Following the betrayal of the General Strike by the Trade Union leaders and the defeat of the heroic struggle of the miners during the latter half of 1926, the working class movement entered into a difficult period. Trade Union leaders declared that never again would there be a General Strike and called for 'peace in industry'. They entered into collaboration with the employers to rationalise industry and to speed up the work processes.

Three years later, the crash on Wall Street heralded the world economic crisis which lasted from 1929 until 1933. This was not only the longest but also the most profound and destructive of all the crises which had beset the capitalist system. It extended to all the countries of the capitalist world and dealt shattering blows to the economy as well as the political theories and ideologies of the ruling class.

During those traumatic years, the small Communist Party strove to give leadership to the workers. Every effort was made by the ruling class and the labour leaders to isolate the Party. Communists were excluded from office and membership in some Trade Unions. They were also excluded from membership of the Labour party and a number of left Labour Parties were disaffiliated when they refused to carry out expulsions.

The fierce attack on the workers' standards of living, both those in employment and the hundreds of thousands out of work, was countered by the Communist Party under the slogan "independent leadership of the working class in struggle". In the course of this work, serious mistakes were made. Labour leaders were called 'social fascists' and crass sectarianism prevailed. It was assumed that because Trade Unions and the Social Democratic Parties were collaborating with the employers, it would always be so. It was also assumed that the rank and file would immediately follow the leaders and be tainted with the same practices (1)

Among the positive aspects was the work of the Party in factories and pits; the prominent part played by such Communist activists as Rose Smith, Emie Wooley, Jim Rushton, Harry Kershaw and Harold and Bessie Dickenson during the Lancashire cotton struggles in the early thirties (2) and the huge demonstrations against the savage cuts in Unemployment Benefit which were organised by the National Unemployed Workers' Movernent under the leadership of Wal Hannington. (3) Out of this activity, as the struggle sharpened, new cadres came into the leadership.

The Central Committee elected at the Eleventh Party Congress in December 1929 included Joe Scott who was later elected to the Amalgamated Engineering Union Executive Council and Abe Moffat who became President of the Scottish Mine Workers. The advances made by the Party during the later thirties and the war years were based on the struggles conducted during 1927 - 1933.

When the DAILY WORKER was launched in 1930, there was an initial sale which settled towards the end of the year to ten thousand. It then picked up from 1931 to reach twenty one thousand with a Saturday sale of forty six thousand. Party membership followed a similar pattern rising from about three and a half thousand m 1929 to reach five and a half thousand in 1933. One commentator remarked, "All in all the three core years of the New Line, from 1930 - 1933 were very good years for the CPGB" .(4)A further indication of the fruits of such activity was the votes cast for Harry Pollitt and Arthur Horner in 1931. (5)

The inheritance from the British Socialist Party of propaganda meetings, indoors and outside, the sale of THE COMMUNIST and political literature, had continued in the Communist Party from 1920. But by 1923, it was recognised that changes were necessary and a Commission was set up to look into methods of work. On their recommendation, emphasis began to the placed on work in factories and pits and in the trade union and labour movements. The result was the establishment of pit and factory cells which were given the responsibility of producing a paper for local sale.

Writing in 1933, Idris Cox said, " The foundation of the Communist Party must be in the factories. This is where the class struggle is seen most clearly in actual practice It is therefore in the factories that the workers can best protect their everyday interests, deal the most serious blows against the boss and organise the struggle for the overthrow of Capitalism. Factory cells, therefore, are the basis of Communist organisation". He suggested that where three or more Communists worked in the same place, there was the basis for the formation of a cell. The first objective of each cell was to lead the daily struggle of the workers. As a means of communication and organisation, many cells produced a paper which took a long hard look at the working conditions, wages and life generally of those among whom they worked.(6)

There was no shortage of material for such papers. Grievances there were in abundance and workers were able to provide examples for inclusion from their own experience. The Communists also looked at the Shop Steward organisation - or lack of it and the extent of Trade Union organisation. Labour Party members and readers of THE DAILY HERALD were approached to undertake joint activity m the workplace while work within the Trade Union influenced Branches and District Committees.

Experience in linking the day to day demands of the workers with the policy of the Party, however, made slow progress. Victimisation was always a problem. Joe Dunn who was a member of the Manchester Distict Committee of the AEU had experience of such treatment. He also had a flair for writing. In the A.E.I Worker he wrote," The sudden word that you are wanted at the desk, the walk down the machines trying to look unconcerned, and the failure to do so. The stealthy glances of the men who work near the desk. The long wait at the side. The meeting with the other wanted men and the forced jokes and laughter. The sudden hush. The foreman trying to look sorry. The business-like way of dealing them out'; the mechanical 'Sorry, I've got to do it'. The long walk back to your machine, the glances as you go. The mechanical resumption of work and then the thought -'How shall I break it them at home?' "(7)

A graphic description of the way in which a factory cell was built up and operated was written about some building workers on a site. Two carpenters and a timekeeper who were Party members, started by recruiting some of the labourers who were preparing the site. In tune, the organisation grew and was run in a formal manner with proper preparation for meetings and allocation of responsibilities. After a time they reviewed their work and realised that they were isolated from the Sub-district of the Party. Although the connection was established, they commented that "we remain fundamentally a Works Cell. Our connection being merely a formal one. Consequently the cell members were not drawn into the local struggles." When a strike took place over the dismissal of a member of the cell, sales of the DAILY WORKER rose from 80 to 300 with another two hundred being sold on neighbouring sites. Five months later, sales had stabilised at 360 with an average weekly sale of literature of about a £1. (8)

It was the unemployed, the housewives and teachers with a later starting time who stood at the factory gates selling the papers. Factory gate meetings were held during the lunchbreak and often hundreds of workers stopped to listen. One activist who played a part during these years was Ewan MacColl (Jimmy Miller). He wrote about the Manchester scene, "There were factory papers and copies of the Party newspaper to be sold outside Metropolitan - Vickers, Taylor Brothers or Lancashire Dynamo in Trafford Park. So we got up at five in the morning and walked through the empty streets. THE SALFORD DOCKER , a four-page duplicated newspaper, had to be sold to the morning shift at the docks, so we walked. There were factory newspapers to be sold outside Crossley Motors in Openshaw, at Gorton Tank or at Ward and Goldstone's Electrical Components factory in Lower Broughton. So we walked there. (9)

During the last years of the thirties and the early years of the war, the factory and pit branches continued to grow. Circulation of the DAILY WORKER and the sales of pamphlets increased. By April, 1942, Lancashire District of the Communist Party had 109 Pit and Factory Groups involving nearly two thousand members.(10) However, in 1944 a campaign was waged to secure affiliation to the Labour Party and it was decided that concentration should be on building area branches so that the Party would be better able to work with the Labour Party ward organisation. (11) Members were transferred from factory branches to the locality and in the process the majority of them were lost to the Party. Many of them felt that their political work lay in the industrial field and not at home.

Later efforts in the period of the cold war to re-form pit and factory branches were not very successful.

NOTES

1. Noreen Branson , HISTORY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN 1927 - 1941. (1985)
2. Harry Pollitt, The Cotton Fight Today. COMMUNIST REVIEW, (June, 1932).
3. Wal Hannington, UNEMPLOYED STRUGGLES, 1919 - 1936 (1936)
4. Mike Squires, CPGB Membership during the Class Against Class years. SOCIALIST HISTORY Number 3. (Winter 1993).
5. THE TIMES HOUSE OF COMMONS, 1931.
   

   General Election, 1931. Whitechapel Janner, B. Liberal 11,013 Hall J. Labour 9,864 Pollitt H. Communist 2,685

   General Election, 1931. Rhondda East Watts- Morgan, Lt.-Col. D. Labour 22,086 Horner, A. Communist 10,359

6. Idris Cox, HOW TO WORK 114 THE FACTORIES AND STREETS. CPGB. January, 1933.
7. Joe Dunn, GETTING THE BIRD. AEI WORKER, April, 1931.
8. HISTORY OF A BUILDING CELL (1924) Document in Communist Party Archives. National Museum of Labour History, Manchester.
9. Ewan MacColl, JOURNEYMAN. (1990) Page 182.
10. CPGB Lancashire District. Typed List of Factory Groups, 1 April, 1942. Working Class Movement Library
11. CPGB. Proposals Of The Executive Committee on Party Organisation. 17, December, 1944

EWAN MacCOLL:

"The Party was growing, slowly, but nevertheless it was growing. It had premises in Great Ducie Street, Manchester, near the old London Road station. The party premises were old when Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1844. We had one room on the top of a four-storey flight of rickety stairs, and in this room there was a duplicating machine, a rickety desk, a wastepaper basket and a typewriter.

It was a poky little room, but all the work of the Party was done there and the work seemed to be endless. We were running factory newspapers, like the Salford Docker, for example, a duplicated news—sheet — one, two, three, four pages, sold outside the docks to blokes as they went on. At this time dockers went to work on spec. You stood in the quays which was just like a cattle market. And there were catwalks between the quays, and a ganger or 'bummer' would come out and say, 'You, you, you and you!' And there'd be five, ten or fifteen men selected out of several hundred, and the rest would go home. And it was like that every day. A number of strikes had developed, and one in Salford itself, a very successful strike, against this system. The demand was that men should be guaranteed work for a certain number of days each week.

During this period I used to be out at the docks maybe twice a week at the early morning shift — the 6 o'clock shift — and we'd sell papers there until they went in. And then I'd go off to the labour exchange, sign on, leave the exchange, and I'd meet Bob, my mate, and we'd maybe go to the party offices, and help with producing the Crossley Motor, which was the organ of the Crossley motor works. Sometimes I'd write little rhymed squibs about an unpopular foreman. Several of these would dot the page in between the more serious articles. I'd do the same for the Ward and Goldstone's Spark that was another duplicated news—sheet that was sold outside an electrical component factory in Lower Broughton. I used to write editorials for that as well, because it was reckoned that I lived near there and should therefore have contact with the workers inside. But as almost ah the workers were girls, and mostly girls who were older than me, well, the chances of getting to know any of them weren't very good. So I used to go up and hang around outside the factory and chat girls up — and get them to tehl me things about which department they worked in, what was the foreman's name, what were the management like, what was the grub like in the canteen; then I'd write an article and maybe make up a song and maybe three or four little lampoons, in rhyming couplets or in Alexandrines sometimes! I'd just learned about Alexandrine verse so I thought, 'Ah right, get the factory newspaper to print those!'

I must have written hundreds of these things, because I was writing for the Salford Docker, the Ward and Goldstone's Spark, the Crossley Motor. What else was I writing for? The British Dyestuffs Corporation factory at Blackley.

The Blackley division of the British Dyestuffs Corporation was the result of a takeover. It had previously been known as Levensteins, though the change of management didn't affect the hellish smells given oíl by the place. As a source of pollution, the place was hard to beat. The local kids had a rhyme about it:

Down in Blackley stands the Dyestuffs
Better known as Levensteins;
O, it smells just like a carsey,
Worse than working down a mine.

Go to buggery, go to buggery,
Go to buggery Levenstein!
O, it smells just like a carsey,
Worse than working down a mine.

I was doing about five factory papers every week, and helping to duplicate them, and sometimes helping to type them. We had a party typist, but she couldn't keep pace with ah the things that had to be done.

In the factory papers there'd be a leading article written about, say, the state of the engineering industry, or some specific struggle that was going on inside the industry. And then the leader writer, if he was good, would relate this not only to the factory but to specific departments inside the factory. Some of this information he would arrive at intuitively or through his knowledge of the politics of the whole industry, some he would arrive at through consultation with whoever had been brought into the branch. Occasionally it would be someone from within the plant that happened with the- Salford Docker, where you got actual dockers writing the editorials. But at first it would be a party member who might be unemployed, who'd make it his business to find out as much as he could about that factory and to interpret it politically. Usually there was an attempt to write some kind of objective analysis of a specific situation. But there'd be all kinds of other pieces, of course, little satiric squibs, lampoons and verses and all the rest of it. These would deal with a little comer of the political picture. A foreman, for example, at Ward and Goldstone's, had a reputation for trying 'to have it off' with the girls who worked under him — well, he was lampooned fantastically, and his position would be made very difficult. Suppose his missus got to hear of it! Well, you can imagine. And there were letters of course m the papers, usually phoney ones ... not the information, just the signatures. You must remember you could be expelled from the AEU (Amalgamated Engineering Union) for being a Red at this time. The selling of the paper had to be done by people outside the factory, at the factory gate. I must have spent a fair amount of time selling at least half a dozen different factory newspapers, outside half a dozen different places of employment.

Now you can't write a four-line squib in formal English to workers who never use formal English; you have to use exactly their terms. Not just an approximation of their terms, but exactly their terms."
(TL:219-21)