In this, the second of two articles outlining the history of relations between the communists of Britain and China, Robert Griffiths, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), having briefly recapped some highlights from the 1920s, 30s and 40s, takes up the story from the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949.
Very soon after liberation, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was instrumental in the formation of the Britain-China Friendship Association (BCFA), which brought together left and progressive trade unionists, co-operators, scientists, academics, artists, writers, musicians and businesspeople, among others. However, in the face of the intensified cold war, and particularly Britain’s participation in the Korean War, the Labour Party placed the BCFA on its list of proscribed organisations. A number of Labour members were expelled from the party as a result, although, in the first half of the 1980s, one of them, Jim Mortimer, was to eventually become the party’s General Secretary.
Against a background of decades of uninterrupted solidarity, CPGB General Secretary Harry Pollitt paid the first of his three visits to China in 1955. The next year, along with Willie Gallacher and George Caborn, he was a fraternal delegate to the eighth national congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC). And in 1959 he was present for the tenth anniversary celebrations of the People’s Republic.
The close friendship between the CPGB and the CPC did not survive the split between the Soviet and Chinese parties, which burst into the open in the early 1960s and divided communists throughout the world. Relations were not restored until the 1980s.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries of eastern Europe in 1989-91 created a new situation, with the first CPB delegation visiting China in 1995.
Comrade Griffiths concludes his article on a note of optimism, with the CPB, together with Friends of Socialist China, jointly celebrating the 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China and beginning to plan for further successful initiatives in 2025.
The article was originally published in the Morning Star. The preceding article, reviewing the earlier years, may be read here and the PDF of the full Morning Star supplement, in which it originally appeared can be downloaded here.
Communists in Britain can be proud of their record of solidarity with the people of China in the latter’s struggle for unity, sovereignty and social justice.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Tom Mann and George Hardy visited China to assist in the unionisation of Chinese workers. The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB, today known as the CPB) organised protests against the Japanese invasion and occupation, with dockers and seafarers striking to halt the shipment of munitions to Japan.
The same British companies, such as Vickers and ICI, were also busy supplying Nazi Germany.
From the Hands Off China movement in the 1920s to the post-war Hands Off Korea campaign, Britain’s communists and their allies opposed British, Japanese and US military intervention in China and its neighbouring countries.
The proclamation of the People’s Republic of China on October 1 1949 marked the dawn of a new era for the Chinese people. As the CPGB’s new programme, Britain’s Road to Socialism, put it in 1951: “The Chinese revolution has freed hundreds of millions from the grip of the landlords and the foreign bankers.”
The party’s leadership also warned that US imperialism, now in the throes of cold war hysteria, would seek a pretext for going to war with China. Dismissed as far-fetched “anti-Americanism,” these fears were realised all too soon when US-UN armed forces advanced on China during the Korean War, drawing a devastating response from Chinese liberation army volunteers.
US president Truman and commander in chief General MacArthur threatened to unleash nuclear war, causing prime minister Clement Attlee to dash to Washington DC where he was assured in December 1950 that the US would not use “the bomb” without consulting Britain first — although Truman refused to put this in writing.
Arthur Clegg sounded a further warning against an atomic conflagration in a CPGB pamphlet the following year, No War With China.
At the same time, Britain’s communists were promoting constructive economic, social and cultural relations with the people of China.
Formed in 1949, the Britain-China Friendship Association (BCFA) attracted support from left and progressive trade unionists, co-operators, scientists, academics, artists, writers, musicians and business people.
No Labour Party organisations were among its 80 or so affiliated bodies, the BCFA having been put on Labour’s list of proscribed “communist front” organisations. Jim Mortimer, later to become Labour’s left-wing general secretary, 1982-85, was among those expelled from the party at the time for his support of the BCFA.
Undaunted, the association arranged a wide range of events showcasing China’s achievements, including mass literacy campaigns, the liberation of women from feudal shackles, extensive land reform and the first five-year economic plan (fulfilled with substantial Soviet assistance).
Daily Worker journalist Alan Winnington, whose reports of massacres by US forces and South Korean police cost him his British passport, later captured the drama and heroism of those early reforms in his classic book, Slaves of the Cool Mountains (1959).
Meanwhile, the BCFA continued to challenge British, US and Western economic, diplomatic and military aggression against People’s China head-on.
Against this background of unstinting solidarity, CPGB general secretary Harry Pollitt paid the first of three trips to China. Having championed Chinese freedom from Japan’s brutal occupation, he received a tumultuous welcome in spring 1955 in Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Canton (Guangzhou) and Hangzhou.
In September 1956, along with Willie Gallacher and George Caborn, Pollitt attended the 8th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
In his address, he praised the party’s “epoch-making achievements which have transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people in China.” In taking the road to socialism — “one of the greatest events of all times” — the Chinese communists had “contributed to a new world situation.”
In Beijing in autumn 1959, together with Ho Chi Minh and other famous leaders of the communist movement, Pollitt celebrated the 10th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
He wrote of the country’s massive construction programme of new factories, shipyards, schools and health centres. He was particularly impressed by the major advances in agriculture, based on a co-operative system of “people’s communes.”
But Pollitt did not live to witness the full extent to which China would go on a course that would damage its economic and social progress and disrupt its relations with most of the world’s communist parties, including the CPGB.
The rupture began with the Great Leap Forward announced in spring 1958.
The ambitious but realistic targets of the second five-year plan (1958-62) were multiplied and brought forward. The people’s communes and workshop manufacture would spread a huge new wave of industrialisation rather than relying on building large production units in heavy industries such as steel.
The USSR withdrew its thousands of “conservative,” “defeatist” and allegedly overbearing economic specialists.
Increasingly, the Communist Party of China (CPC) challenged the positions taken by the Communist Party of the USSR and most other communist parties on vital strategic questions:
In advanced capitalist countries with a large working class and powerful communist parties, can there be a transition to socialism without violent civil war?
Were the 1957 and 1960 international meetings of communist parties right to emphasise the aim of “peaceful co-existence” between states with different social systems?
For the CPC back then, such positions abandoned the revolutionary class struggle, nationally and internationally, as the essence of Marxism-Leninism. The polemics between the Chinese and Soviet parties assumed a very sharp character.
The CPGB regretted the tone and, while generally siding with the Soviets, urged a process of comradely dialogue in an effort to reunite the world communist movement, especially in the period when the Vietnamese communists were fighting a war of national liberation against US imperialism.
The failure of the Great Leap Forward intensified the purge directed by Mao Zedong against “counter-revolutionary elements.” Alleged “capitalist roaders” at every level of Chinese society, including in the top CPC leadership, were besieged by Red Guards in the so-called Cultural Revolution.
The CPGB regarded this descent into chaos with horror. Its standpoint was clearly and comprehensively expressed in Rajani Palme Dutt’s 1967 pamphlet Whither China?
Although the CPC urged genuine Marxist-Leninists to split away from “revisionist” leaderships who could not be overturned, such endeavours failed to produce new Maoist parties of any great influence or durability in Britain.
More successful was the establishment of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU) in 1965, chaired by renowned scientist Dr Joseph Needham and dedicated to explaining Chinese developments as the BCFA was mothballed due to the split in the international movement.
Meanwhile, the CPGB refused to denounce the supposed “social imperialism” of the USSR, although it condemned the Soviet and Warsaw Pact military intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Profound disagreement with aspects of Chinese foreign policy, notably in Angola and Chile, kept relations with the CPC at their lowest-ever level.
The thaw began some time after the change of CPC leadership in the late 1970s, following the death of Mao and the downfall of the so-called Gang of Four.
Divisions within the CPGB over revolutionary strategy and the party’s support for the USSR’s domestic and foreign policies eventually produced a revisionist leadership on the path to liquidation.
In the 1990s, counter-revolution in the USSR and the socialist countries of eastern Europe shook the international communist movement to its core.
However, the CPC’s new course has since constructed the dynamic, modernising, outward-looking China of today, growing three times faster than developed capitalist economies, eliminating absolute poverty and pursuing international peace, sustainable development and social justice.
Significantly, too, the CPC is playing a major role in rebuilding the world communist movement. It participates fully in the annual International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties and hosts numerous delegations from around the world.
Relations with the CPB have grown ever warmer, with delegations to each others’ countries beginning with the visit to China of CPB general secretary Mike Hicks, chair Richard Maybin, Morning Star editor John Haylett and secretary Mary Rosser in 1995.
Since its foundation in early 2021, the work of Friends of Socialist China has brought communists, socialists, and progressives together to analyse, discuss and publicise the achievements of today’s China, while recognising — as do China’s Communists — that much remains to be done.
Together, we celebrate the 75th anniversary year of the People’s Republic of China and begin to plan for further successful initiatives in 2025.
