Anti-Fascist or Imperialist War? The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Outbreak of War in 1939.

Abstract

This thesis aims to explain the motivations which led the leadership of the Communist Party of Great Britain to, at first, give qualified support to the British war effort at the start of World War Two and to give greater insight into the motivations which led members of the Party’s Central Committee to abandon this line one month into the war, in favour of a line of opposition to the war based on advocating an immediate peace conference mediated by the Soviet Union. It finds that the Party leaders initially gave a degree of support to the war because they felt that the war was not a simple imperialist war but rather a war of resistance to fascist aggression; an idea based on theoretical concepts adhered to by the Party during the 1930s. The Central Committee felt that supporting the war would allow the Party to prevent German fascism being imposed on Britain through conquest and would provide the opportunity to re-establish democratic rule in states which had already succumbed to Nazism. Furthermore it felt that such a policy would be supported by the British workers and would not conflict with Soviet policy. This thesis also finds that, whilst the intellectual authority of the Comintern and the Soviet Union were the primary trigger for the Party’s change in line, the Party leadership were also convinced of its correctness on the basis of pre-existing suspicions of the war aims of the British government as well as a belief that campaigning for peace would allow the Party to safeguard British democracy from its enemies at home and abroad. At the same time it highlights differences between the motivations of the majority of the Central Committee and the Party’s secretariat for supporting the new line, specifically in their perceptions of the possibilities of a German victory in the war.