Despite being directly funded by the Soviet Union from 1956 through to the late 1970s, the party became something akin to a pressure group and was further weakened by internal strife. In 1991, after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the decision was taken to disband the party for good.
In 1920, a group of revolutionary socialists attended a meeting at the Cannon Street Hotel in London. The men and women were members of various political groups including the British Socialist Party (BSP), the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), Prohibition and Reform Party (PRP) and the Workers’ Socialist Federation (WSF).
It was agreed to form the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). It later emerged that Lenin had provided at least £55,000 (over £1 million in today’s money) to help fund the CPGB.
Prior to the 1926 British General Strike, large numbers of the CPGB’s leaders were put in prison under the charge of “seditious conspiracy”. But the CPGB’s support for the strike swelled its membership, particularly in Glasgow, East London and Wales, parts of which became known as “Little Moscow”.
The party was active in organising various rallies and demonstrations. Some of these ended in violence, notably in 1936 when Communist marchers clashed with the Blackshirts, members of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, in and around London’s Cable Street.
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