British Communism And The Politics Of Race

Evan Smith, Ph.D. (2007), Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, is a Visiting Adjunct Fellow at that university. He co-wrote Race, Gender and the Body in British Immigration Control (Palgrave, 2014) and co-edited Against the Grain: The British Far Left from 1956 (MUP, 2014).

“Evan Smith’s British Communism and the Politics of Race provides an excellent reference work for an under-explored topic, namely the Communist Party of Great Britain’s relationship to the anti-racist movements of post-war Britain.”—Daniel Edmonds, Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History“Aiming for a better understanding of the impact the Communist Party had on anti-racist politics, [Evan Smith] has made a close reading of the party’s publications, its internal documents and the secondary literature. The result is a carefully written study of the party’s policy on race.”—Geoff Brown, International Socialism

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionThemesShifting Away from the Centrality of ClassThinking Intersectionally about the CPGB and the Politics of ‘Race’Situating the Party’s Anti-racism within the Wider ScholarshipA Note on MethodologyBook Structure1 The End of Empire and the Windrush Moment, 1945–60The Communist Party’s Anti-colonial TraditionsThe CPGB and the Era of DecolonisationLeft Nationalism and the Postwar CPGBThe Response of the Communist Party to Commonwealth MigrationThe Campaign Against Polish ResettlementThe Legacy of the ‘Battle of Cable Street’ and the CPGB’s Postwar Anti-fascismAnti-fascist Action against the Fascist Revival of the Union Movement, 1945–51The Impact of Commonwealth Migrants upon the Party’s Anti-colonial/Anti-racist OutlookThe Nationality BranchesConclusion2 Anti-racism and Building the ‘Mass Party’, 1960–9The Communist Party, Labour and Immigration ControlsThe Principle of Immigration ControlsThe Campaign for Legislation against Racial DiscriminationThe Race Relations Acts Under Labour, 1965–8The CPGB’s Concept of ‘Race’ in the Post-Colonial EraThe Movement for Colonial Freedom and Moderate Anti-racismThe Beginnings of the ‘British Upturn’ and the Radicalism of ‘1968’The Trade Unions and RaceThe Rise of New Social Movements and Black RadicalismThe Link with International IssuesCapitulating to Racism: Labour and the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968Integration and ‘Good Race Relations’: The 1968 Race Relations ActPowellism and the Rise of the National FrontConclusion3 The Crisis Emerges, 1970–5The 1971 Immigration Act and Opposition to the Conservative GovernmentThe Communist Party and the Reaction of the Trade Unions to the Immigration ActFacing the Limits of Industrial MilitancyThe Ugandan Asian ‘Controversy’ and the Rise of the National Front under the ConservativesThe ‘No Platform’ StrategyRed Lion Square and the Death of Kevin GatelyThe Trade Union Response to Fascism and Racism in the 1970sAsian Workers and the Trade Unions in the Early 1970s: Mansfield Hosiery Mills and Imperial TypewritersConclusion4 The Great Moving Right Show, 1976–9The Building of the Broad Democratic AllianceThe Grunwick StrikeIntersectionality and the British Labour MovementPolicing the Labour MovementThe NF’s Shift to the Streets and the Rise of the Asian Youth MovementsThe Rise of the SWP and the Revival of Militant Anti-fascismThe ‘Battle of Lewisham’‘The National Front is a Nazi Front’: The Anti-Nazi League, 1977–9Rock Against RacismThe ANL and the Wider British leftSouthall and the Death of Blair Peach‘Feeling Rather Swamped’: Thatcher and the Exploitation of Popular RacismConclusion5 Babylon’s Burning: Into the 1980sFurther Defeats for the CPGBThe Police and the Black CommunitiesFrom Southall to Brixton: The Violent Reaction to the Police Under Thatcher‘Crisis in the Inner Cities’: The Communist Party’s ReactionThe 1981 Riots as Social ProtestLord Scarman’s Report and the Denial of Institutional RacismThe Broad Democratic Alliance and Municipal Anti-racismThe ‘Limits’ of Trade Unionism in the 1980sThe Push for Black Sections/Caucuses within the Labour MovementThe End of the PartyConclusionConclusionReferencesIndex