The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party. (1931)

From the June 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

From information that has been published from time to time about the number of its members, it is possible to judge of the varying fortunes of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Of late those variations have been consistently downwards.

A Communist Party member, writing to the New York Militant (March 15th, 1931), a “Trotskyite” organ, states that the Communist Party began with 5,000 members. Statements made at the time put the membership higher, but it has not been possible to obtain authoritative information to that effect.

In March, 1921 (see Communist, April 2nd, 1921), 5,000 members of the were reported to have joined the Communist Party en bloc. The Editor of the Communist remarked that this was the virtual end of the I.L.P., which henceforth “can have no share or part in the Revolution.” Within a year or two the Communists were pushing the “United Front” campaign and asking the I.L.P., to join hands with them, not, indeed, to further the “Revolution,” but to secure the election of MacDonald, Thomas, Henderson, and the rest of the Labour Party leaders.

International Press Correspondence (August 12th, 1924), an official Communist publication, gave the 1923 membership as 5,116, and the 1924 membership as 3,000. The Report of the Central Committee to the 1927 Conference of the British Party (see Manchester Guardian, September 29th., 1927) gave the membership for 1925, 1926, and 1927 as 5,000, 10,800 and 7,377. Of the 7,377 members, 2,300 were in South Wales, 1,500 in Scotland, 1,321 in London, 737 on Tyneside, 534 in Manchester, and 420 in Sheffield.

With regard to the 1926 membership, it was stated at the Moscow Congress in July, 1930, by Manuilsky, that the highest point reached in 1926 was 12,000 (see Daily Herald, July 8th, 1930). The figure 12,000 probably relates to a later date in 1926 than the figure 10,800 given in the preceding paragraph.

Pravda (October 25th, 1930), the Russian Communist paper, gave the membership for the middle of 1928 as 9,000, and for February, 1930, as 3,200 (see Observer, October 26th, 1930). It also disposed that, out of a total membership of four millions in the Communist International, only 500,000 were outside Russia.

At the Bermondsey Communist Party Conference in January, 1929, a delegate, Miss Budden, said that the membership was then 3,700 (Daily Telegraph, January 21st, 1929).

Manuilsky (see above) gave the membership in July, 1930, as 3,500 (Daily Herald, July 8th, 1930).

The Tyneside District Committee of the Communist Party questioned the accuracy of the official figures and gave the membership at the middle of 1929 as not more than 2,500, possibly less (see Communist Review, October, 1929).

Finally, the Communist Party member who supplied information to the New York Militant states that the present membership is under 1,000. He states also that the circulation of the Daily Worker has dropped from 10,000 a day to less than 5,000; as compared with a circulation of 70,000 for the former Workers’ Weekly, and a circulation, at its highest point, of 110,000 for the Sunday Worker.

The following table sets out the estimates for the various years. The figure for 1921 is made up by adding the 5,000 I.L.P. recruits to the previous 5,000 members.

Year	Membership
1920	5,000
1921	10,000
1923	5,116
1924	3,000
1925	5,0000
1926	10,800
1926	12,000
1927	7,377
1929	3,700
1930	3,200
1930	3,500
1931	1,000

The Communists’ chief criticism of the S.P.G.B. has been that our method, with its insistence upon educating the workers in Socialist principles, is too slow. What do the Communists now think of their own “quick” methods? We wonder if the Russian Government and the Russian workers are satisfied with value received for the money—which must run into hundreds of thousands of pounds—spent here on propaganda, little of it having anything to do with Communism?

Edgar Hardcastle