Welcome to the 1911 Liverpool General Transport Strike resource...

Friday 9 November 2012

Trade Unions and Revolution: The Industrial Politics of the Early British Communist Party, by James Hinton & Richard Hyman

A short, practicable, book on the Communist Party in the 1920s looking at the National Minority Movement, the relationship with the Trade Union bureaucracy and 'lefts', and the development of revolutionary organisation. The book may be of interest in relation and contrast to the events of the Great Unrest, and to those seeking to organise today against the austerity offensive.

'By attempting to build a mass revolutionary party in Britain in the 1920s, where the labour movement was in retreat, the Communist Party committed a tragic blunder. It sacrificed clarity in its propaganda and its theory, and lost the opportunity to form a revolutionary cadre'

First published 1975 by Pluto Press

Some counterparts and counterpoints to the book:
 Duncan Hallas: The Communist Party and the General Strike (1976)
Jim Higgins: The Minority Movement (1970)
Chris Harman: Trade Union Bureaucracy in Britain, The General Strike (1971)  Trade Unions and Revolution: The Industrial Politics of the Early British Communist Party, by James Hinton...