Maoism in the Developed World

Michael McCreery died in 1965. His group thereafter splintered into several competing organizations. One of these was the Action Committee for Marxist-Leninist Unity, headed by Michael Baker, which published a periodical, Hammer or Anvil. At the end of 1967 it joined with the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Britain to form the Revolutionary Communist League of Great Britain, which endorsed Liu Shao-qui at the time of the Cultural Revolution.[239] Other elements from the McCreery group established the Workers Party of Scotland and the Working People’s Party of England.[240]

The Communist Party Of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

Even after the establishment of The Committee to Defeat Revisionism, there continued to be pro-Chinese elements within the leadership of the CPGB. In the party’s 1965 congress, twenty such people were expelled from the party’s ranks. Two years later, in April 1967, another group, led by Reg Birch and three other members of the editorial committee of a pro-Peking publication, Marxist, were also expelled from the CPGB.[241]

Finally, in April 1968, Birch and others who had been expelled held a congress in which they established the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). It claimed a membership of 400 at its inception.[242] Reports on its membership did not vary significantly in the following decade.

The CPB (M-L) published a fortnightly paper The Worker. However, the main importance of the party was derived from its major leader and spokesman, Reg Birch. He was a long-time member of the Executive Committee of one of the country’s largest national unions, the Amalgamated Engineering Union, and in September 1975 was also elected to the General Council of the Trade Union Congress.[243]

As might have been expected, the CPB (M-L) adopted extremist positions, both in the industrial and general political field. D. L. Price wrote in 1974 that “Though small in numbers, the CPB ML operated intensively in the engineering industry, in campaigns aimed at destroying the Industrial Relations Act. The campaigns took the form of occupations of factory premises and rallies: ‘Occupations lend themselves admirably to the present phase of guerrilla struggle. … Every guerrilla struggle is a rehearsal for the final confrontation when it will not be individual factories occupied tactically but the whole employing class expropriated strategically.’ Reg Birch forecast that his party would become increasingly militant: ‘We will fight for our rights. … Well take it out into the open and well have a civil war about it.’”[244]

The party apparently did not take part in elections. Following the October 1974 general election, it indicated its apocalyptic view of the situation in a statement that claimed, “We are in a fight to the death—the death of a class, them over us. They will not bury us. We will bury them.” … Such a line led one observer to comment that in 1974 “the party steadily lost credibility, as its propaganda became increasingly doctrinaire and extreme.”[245]

The CPB (M-L) was in 1974 credited with being “the only pro-Chinese party in Great Britain whose activities are publicized by the People’s Republic of China.”[246] The year before, Reg Birch had made an extended visit to Peking and Tirana, where he was given interviews there with Chou En-lai and Enver Hoxha, respectively.[247]

Other Maoist Groups

The CPB (M-L) was not the only pro-Maoist party in Britain in the 1970s, however. In 1976, Richard Sim reported that “In 1976 eight pro-Chinese Marxist parties were identified as still operative in Britain though all were very small.” Of these, Sim said, the PCB (M-L) was “the largest, with a membership of 300-400.”[248]

By the late 1970s there was a second Maoist group of at least some significance, the Revolutionary Communist League of Britain. It was formed in 1978 by the merger of the Communist Federation of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and the Communist Unity Association of Britain (Marxist-Leninist).[249] It came to associate itself with the Albanians against the Chinese.[250]

By the early 1980s, the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and the Revolutionary Communist League of Britain were reported to be the only two Maoist groups that “can make any claim of having a visible organization” in the United Kingdom. In general, Maoism was said to be “in serious decline.”[251]

British Maoism was affected by the split between China and Albania. The Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) supported Albania in its quarrel with the successors of Mao Tse-tung. The CPB (M-L)’s rival, the Revolutionary Communist League of Britain, was said to “admire the Pol Pot regime”[252]