Peter Fryer on the 1956-7 crisis in the Communist Party

Submitted by AWL on 19 December, 2013 - 8:36

In 1956-7 the British Communist Party cut a figure as by far the weightiest activist left party in the country, with over 40,000 members and great influence in the trade unions and workplaces. It was thrown into crisis by world events.

In February 1956 Stalin's successor as ruler of the USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, had made a "secret speech", soon leaked, denouncing Stalin. CP members' faith in Stalin was shattered. And then their hopes that Khrushchev would bring socialist reform were shattered too, when Khrushchev sent Russian tanks into Hungary in November 1956 to crush a revolutionary workers' uprising against the bureaucratic regime there.

The articles listed below were written by, or are about, Peter Fryer, who in 1956 was the reporter in Hungary for the British CP newspaper, the Daily Worker. He sent truthful reports, had them suppressed, spoke out in support of the Hungarian workers, was expelled by the CP and became a Trotskyist.

Introduction: Peter Fryer and Trotskyism

The 1956 crisis in the British Communist Party and the Trotskyists: an overview written in October 1957

The 1957 congress of the Communist Party (report at the time by Peter Fryer).

The speech Peter Fryer would have made at the 1957 congress of the Communist Party (if he had been able to speak).

Below: Peter Fryer in 1957

The CP remained a substantial force into the 1970s. It edged away from slavish obedience to the rulers of the USSR - it opposed the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 - but towards social democracy, not towards revolutionary socialism. From the late 1960s it faced a greater challenge from its left.

It declined drastically from the late 1970s, and split in the mid-1980s. The "Eurocommunist" wing which had kept the name "Communist Party of Great Britain" after the split then wound up the rump party in 1991. Elements of the anti-"Eurocommunist", more Stalinistic, wing regrouped in due course and formed the present (small) Communist Party of Britain, which publishes the Morning Star.

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