Communist Party of Great Britain: Scottish Committee Archive

The CPGB in Scotland

From the outset, the Scottish component of the Party had been centrally important to the British organisation through the development of ‘Little Moscows’ in the Vale of Leven, in Fife and elsewhere, and through activity in the Scottish coalfields, shipyards and industrial centres. By the 1960s about one quarter of the national CP membership resided in the Scottish Central belt. Although a decline in membership followed as elsewhere, the Party in Scotland pursued effective lines of work in the trade union movement, the peace movement, the tenants’ movement and the home rule movement. The CP played a major (if under-publicised) role in the Scottish convention movement in the 1940s and 1950s. It helped to rejuvenate the peace movement and CND (although some initial ambiguity regarding attitudes to Soviet ‘peace policy’ caused tensions at the early stage of CND’s development) and elsewhere.It was the Party which developed the strategy for the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in of 1971 and communist shop stewards such as Jimmy Airlie, Jimmy Reid and Sammy Barr led the action on the ground.The work-in itself and its eventual successful outcome had a momentous impact on Scottish public feeling and on national politics of the time, with Scottish communists again in the centre of British affairs with the miners strikes of 1972 and 1974, (in which the Scottish National Union of Mineworkers and its communist leaders were centrally important).By the early 1970s, relationships with the STUC were warm (Jimmy Milne, a communist, was to be elected General Secretary of the STUC in the 1980s).There were some local successes in the electoral field with local councillors being retained in areas such as Fife, Clydebank and the Vale of Leven, although these positions were to be adversely affected by the 1974 re-organisation of local government, leading to the near wipe out of local representation. In this period communist students made some advances in the universities, gaining leadership of the National Union of Students in Scotland.

In the 1980s, the CP in Scotland continued to play a major role in issues such as the STUC led anti-poll tax campaign, the miners’ strike of the mid 1980s (in which again communist miners’ leaders such as Mick McGahey and George Bolton played a prominent part), and the regroupment and development of the Campaign for a Scottish Parliament. After having tried unsuccessfully to unite the pro-devolution forces in the run up to the 1979 referendum the Scottish CP helped bring about the initial meetings of the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly (later Campaign for a Scottish Parliament) whose activities led to the Claim of Right for Scotland and through this to the setting up of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in 1989. From 1989 to 1995, Douglas Chalmers, the Secretary of the Party in Scotland represented the Communist Party (then subsequently Democratic Left Scotland) on the Executive Committee of the Constitutional Convention which drew up the scheme for the new parliament.

During this period of growing success in terms of achieving a Scottish Parliament, the tensions affecting the CP elsewhere also impacted badly on the Party in Scotland. While the majority of the CP members clearly supported the changes at a British level, voting to transform the CP into Democratic Left (Scotland), a minority of members felt unable to do so, and on the change formed an organisation called the Communist Party of Scotland.

(Dr Douglas Chalmers)

Last Updated: 1 August, 2008
Edited by: webteam@gcal.ac.uk