VERY FEW intellectuals joined the British Communist Party when it was formed in 1920. The great majority of the British intelligentsia were too much the children of Britsuccessful workers' revolution.
There were a few notable and praiseworthy exceptions however, and amongst these was Rajani Palme Dutt. Dutt, a former scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, without hesitation rejected what could have been an eminently successful academic career to become a revolutionary.
But like so many of that group of sell-sacrificing and devoted militants who founded the CPGB, Dutt came to identify loyalty to communism with blind obedience to the Soviet Union, Beginning from the correct understanding that it was the absolute duty of the mternations workind class to defend the first workers' state, Durt and his colleapses translated that to mean that the international communist partics had to subordinate their own revolution so see uponame needs or Che stain se Red Weekly 1 January 1975 Page 4 buratcracy that fook control in Russia after Lenin's deati The high motives that had inspired the communist pioneers were cynically manipulated by the 'apparatchiks" who now ran the 3ed International In toco the Dutts, the Pollitts and the Arnols becafne nothing more than cynical timeserves who followed overy twist and turn in the Kremlin's line with an eathaslasm that converted the infant CPGB Iramn a potential revolutionary organisation ato a burucratic set To make the CP sale for the Kremlin ish imperialism to be inspired by the and ensure theirown control over its Campbell Homer opposition to the ultraleft lunacy of the Third Period. A com phant and servile party was assured at the expease of driving it into the sectarian wilderness.
After the rise to power of Hitler in Germany -assisted by the ultra-leftism of the Comintern's third period politica -the Communist International turned its resources towards building an alliance of the progressive and democratic nat Jons" against fascism. Figures like the Duchess of Alholl and the Right Rorerend Hewlitt Johnson traipsed around the country with Dutt and the other CP leaders urging a popular frant to oppose fascists.
Hitler's invasion of Poland and the Stalin-Hitler Pact blew this popular front sky high, and the CP lound itself on thu politient sidelines. The CP's entwhile prognosive allies now tail to be portrayed us imperilist war-mongers Even Dutt's pid ally Podlitt tound this hard to swallow and resigned for a time from the icneral secretaryship of the CP. in Labour Monthly in July 1940, Char chill and Chamberian unite in common defence of their imperialist and class int creshe in the same magazine he spelt.
our even more clearly the lise of the ition Goverumont of Churchill-Chamber lain-Attice is a govemment of full and BEN HOSLE TONESE RAT Then, on 22 June 1941, the Nazis invaded the 055k. Unblushingly rocognising the 'now reality', Dutt did a complete about-turn, claiming that the opcoing of a second front was the .. way we can open up a now future for the working class movement and the peoples of the world. The imperialist wat had, according to Dutt, hecome a peo pies war,"
Stalin's crimes at cho 20th Compress in 1956, detonating an explosion throughaut the world Communist Parties, Dutt remained an unrepentant and unreconstructod stalinist. At a CP executive mecting replying to ember shocked hy the disclosins, he cynically commented that they were 'simply sputs on the sun On his death, Dutt pot an obituary from the Tina. Spoking of his rule in helping to build the Indian Communist Parly, the Times remarked: "Yet, what ever damage he did to the British Empin: he prohably inore than made up hy his strong discouragement of rebellious tendencies in India in tha critical years 1941-45 It is a sag: indictment of stalinism that a once idealist revol bonary should he thanked by the organ of the ruliar class tar services rendered.
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