Activities and affiliations

Political and party leadership Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) 1890–1960 ○ Cerebral hemorrhage

Stalin's personally approved CPGB General Secretary who led the party for 25 years

10 May 1920, Port of London. Pollitt convinced dockers not to load the SS Jolly George with munitions bound for Poland, then at war with Soviet Russia. The ship sailed empty on 15 May.

Founding member and General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain for over 25 years, the most significant British communist of the 20th century. He persuaded London dockers to block munitions bound for Poland in the 1920 Hands Off Russia campaign. Appointed General Secretary with Stalin's personal approval, he was the party's secret 'Code Holder' in direct radio contact with Moscow. He supported the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and co-authored The British Road to Socialism, committing the CPGB to a parliamentary path. When Khrushchev denounced Stalin in 1956, Pollitt refused to take down Stalin's portrait from his living room.

Political and party leadership Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) 1896–1974 ○ Natural causes

CPGB founding member, chief theoretician for half a century, and pioneer of Marxist historiography on India

After Khrushchev's 1956 Secret Speech, Dutt told the CPGB Political Bureau: 'On Stalin's sun there were, unsurprisingly, some spots.' The Soviet system, he added, had 'demonstrated the ability of a socialist society to recognise and correct its mistakes.'

Founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and its chief theoretician for half a century, a Marxist historian and journalist. His Fascism and Social Revolution (1934) analysed fascism as an extreme form of monopoly-capitalist crisis, his India Today (1940) pioneered Marxist historiography on India, and he served as CPGB General Secretary in 1939–1941, replacing Harry Pollitt over the party's anti-war line at the outbreak of World War II.