Harry Pollitt

British politician

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Last Updated: Jun 23, 2025 • Article History

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Born:: Nov. 22, 1890, Droylsden, Lancashire, Eng.

Died:: June 27, 1960, at sea en route from Australia to England (aged 69)

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Harry Pollitt (born Nov. 22, 1890, Droylsden, Lancashire, Eng.—died June 27, 1960, at sea en route from Australia to England) was a British Communist, general secretary (1929–39, 1941–56) and chairman (1956–60) of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).

Pollitt’s father was a factory worker and trade unionist and his mother a weaver. At age 13 (1903) he left school to work in the local textile mill and eventually became a boilermaker and a leader in the boilermakers union. He helped found the CPGB in 1920 and went to Moscow in 1921 to attend a congress of the Third International, where he met Vladimir Lenin. In 1925 he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for seditious libel and incitement to mutiny. (In 1934 he was acquitted in another sedition trial.) In 1929 he became head of his party as general secretary.

Pollitt enthusiastically supported Britain’s declaration of war against Germany on Sept. 3, 1939; but when Russia invaded Poland two weeks later, the official Moscow line changed, and Pollitt was caught in an embarrassing contradiction. He was removed from the secretaryship. Following the outbreak of war between Germany and the Soviet Union in June 1941, however, Pollitt was returned to leadership of the party.

He was caught again in a contretemps in 1956, when, while he was praising Stalin, the secret 20th Party Congress in Moscow was condemning the former Soviet leader. Pollitt was again set aside, this time given the nominal post of chairman of the British Communist Party.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Communist Party

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Communist Party

politics

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Related Topics:: political party; Politburo

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Communist Party, Political party organized to facilitate the transition of society from capitalism through socialism to communism. Russia was the first country in which communists came to power (1917). In 1918 the Bolshevik party was renamed the All-Russian Communist Party; the name was taken to distinguish its members from the socialists of the Second International who had supported capitalist governments during World War I. Its basic unit was the workers’ council (soviet), above which were district, city, regional, and republic committees. At the top was the party congress, which met only every few years; the delegates elected the members of the Central Committee, who in turn elected the members of the Politburo and the Secretariat, though those organizations were actually largely self-perpetuating. The Soviet Union dominated communist parties worldwide through World War II. Yugoslavia challenged that hegemony in 1948 and China went its own way in the 1950s and ’60s. Communist parties have survived the demise of the Soviet Union (1991), but with reduced political influence. Cuba’s party remains in control, as does a hereditary communist party in North Korea.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Jeannette L. Nolen.