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The Superterranean World of British Communist Historiography

Professors McIlroy and Campbell have penned a clearly written, lively account of British Communist Party historiography, most informative to one who studies the CPUSA. They acknowledge major differences, specifically the CPGB’s lack of language federations, relative freedom from sustained factionalism, and totally legal status. The essay nevertheless lays out a literary terrain familiar to Americans. Historians of the Party take their work seriously. They express their views forcefully. They employ compelling argumentation. Revisionists and traditionalists battle each other (albeit with a bit less acrimony). McIlroy and Campbell make it clear that recent, single-volume, scholarly general histories of the British Party (Good Old Cause by Willie Thompson; Laybourn and Murphy’s Under the Red Flag; and Eaden and Renton’s Communist Party) have made ‘‘surprisingly’’ little use of East Bloc archives. That all three neglect such a trove strikes a stateside reader as positively astounding. Clearly, a major opportunity exists for a graduate student or young writer seeking a historiographical name for him or herself. McIlroy and Campbell’s account alludes to Trotskyists; perhaps they might have discussed Trotskyism’s general omission from the scholarly literature on most Communist parties. A central aspect of ‘‘A Peripheral Vision’’ is the authors’ correction of errors made by previous historians, and insistence that assertions reflect the evidence—not merely acknowledge its existence. As such, their work reminds one of In Denial, the powerful indictment of shoddy scholarship by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. What McIlroy and Campbell do in their article is an essential, if not always pleasant, aspect of our craft. Those they criticize will likely have responses to make. Hopefully, in the end however, all will be held to a higher standard. As Brigitte Studer, Berthold Unfried, and Bryan D. Palmer did earlier, McIlroy and Campbell identify Stalinism, or the Stalinist way of life, as an