Pre-print version of article in ‘Classics and Communism’ (D. Movrin & E. Olechowska eds.) Between  the  Party  and  the  Ivory  Tower:       Classics  and  Communism  in  1930s  Britain     Henry  Stead  and  Edith  Hall  (KCL)       1. The  Early  Years  of  the  CPGB   The  Communist  Party  of  Great  Britain  was  founded  at  the  ‘Unity  Convention’,  which   took  place  at  the  grand  Victorian  Cannon  Street  Hotel  over  the  weekend  of  July  31st  to   August  1st,  1920.    Inspired  by  the  Russian  revolution,  and  with  a  generous  financial   donation  from  Lenin,  the  four  major  political  groups  which  combined  to  form  the  new   CPGB  were  the  British  Socialist  Party  (BSP),  the  Socialist  Labour  Party  (SLP),  the   Prohibition  and  Reform  Party  (PRP)  and  the  Workers'  Socialist  Federation  (WSF).1     Although  the  CPGB  never  became  a  mass  party  like  its  equivalents  in  France  or   Italy,  it  exerted  an  ideological  and  cultural  influence  out  of  proportion  to  its  size,   partly  because  there  were  always  strong  links  between  its  members  and  those  of  the   mainstream  Labour  Party.  Substantial  numbers  of  prominent  workers’  representatives,   students  and  intellectuals,  moreover,  did  actually  take  out  membership.  By  the  time  of   the  General  Strike  in  1926,  the  party  had  over  ten  thousand  members.  Its  first  Member   of  Parliament,  William  Gallacher,  was  elected  for  the  mining  district  of  West  Fife  in   Scotland  in  the  1931  General  Election,  at  which  the  party  won  nearly  seventy-­‐five   thousand   votes   nationally.   Although   by   1936   the   party’s   leaders   were   thoroughly   divided  over  the  question  of  continuing  support  for  Joseph  Stalin  and  his  reported   purges,   the   situation   in   Spain   to   an   extent   diverted   the   membership’s   attention.   1 Pre-print version of article in ‘Classics and Communism’ (D. Movrin & E. Olechowska eds.) British  Communists  were  crucial  in  the  creation  of  the  International  Brigades  which   went  to  fight  for  the  Republicans  in  the  Spanish  Civil  War.     While  the  Fascists  gained  power  in  both  Germany  and  Italy,  the  membership  of   the  CPGB  steadily  increased.    There  was  discomfort  amongst  British  Communists  after   the  signing  of  the  Nazi-­‐Soviet  non-­‐aggression  pact  in  1939,  but  when  Germany  invaded   the  Soviet  Union  in  1941,  and  Churchill  announced  that  Britons  and  Russians  were   now  close  allies,  party  membership  soared  to  fifty-­‐six  thousand.  At  the  end  of  the  war,   two  Communists  were  elected  to  parliament  in  the  General  Election.  This  was  the   historic  moment  at  which  the  CPGB  enjoyed  its  greatest  popularity;  but,  within  a   decade,  lurid  anti-­‐Soviet  propaganda,  alongside  very  real  accounts  of  Stalin’s  dreadful   crimes,  sent  the  party  into  terminal  decline.     During  the  party’s  first  two  and  a  half  decades,  however,  when  it  was  expanding   and  flourishing,  and  when  most  of  its  members  were  idealistic  citizens  genuinely   committed  to  building  a  fairer  economic  system  and  supporting  the  rights  of  the   working  class,  it  was  joined  by  a  significant  number  of  leading  intellectuals.  Some   were  scientists,  notably  J.D.  Bernal,  a  prominent  physicist  and  crystallographer.2  In   Arts   and   Humanities,   there   were   several   Communist   writers   during   the   first   two   decades  of  the  party’s  existence;  they  were  influential  amongst  their  ‘fellow-­‐traveller’   friends—the  substantial  number  of  figures  who  were  sympathetic  to  some  of  the  aims   of  the  party  but  who  never  actually  became  members,  such  as  W.H.  Auden,  E.M.   Forster  and  the  classical  scholar  and  poet  Louis  MacNeice.   After  the  war,  in  the  eleven  years  before  the  mass  exodus  from  the  party  in   protest  against  the  crushing  of  the  1956  revolution  in  Hungary  by  the  Warsaw  Pact,   the  Communist  Party  Historians  Group  boasted  a  dazzling  set  of  members,  including   2 Pre-print version of article in ‘Classics and Communism’ (D. Movrin & E. Olechowska eds.) Eric  Hobsbawm,  Christopher  Hill,  E.P.  Thompson,  A.L.  Morton  and  Raphael  Samuel.   The  contribution  to  British  intellectual  life  made  by  these  men  has  been  much  studied,   and  some  of  them  had  been  active  party  members,  developing  their  theories  of  history,   from   well   before   1939.   Looking   back   on   the   1930s,   Christopher   Hill   himself   drew   attention  to  the  number  of  CPGB  intellectuals  in  the  1930s  for  whom,  he  argued,  it  had   not  been  History  but  English  Literature  that  had  been  the  original  primary  interest–he   was  thinking  not  only  of  A.L  Morton,  but  of  several  other  active  Communist  writers   such  as  Edgell  Rickword,  Alick  West,  Douglas  Garman,  and  Jack  Lindsay.3      Without   for   a   minute   denying   the   importance   of   English   literature   in   the   intellectual   development   and   publications   of   these   men,   and   for   other   Communists   of   their   generation   such   as   the   poet   (and   translator   of   Vergil)   Cecil   Day   Lewis,   Stephen   Spender  and  the  outstanding  English  Literature  specialist  Margot  Heinemann,  we  are   keen  to  stress  that  several,  for  example  Alick  West  and  Jack  Lindsay,  only  came  to   English   literature   via   traditional   and   rigorous   educations   in   the   Greek   and   Latin   classics.  Moreover,  part  of  their  Marxist  understanding  of  culture  was  that  separating   different   linguistic   traditions   and   historical   periods—reading   ancient   poetry   in   isolation   from   contemporary   poetry,   for   example—was   to   impoverish   the   transformative   social   potential   of   art.   It   therefore   needs   to   be   noted   that   Edgell   Rickword,  who  in  1919  went  to  Pembroke  College,  Oxford,  to  read  Modern  Languages,   had  attended  Colchester  Royal  Grammar  School,  famous  for  its  emphasis  on  training   in   classical   languages   and   literature.   Douglas   Garman   attended   Caius   College,   Cambridge,  graduating  in  Medieval  and  Modern  Languages  in  1923,  but  much  of  his   specialist  translation  work  in  later  life  was  actually  on  ancient  Greek  history.   3 Pre-print version of article in ‘Classics and Communism’ (D. Movrin & E. Olechowska eds.)  There   were,   moreover,   several   specialist   Classical   scholars   working   inside   academia  who  were  committed  and  active  party  members.  In  their  cases,  too,  we  often   find  a  sensitivity  to  the  continuity  of  literary  history,  taking  the  form  of  much  more   developed  interest  in  the  ‘reception’  of  ancient  literature  in  the  modern  world  than  in   most  of  the  classical  scholars  of  the  time.    It  is  therefore  possible  to  make  a  case  that   British  Marxist  intellectual  tradition  as  founded  in  the  1930s  was  built  less  on  literature   in  English  than  on  literature  in  Latin  and  Greek.  This  has  important  implications  for   the  way  that  literature  in  that  period  is  configured  more  generally,  since  the  classicism   of  this  time  is  always  routinely  associated  with  the  Modernist  poetry  of  Ezra  Pound,   T.S.  Eliot,  and  the  other  practitioners  of  the  ‘radical  Right’  in  literature.  Their  fame  and   public  prominence  has  obscured  the  role  of  Classics  in  early  British  Communism.  It  is   therefore  our  intention  in  this  article  to  introduce  the  reader  to  the  small  but  highly   influential  group  of  scholar-­‐socialists  active  in  Britain  at  this  time,  who  had  a  strong   interest  in  the  Greek  and  Roman  classics,  and  represent  an  important  but  neglected   chapter  in  the  history  of  Classics  and  Classical  Scholarship  in  Britain.  Between  them,   they  succeeded  in  hegemonising  a  cultural  space,  and  establishing  a  dialogue,  between   the   Marxist   theory   and   cultural   practices   of   the   Communist   Party   and   academic   Classics  (the  ‘Ivory  Tower’).  This  dialogue  has  never  been  fully  appreciated  either  by   Classicists  or  by  modern  cultural  and  political  historians.   2. Communist  Classical  Scholars   The  first  and  in  some  ways  the  most  influential  of  all  the  Classical  scholars  who  were   members  of  the  CPGB  was  Benjamin  Farrington.  He  was  actually  an  Irishman,  born  in   Cork   1891,   when   Ireland   had   not   yet   achieved   independence   from   the   United   4 Pre-print version of article in ‘Classics and Communism’ (D. Movrin & E. Olechowska eds.) Kingdom.  He  graduated  in  Classics  from  University  College,  Cork,  and  then  moved  to   Trinity  College,  Dublin,  to  take  another  degree  in  Middle  English.  There  his  political   views  were  shaped  by  the  plight  of  the  working  class  in  Ireland,  which  came  to  a  head   in  the  Dublin  ‘lock-­‐out’  of  1913,  a  traumatic  industrial  dispute  between  factory  owners   and  thousands  of  slum-­‐dwelling  Dubliners  fighting  for  the  right  to  form  trade  unions.   Farrington  was  profoundly  affected  by  the  crisis,  and  influenced  by  the  speeches  of   James  Connolly,  a  Scottish  Marxist  of  Irish  descent.  Connolly  saw  the  need  for  Home   Rule  for  Ireland  as  inseparable  from  goals  of  the  poor,  and  in  1912  formed  the  Irish   Labour  Party.    Farrington  later  described  the  impact  which  Connolly’s  Marxist  analysis   of  the  political  situation  had  affected  his  own  understanding  of  intellectual  history:   ‘All  through  my  years  as  a  university  student  I  had  been  studying  the  history  of   thought.  Nobody  before  Connolly  had  brought  home  to  me  that  the  history  of  thought   does  not  exist  in  isolation  but  is  part  of  the  history  of  the  society  in  which  the  thought   is  produced  .  .  .  I  am  conscious  that  it  is  to  a  workingman  that  I  owe  the  conviction   that   learning   need   not   be   pedantic   or   obscurantist   but   a   guide   to   action   in   the   present.’4     Farrington’s  growing  radicalism  received  an  academic  focus  when  in  1915-­‐1917,   including  the  period  of  the  very  height  of  the  Irish  turmoil  during  the  1916  Easter   Rising,  he  was  reading  for  his  Master’s  degree  in  English  from  University  College,   completing  his  thesis  in  1917  on  Shelley's  translation  from  the  Greek.  After  lecturing  in   Classics  at  Queen's  University,  Belfast,  he  moved  to  the  University  of  Cape  Town  in   South  Africa,  where  he  was  in  a  position  to  study  the  racist  and  nationalist  legacies  of   European  imperialism  at  first  hand.  He  was  promoted  from  a  lectureship  in  Greek  to   5 Pre-print version of article in ‘Classics and Communism’ (D. Movrin & E. Olechowska eds.) the  Chair  of  Latin,  but  left  in  1935  as  the  first  steps  towards  institutionalised  Apartheid   were  taken.  He  then  worked  at  the  University  of  Bristol  for  a  year  before  taking  up  a   Professorship  at  University  College,  Swansea,  in  the  heart  of  the  Welsh  industrial  and   mining   region,   where   he   remained   for   twenty-­‐one   years.     His   major   academic   contribution  was  to  the  history  and  philosophy  of  ancient  science,  expressed  in  a   series  of  four  pioneering  if  tendentious  books,  Science  in  Antiquity  (1936),  Science  and   Politics  in  the  Ancient  World  (1939),  Greek  Science:  Its  Meaning  for  Us  (1944),  and  Head   and  Hand  in  Ancient  Greece:  Four  Studies  in  the  Social  Relations  of  Thought  (1947).  His   more  general,  accessible  The  Civilization  of  Greece  and  Rome  (1938)  was  an  important   attempt  to  make  ancient  history  available  to  working  people  beyond  the  Academy.   Farrington’s  lively,  lucid  materialist  analyses  of  the  relationship  between  the  ancient   economy  and  ancient  ideas  were  often  derided  by  mainstream  classical  scholars,  but   they  were  (and  still  are)  widely  read  by  the  more  open-­‐minded  among  them.  His   commitment   to   Communist   ideals   was   lifelong,   and   he   often   taught   on   summer   schools  and  to  working  men’s  educational  societies.  His  pamphlet  The  Challenge  of   Socialism,  for  example,  was  developed  in  a  series  of  lectures  he  delivered  at  weekend   schools  in  Dublin  in  August  1946.       In  England,  some  of  the  younger  members  of  the  CPGB  in  the  1930s  only  later   went  on  to  become  prominent  academic  classicists.  One  party  member  at  that  time   was  Geoffrey  de  Ste.  Croix  (1910-­‐2000).  He  had  been  trained  in  Classics  at  Clifton   College,   a   fee-­‐paying   school   private   school   in   Bristol,   but   did   not   go   straight   to   university,  training  instead  as  a  lawyer.  During  the  1930s  he  practised  in  London  and   was  a  member  of  the  CPGB;  he  was  one  of  those  who  left  in  1939  after  the  Nazi-­‐Soviet   6 Pre-print version of article in ‘Classics and Communism’ (D. Movrin & E. Olechowska eds.) pact.  It  was  not  until  1947,  after  serving  in  the  RAF,  that  he  entered  London  University   to  study  Classics;  he  then  pursued  a  brilliant  academic  career,  took  up  a  position  at   New  College,  Oxford,  and  wrote  his  two  ‘classics’  of  Ancient  History,  from  a  Marxist   analytical  perspective,  The  Origins  of  the  Peloponnesian  War  (1972)  and  The  Class   Struggle  in  the  Ancient  Greek  World  (1981).  His  two  periods  of  exposure  to  Classical   education  at  school  and  at  university  therefore  preceded  and  followed  his  period  of   intense   exposure   to   Marxist   ideas   as   a   lawyer   and   CPGB   member   in   the   1930s.   Unfortunately,   he   rarely   spoke   about   the   degree   to   which   he   had   been   directly   involved  in  the  educational  and  intellectual  activities  of  the  party  during  that  crucial   decade:  on  one  occasion  in  the  early  1990s  Edith  persuaded  him  to  reminisce,  and  he   certainly  told  her  that  he  had  attended  classes  on  Marxism  run  by  the  CPGB  sixty   years  earlier.  But  his  massive  subsequent  disillusionment  with  the  party  prevented   him  from  further  elaborating  on  these  formative  experiences.     Robert  Browning  (not  a  relation  of  the  famous  poet  with  the  same  name),  born   in  1914,  was  de  Ste.  Croix’s  junior  by  four  years.  Although  he  never  achieved  the  same   fame  (or  notoriety),  his  books  were  and  still  are  widely  read,  usually  by  scholars  who   have  no  idea  that  he  was  for  many  years  an  idealistic  Communist  Party  member.     Brought  up  in  Glasgow  during  the  terrible  poverty  on  Clydeside  in  the  1920s  and  1930s,   he  studied  Humanities  at  Glasgow  University,  and  may  have  joined  the  CPGB  at  that   time.  He  was  certainly  a  member  soon  after  he  arrived  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford  in   1935.  There  he  won  almost  every  available  prize  and  scholarship  for  his  performances   in  Latin  and  Greek,  even  as  he  immersed  himself  in  CPGB  activities  and  Marxist   theories  of  history.  He  spent  most  of  his  working  life  at  London  University,  first  at   7 Pre-print version of article in ‘Classics and Communism’ (D. Movrin & E. Olechowska eds.) UCL  until  1965,  and  thereafter  until  1981  as  Professor  of  Classics  and  Ancient  History  at   Birkbeck.  There  he  found  an  ideal  home,  since  Birkbeck  College,  which  had  indirectly   grown  out  of  the  Mechanics  Institute  movement,  was  and  is  an  institution  dedicated   to  providing  adult  education  available  in  the  evenings  and  part-­‐time,  this  enabling   poor  and  working-­‐class  full-­‐time  workers  to  study  at  London  University.     As  a  Communist,  Browning’s  political  interests  in  the  modern  Balkans  and   Black   Sea   also   no   doubt   informed   his   shift   towards   Byzantine   Studies—the   links   between  ancient  and  modern  are  especially  apparent  in  his  Byzantium  and  Bulgaria   (1975).  As  a  Marxist,  his  interest  in  ancient  atheism  and  resistance  to  Christianity   underlies  his  study  of  the  Emperor  Julian  (also  1975).  He  was  to  become  the  most   important  Classicist  in  the  Communist  Party  Historians  Group,  and  was  still  lecturing   after  his  retirement  at  the  CPGB  Headquarters  in  St.  John’s  Street,  London,  in  the  mid-­‐ 1980s;  Edith  heard  him  run  a  public  seminar  for  working  people,  there  on  slavery  and   feudalism,  in  1985.     Unlike   de   Ste.   Croix,   Browning   seems   to   have   remained   rather   naively   committed   to   the   CPGB   for   most   of   his   life;   not   even   the   1968   invasion   of   Czechoslovakia  by  the  Soviet  Union  could  altogether  shake  his  trust  in  its  political   validity.  This  was  partly  because  his  great  gift  for  languages  had  led  him  to  become   fluent  in  several  Slavic  tongues,  as  well  as  Georgian,  and  he  always  maintained  strong   personal  contacts  with  Classical  and  Byzantine  scholars  of  the  USSR  and  Yugoslavia.   He  wrote  two  articles  in  Russian,  both  in  the  Soviet  Byzantine  journal  Vizantiiskii   Vremennik,  on  the  topic  of  slavery  in  Byzantium.  The  first  of  them  is  widely  regarded   8 Pre-print version of article in ‘Classics and Communism’ (D. Movrin & E. Olechowska eds.) as  the  seminal  work  in  the  area.  But  the  Marxist  theory  and  the  Eastern  bloc  contacts   all  originated  in  his  idealistic  youth  and  the  radical  1930s.   The  fourth  of  the  CPGB  classicists  in  the  1930s  was  George  Derwent  Thomson   (1903-­‐1987),  who  studied  Classics  at  King's  College,  Cambridge  but  then  moved  to  the   National   University   of   Ireland   (Galway),   where   he   was   swiftly   promoted   to   the   Professorship.  In  western  Ireland  in  the  1920s  he  became  radicalised  by  contact  with   the  Gaelic-­‐speaking  population,  long  oppressed  and  only  newly  liberated  from  British   imperialism.  He  learned  to  speak  their  ancient  language  fluently,  and  translated  works   by  Plato  (1929)  and  both  Aeschylus  (1933)  and  Euripides  into  it  (1932).      His  first   scholarly  commentary,  published  in  1932,  was  on  the  poet  who  had  been  the  favourite   of  radicals  since  Shelley  and  Marx,  the  Aeschylean  Prometheus  Bound.  By  the  time  he   moved  back  to  a  lectureship  at  King’s  College,  Cambridge,  in  1934,  he  was  an  ardent   socialist,  and  he  joined  the  CPGB  in  1936,  when  he  also  accepted  the  chair  of  Greek  at   Birmingham   University.   An   industrial   city   with   a   large   automobile   industry,   Birmingham  offered  him  many  opportunities  to  teach  working-­‐class  men  as  well  as   full-­‐time  university  students.   Thomson  was  intellectually  restless  and  enjoyed  controversy.  By  the  early  1950s   he   had   come   into   conflict   with   the   leadership   and   ideological   programme   of   the   CPGB.  He  became  increasingly  interested  in  China  and  Maoism.  But  in  the  intervening   period,   from   1936   onwards,   he   produced   a   stream   of   publications   which   were   informally   blacklisted   at   Oxford,   but   very   widely   read   outside   the   Classics   establishment  in  Britain,  and  indeed  were  on  the  syllabus  of  many  departments  of   Anthopology   and   Sociology   as   well   as   the   reading   lists   circulated   by   workers’   9 Pre-print version of article in ‘Classics and Communism’ (D. Movrin & E. Olechowska eds.) educational   organisations.   In   1938   he   published   his   impressive   two-­‐volume   commentary  on  Aeschylus’  Oresteia,  which  still  needs  to  be  consulted  by  any  scholar   working  on  that  text.  But  the  work  of  classical  scholarship  with  which  he  will  always   be  primarily  associated  was  his  1941  Aeschylus  &  Athens,  a  Marxist  anthropological   study  of  early  Greek  tragedy,  published  by  the  press  most  closely  associated  with  the   CPGB,  Lawrence  &  Wishart.  In  1949  he  followed  this  with  The  Prehistoric  Aegean,  and   in   1954   with   The   First   Philosophers,   making   a   kind   of   'trilogy’   of   Marxist   interpretations  of  ancient  Greek  civilisation  from  the  Bronze  Age  to  Periclean  Athens.   Generally   derided   in   Britain,   classical   circles,   Aeschylus   and   Athens   nevertheless   became   well-­‐known   internationally,   being   translated   into   Czech,   Modern   Greek,   Polish,  Russian,  Hungarian,  and  German;  the  other  volumes  also  came  out  in  several   Eastern  and  western  European  languages  including  Spanish.  Indeed,  Thomson’s  60th   birthday  Festschrift,  Geras,  was  a  rare  publication  precisely  because  it  was  such  an   unusual  instance  of  a  work  of  Classical  scholarship  that  truly  transcended  the  ‘Iron   Curtain’;    it  was  published  by  the  Univerzita  Karlova  (Charles  University)  of  Prague  in   1963   as   Acta   Universitatis   Carolinae,   Philosophica   et   historica   1963/1,   Graecolatina   Pragensia,   2.   It   was   co-­‐edited   by   the   Czech   scholar   Ladislav   Varcl   of   the   Prague   Department  of  Studies  of  Classical  Antiquity  and  R.F.  Willetts,  Thomson’s  colleague  at   Birmingham.  The  international  contributors  to  the  volume  included  Robert  Browning   and  scholars  from  Russia  and  East  Germany.     3. Classical  Undercurrents  in  Communist  Cultural  Debate   10