CHNN 22, Spring 2008 - School of Social Sciences

some new total membership figure replaced it. It is hard to tell the frequency with which this was
done because there is not a complete run of data, but it seems to have happened at least annually,
and occasionally on a six-monthly basis. Prior to the advent of computing, updating these figures
was a laborious task and could not be undertaken continuously (and, indeed, the totals compiled by
the party contain occasional arithmetical errors); and in any case, because card sales took place
throughout the year, the decision about when to fix the total membership figure must always have
been arbitrary. Partly to avoid spurious fluctuations in our own report due to reporting-date
choices (and partly because of the years for which data happen to be available), in this note we have
therefore chosen to report biennial rather than annual membership totals.
The other difficult issue is one of geography. Communist Party districts varied enormously in size
and importance (‘Devon and Cornwall’ vs. ‘Scotland’, for example). Districts were also split, or
merged, from time to time. Without some sort of simplification, longitudinal studies of party
membership would be impossible. What we have done in this note is to combine smaller districts
into relatively consistent geographical units (so, for example, all the ‘Midlands’ districts have been
grouped together). What this does not take account of is (a) whether the physical boundaries of
districts with the same names were changed from time to time, and (b) occasions when some (but
not all) members in one district (such as the East Midlands) were reassigned to a different place
entirely (such as London). However, although this means that some inaccuracies must exist, we do
not believe that they are sufficient materially to affect the overall picture; and the disaggregated
original data are available, on request from the authors.
Thus, the broad picture available from our research is as follows:
(a) Membership up to and including 1957 (using original geographical terms)
Figure 1. 1945 Data
1945 Communist Party Membership Totals
London 14,417
Kent 1,063
Sussex 390
Hants & Dorset 800
East Anglia 585
W.of England 1,154
Devon 410
Tees-Side 467
North-East 1,121
Yorkshire 2,889
Lancashire 4,568
North West 459
Midlands 2,529
E.Midlands 2,135
S.E.Midlands 1,416
S.Midlands 874
Scotland 7,441
Wales 2,567
Overall 45,285
16