CHNN 22, Spring 2008 - School of Social Sciences

Concluding Remarks
Without further investigation, it is impossible to draw conclusions from these figures. But it is
tempting to speculate. One speculation is this; that the decline in membership figures after the
mid-1970s may have been largely generational. The fall does not seem to have related directly to
political events (like 1968 – or even, in the long term, 1956); but it could be credibly explained by
mortality. If many members had joined in the 1930s and early 1940s (aged, perhaps, in their early
twenties), 4 and if that group represented the core of the loyal membership of the party, the sad
truth is, that by 1975, it is actuarially probable that they would have started to die, in increasing
numbers. Given mortality rates for manual workers, who made up much of the party’s core
membership, especially in the large industrial districts, a sharp decline in membership in those
areas could have been accounted for by mortality alone, especially for men aged 65 and over. (If, by
contrast, many of the doughty Cornish and Devonian members were drawn from middle-class
groups such as teachers, with higher life expectancies, the relative out-performance of the West
Country in terms of membership retention, might also be partly explained.) Similar patterns –
though this is not an analogy that would have appealed to the party – can be seen in the 1970s’
sales figures for soap-powders, where old brands (adopted by consumers early in their married
lives) were, by 1976, dying along with their loyal users. 5
Harold Carter, St John’s College, Oxford
haroldcarter@mac.com
Gabriel Silkstone-Carter, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Harold Carter is working on the changing political economy British cities between 1945 and the present day;
he is especially interested in the political and social impact of fifty years of social-democratic intervention in
housing and planning, in the context of de-industrialisation. As part of this project he has written detailed
histories of Southwark and of Sheffield, and he is currently working on the rise of the left in Sheffield before
1984. Gabriel Silkstone-Carter is writing on the role of the Communist Party in the 1972 Miners' Strike in
Kent. They would be very interested to hear from anyone with information (especially personal
reminiscences) relating to these topics.
Notes
1 All our sources are loose documents in the box CP/CENT/ORG/19 (folders /01 to /04), in the Communist
Party Archive in the People’s History Museum Manchester. There is an un-sourced part typed and part
handwritten document, in folder 19/04 of that box, which gives annual membership totals for the party but
no regional breakdown; these totals cross-check with the figures we report. The maximum divergence
between the two totals is 5% of the total membership (in 1957), and the figures for other years agree closely.
On 10 occasions the divergence is 2% or less, and on two others it is 3%.
2 We have also reported numerically, though not graphically, three bench-mark years (1945, 1955, and 1957)
because rather comprehensive data are available for those years (and we would like to draw attention to
them), and because 1945 in particular represented a strong year for party membership (presumably, partly
reflecting the popularity of the USSR as a wartime ally, and partly reflecting the continuing political activity
of the CPGB at a time when Labour Party activism was muted by the exigencies of war).
3 In the graphs, 1987 has been inserted as an average of 1985 and 1989, since no data were available in the
file for 1986, 1987, or 1988. The graphs are available in coloured-in form (which is easier to read) in the
online version of the Newsletter.
4 Party membership peaked, at 56,000, in 1942, according to the unsourced document in file
CP/CENT/ORG/19/04, which we have no reason to believe to be inaccurate.
5 Author’s notes; presentation by Proctor and Gamble Ltd, Newcastle, 1975.
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