CHNN 22, Spring 2008 - School of Social Sciences

another, and they said, had we any criticisms to make? The only criticism we could see was that
they were building two-lane roads, because at that stage there was very little motor traffic; and we
said we thought that was short-sighted, they were going to need bigger roads. We weren’t looking
to criticise; and of course, we were on official delegations and weren’t shown anything that was
likely to be critical. We were blind.
I’ve always found it useful to be half-Jewish when I’m with Jewish people and helpful to be half-
Irish when I’m with Irish people; but in actual fact I’ve never regarded myself as anything but a
normal English woman of no particular national affiliation.
We welcomed more than accepted the more critical position adopted by the party (at times of
things like Czechoslovakia). Once the Khrushchev report had impinged itself on our consciousness
and we’d begun to think a lot about and discuss it – Eddie was my mentor, of course. Eddie did my
thinking for me; that’s really what I miss him for most. If anything cropped up, I would say, ‘Eddie.’
He knew, he had a tremendous political understanding, far more than me. We were prepared to go
along. We were not prepared, ever, to be anti-party. We never deviated from our belief that
fundamentally that marxism, which I always prefer to call scientific socialism – I think marxism is
a misnomer and gives people the opportunity of making it into a dogma: ‘Marx said’, you know;
whereas I considered scientific socialism to be a continually progressive political attitude. So far as
I’m concerned, yes, there will be, in a longer perspective than we had hoped for, there will be a
major political change. Funnily enough, the almost overnight collapse of the Berlin wall and the
Soviet Union and so on, made us think that, well, possibly things could happen quicker here than
we think. It was almost a hopeful sign. Harry Pollitt always ended his speeches by saying, ‘It will
come in my lifetime.’ Well, it didn’t, and it won’t come in mine; but it will come, full stop.
In this brief extract from an interview carried out by Richard Cross on 9 May 2000,
Ruth Frow discusses the latter years of her involvement with the CPGB and her
expulsion from the party in 1985.
W
e formed the Trust, the Working Class Movement Library Charitable Trust, in ’67, and
from that time onwards we took the library collection very seriously, and we would go
round, every weekend and any spare time we had, to bookshops or to comrades that we
suspected of having material that might be useful. We considered that to be very much our ‘party’
activity. But we always participated in the branch activity. I was a member of the branch
committee, which got me expelled in ’86. The whole branch committee was expelled. Eddie wasn’t
expelled, he didn’t re-register when I was expelled — but people like Alice Bates and Dorothy
Watts, who had been active grass-roots comrades for years — for half a century — and to expel
them was just sheer stupidity, utter stupidity. I could name a whole series of people who it was
lunacy to expel. It was the deliberate break-up of the organisation. I think the break-up of the
CPGB was a very successful ploy on the part of the people who wanted to see the CPGB broken up.
And whether… the comrades who were involved in it were consciously doing it, and which were just
being used as “cats’ paws” I don’t know. It will come out one day.
I can tell you how the expulsion process worked in my case… On every possible occasion, Eddie and
I went off with the car and caravan collecting books. Every weekend, every holiday and so on. By
’86 Eddie had been retired some years, and we just went off for the whole of the summer. By that
time, I’d — had I retired? I’m not sure. Anyway, we went off for the longest possible period. So
every time I came back there was a letter saying ‘you have the right of appeal against expulsion’,
and I wrote explaining that I hadn’t been at the bloody meeting anyway. I was a member of the
branch committee and fully in agreement with the decision they’d taken to go ahead with the
meeting [a public meeting the district committee had ruled should not go ahead], but I just didn’t
happen to be there. But in each case I was given the opportunity of going to a district — or going to
the secretariat — meeting to put my case, but the time had gone by the time I got back. And the last
one just said ‘as you haven’t appeared, you are now expelled’.
Some comrades I think, Alice Bates was one, Henry Suss was another, I can’t remember the others,
but there were about half a dozen them that did put in an appeal, and went down to [the 1985
CPGB] congress, in November I think. They were treated disgracefully. They were escorted into the
hall… and they were marched to the platform, and they were listened to in absolute silence, and
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