John Gollan

John Gollan (born April 2, 1911 in Edinburgh , † September 5, 1977 in London ) was a British communist politician .

Life

Gollan became a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1927 . In 1931 he was charged with sedition and incitement to mutiny by the distribution of anti-militarist accused leaflet to military personnel and sentenced to a prison term of six months. After his release in 1932 he became a full-time functionary of the CPGB. First he was editor of the newspaper "Young Worker" and then general secretary of the Communist Youth League (Young Communist League). In 1939 he was initially party secretary for the north coast of Great Britain , before he was elected party secretary for Scotland in 1941 . A few years after the end of World War II , he moved from this post to the party's national office in London , where he became Deputy Secretary General of the CPGB in 1947 and deputy editor of the left-wing newspaper "The Daily Worker" from 1949 to 1954 . From 1954 to 1956 he was also the party's national organizer.

In 1956 he succeeded Harry Pollitt as Secretary General of the CPGB .

When he took over this office, his party had to explain to its supporters how the new party leader of the CPSU Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was dealing with Stalinism . At the same time in the time he took office, the bloody suppression of the dropped Hungarian popular uprising by the Red Army , which was received with doubt also loyal supporters of the party. Within two years, the party then lost nearly a quarter of its members, including many of its intellectuals . Through his persistent and sustained efforts, he succeeded in increasing the membership from 25,000 to just over 30,000 members, but the bitter clashes between the CPSU and the Chinese Communist Party have been a constant source of differences of opinion and difficulties within the party.

In 1968 he disapproved of the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops to put down the Prague Spring as "a tragic mistake" and "completely unjustified". The CPGB was therefore one of the communist parties that refused to sign the final protocol of the Conference of Communist Parties in Moscow in 1969 . From that point on, the more traditionally-minded elements in the CPGB were referred to by their opponents as tankies for their support for the Warsaw Pact, whereas their opponents increasingly turned to the positions of Eurocommunism , as found in the communist parties of Italy and later also Spain loomed, trended.

At the national level, the decline in the vote continued. The growing crisis in the party also affected the credibility of its ruling class as former long-standing and influential members left their posts. In addition to his poor health, this ultimately led to Gollan's resignation from the office of general secretary in 1975 and replaced by the previous national organizer of the party, Gordon McLennan .

Web links

• John Gollan Archives 1911-1977
• CPGB archive
• rulers.org