George Matthews (1917-2005) was a prominent member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1949 he became assistant general secretary of the party. He attended the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 and was acting editor of the Daily Worker at the time of the Soviet-led suppression of the Hungarian revolution later in the year. He was the editor of the Daily Worker (renamed the Morning Star in 1966) from 1959 to 1974.
The YouTube items posted here are two interviews with George Matthews conducted by Andrew Whitehead. The first was recorded on 2 December 1991 and covers Matthews' recollections of party activism and his attendance at the historic 20th Congress of the CPSU and becoming aware of Khrushchev's secret speech. The second interview, recorded on 20 May 1992, focusses on the Sino-Soviet split and the links between the CPGB and communist parties in India and other former British colonies.
NOTES FROM INTERVIEWS 2 December 1991 Joined CPGB just before WW2 primarily because of its role in the fight against fascism Became a party full-timer in 1949 Party’s ‘somersault’ over attitude to WW2; ‘I don’t remember any great qualms myself about doing the somersault’ Description of Pollitt – ‘great sense of humour, tough but easy to work with ... I had an extremely high opinion of him’ ‘Palme Dutt was a quite different kettle of fish ...’ pursuing a ‘Jesuitical’ kind of argument over the WW2 ‘About Turn’ 1945 election a ‘disappointment, certainly we’d hoped that Pollitt would be returned ... I think Harry was virtually certain he was in’ Moscow’s influence in the drafting of the initial British Road to Socialism, and the idea of a ‘Soviet Britain’ abandoned well before 1950; discussions about the drafts in the party’s Political Committee first heard about Khrushchev’s 1956 secret speech in despatches from Sam Russell, the Daily Worker correspondent in Moscow; full publication came in The Observer – but in the intervening period there had been leaks of bits of it ‘I was there with Pollitt and Dutt as the British delegation to the 20th Congress. My assumption is that the speech was made on the day when Pollitt and I were sent to a factory making rubber tyres and other rubber products ... there was nothing unusual about the fact that they said to Pollitt and myself: we’d like you to go to this factory and Harry can address the workers and so on ... what Dutt did that day I do not know’ ‘we knew, as everybody else did, from what was said in the Congress was something was up, I mean Mikoyan said: we’ve had no collective leadership for twenty years – which was a pretty clear indication that something was wrong ... but nothing like what was said by Khrushchev when he blew the gaffe on a lot of it, not all of it’ ‘it was an enormous shock and undoubtedly it resulted in – I wouldn’t say an atmosphere of crisis at King Street, certainly in the initial stages. Subsequently, after Hungary, there became something that could really be called - a crisis developed, because the combination of the 20th Congress revelations and the events in Hungary did produce a mass exodus from the party ... There were deep divisions in the party after the 20th Congress, and before Hungary ... And Edward Thompson will of course have told you of the New Reasoner and the Reasoner and all that went with that particular episode. But as far as the political leadership was concerned, I think there was a tendency to underplay the importance of what had happened, to try to put the best possible face on it and to argue that: well, now they’ve come clean it shows that self-criticism exists in the Soviet party, and it’s never going to happen again because – this sort of attitude which tried to diminish the extent to which people questioned previously held beliefs. Ref to Pollitt speech where he said: if the Russians cause us a lot of problems we can always take an aspirin (calling a halt to discussion about Khrushchev’s speech in the Daily Worker) ‘in retrospect it was wrong and people like Thompson and John Saville and others who were questioning were absolutely right and what they did was legitimate in the circumstances at the time. But of course they were in conflict with the leadership. The formal position was that they were undoubtedly breaking the rules of the party and so they were liable to disciplinary action – some of them got out like Edward and John before they were kicked out; if they’d persisted in the party and persisted in what they were doing I think they would undoubtedly have been expelled from the party. As it was they got out before that happened.’ On Hungary ‘this was an occasion on which there was quite a lot of heart-searching, it wasn’t a kind of automatic knee jerk response to say: the Soviet Union’s done it, it must be right ... The British party leadership took the view that it was a counter-revolution ... we took the view that these are communists being hanged from lampposts, it wasn’t quite as simple a that but basically we took the view it was a counter-revolution and therefore socialism was in danger and therefore you could justify what the Soviet Union did on that basis.’ ‘I remember a meeting of the executive committee just at the time of the Soviet action in Budapest where we were going to discuss the line taken ... Gollan, Pollitt and I were in Gollan’s room, because by then Gollan was the general secretary, at King Street waiting for the rest of the people to come to the meeting down in the hall there and I remember Harry saying: well, you youngsters will have to decide what you are going to do because I’m too old to change – which, the implication of which was even after ’56, the 20th Congress, he was still very much in that position: the Russians, if the Russians do it, they must have good reason and so on ... Both Johnny and I had doubts but we did in the end – came to the conclusion that it was a counter-revolution and argued for that and the executive committee took that position and produced a relatively brief statement on that day ... it was a Sunday, it was the day of the big anti-Suez demo, because it coincide with Suez, a big anti-Suez demonstration in Trafalgar Square I think, and we produced a short statement from the executive committee which in a sense poured fuel on the flames, because it was so short and because it was so unqualified and didn’t really probe into the reasons – even if you accepted that it had happened, why it had happened. And so that I think really exacerbated rather than placated people who had doubts but who might have possible stuck in if a different treatment of it had occurred at the time’ Peter Fryer’s despatches from Budapest ‘two of them were carried more-or-less in full ... and the final one, I think Peter says that I – I’d been sent to the Daily Worker on a temporary basis because the editor, Johnny Campbell, was in Moscow and Mick Bennett was the assistant editor and is was felt that he could do with a bit of help so I was sent there. And Peter says in his book I think that I drastically censored what I suppose must have been his final despatch – which may well be the case. I mean every journalist, as you know, complains about subs (laughs) and says that subs have cut out the best bit and so on. But I think it may well be that I went beyond the normal call of duty in subbing it. I don’t remember now ... I’m quite prepared to believe it was censored to some extent. You can’t justify it now. At the time one rationalised it to oneself in the sense that it was against the policy of the party, it was giving what we regarded as a false picture, and we shouldn’t mislead the readers who can get all this stuff in other papers, why use up space in the Daily Worker for this sort of stuff. One can rationalise it on those grounds. In retrospect, of course, we shouldn’t have done it. We should have published what Peter sent and I’ve apologised to Peter since then ... for what happened at that time. Mind you, I think Peter himself went a bit too far the other way ... We saw virtually only the counter-revolution aspect; Peter saw only the democratic aspect. I think he was more right than we were but I think he did overdo it a bit in that respect and paid too little attention to the danger to socialism.’ Lost 7,000 or 8,000 members in ’56 or soon after – about a quarter of the membership ‘I’m not even sure that the people opposed to the leadership ever launched a frontal attack on democratic centralism ... my impression is what they argued was amending it, liberalising it as it were ... and for exercising it with less rigidity ... The majority report from the commission [on inner-party democracy] was a total justification of democratic centralism’ Post-1958 Soviet funding for the CPGB and history of Moscow financial support Re MI5 ‘You operated on the assumption that everything you said, particularly on the phone, was listened to’; not until 1975 that there was absolute proof of bugging in King Street when builders discovered a bulky bugging device ‘about the size of a Walkman’ concealed in the wooden platform behind which the chairman used to sit
20 May 1992 First went to Moscow in 1956 for the 20th Congress; elected to executive committee 1943, political committee 1945, took up full-time work in late ’49 or early ‘50 At 20th Congress, Pollitt, Dutt and GM were the three British delegates ‘At the public sessions of the congress, we knew something was up because of the various veiled allusions that were made – Mikoyan said: we’ve had no collective leadership for twenty years - which cause something of a stir in the congress as you can imagine. So the existence of what became known as the cult of Stalin had already become public knowledge to that extent but to nothing like the horrific extent that was revealed in the secret speech, which we didn’t know about at the time or for some time afterwards’ Both the Russians and Chinese keen to maximise support in the international communist movement, including smaller non-governmental parties Means of Soviet money reaching the CPGB and the Daily Worker Tito split and the communist movement, though a relatively small number left the CPGB over it – and James Klugmann’s role Signs of Sino-Soviet split emerging Attended 1960 Moscow world communist conference, GM ‘stuck in Moscow’ for seven weeks in preparatory meetings as well as plenaries. ‘The atmosphere of mutual distrust can be best conveyed by the fact that we sat at – there were two long tables at the great hall of the Kremlin and a table at each end, and the main protagonists sat facing each other, the Russians and the Chinese, on either side ... I was sitting at the end so I could see both sides. And every time Ponomarev, who was one of the principal Soviet representatives at the meeting, spoke to someone either side of him, he put his hand over his mouth so that the Chinese sitting opposite him couldn’t lip read what he was saying. I’d never seen that happening before. I mean, maybe it happens quite often at international conferences (laughs) but it was the first time I’d ever seen it and it was extraordinary to see it at an international communist conference.’ When to China with Gollan in 1963 – thought might be able to help prevent the split getting worse. Went to Moscow and on to Peking. Special performance for them of Chinese opera. Styles of Chinese interpreters – in Moscow on 1960 and in Peking in 1963 Never met Mao, but met Chou en-Lai in Moscow ‘Mixed feelings’ on Khrushchev Went with Gollan to Moscow about 1964 after removal of Khrushchev; ‘we weren’t terribly impressed with Brezhnev’ – and rigor mortis there became increasingly apparent; Gorbachev’s appearance on the scene ‘a great relief’ Found among microfilms for July 1938 minutes of meeting at which Nehru reported to the British party’s central committee on the situation in India – and support for Indian trade union movement and left Also a party relationship with progressive African students, such as Nkrumah When Indian party split, the CPGB tended to side with the CPI rather than the CPIM Personally knew a number of people in the South African CP