ABSTRACT
The National Conference of the Communist Party, which met in Sheffield in October 1935, passed a resolution which departed considerably from the slogan ‘For a Communist Group in Parliament’ adopted at the Thirteenth Congress only eight months previously. In the intervening period the decision of the Comintern Congress had become public. The resolution adopted by the National Conference consequently proposed an electoral agreement with the Labour Party and a campaign for affiliation to it.1 This was a preliminary to withdrawing Communist candidates from all but two of the contests in the General Election. Even in West Fife and Rhondda East, the Central Committee declared that: ‘the Party is prepared to, in conjunction with the Trade Unions and Labour bodies in them, convene a selection conference, bring the various working class candidates before it and abide by their decisions’.2
