ABSTRACT
The role of Communist Party (CP) activists in industry has been long disregarded by industrial relations academics and political scientists. Moran mentions that the Communists were the best organized left group in industry, influenced the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions and were active in the docks, a key site of struggles against the Act. CP politics were codified in The British Road to Socialism, revised in 1968 and 1977. The British Road envisaged a peaceful transition to socialism. The thrust of CP industrial politics centred upon defence of collective bargaining and the shop steward system, seeking to insert into this defence an advocacy of broader industrial and economic policies. The leftist caste of CP politics, cutting in practice with the grain of militancy despite the popular frontism of The British Road, is readily evoked by the position on industrial democracy.
