ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the Communist Party’s contribution to the two substantial rank-and-file movements of the 1930s, the London Busmen’s Rank and File Movement and the Aircraft Shop Stewards National Council (ASSNC). At Ernest Bevin’s instigation, the General Executive Council prepared a report on the London Busmen’s Rank and File Movement, condemning its attitude of putting the Movement before the union, and concluding that there was no place for an ‘unofficial’ movement alongside the union. The 7th World Congress had moved the International Communist Movement away from the pursuit of independent leadership about a fortnight after Peter Zinkin’s London triumph in its favour. Zinkin had evidently been able to convince successive ASSNC meetings that their rank-and-file movement could bend union executives to their will and that strike pay would be dispensed for a national dispute to win their just demands. The ASSNC’s overt progamme contained none of the provocative rank-and-filism which Zinkin was routinely dispensing in person.
