Betrayal of British Labour leaders¶
Core Argument¶
Here, the chapter delivers a blistering indictment of the British Labour leadership and the Communist Party of Great Britain for their complicity in Churchill’s counter-revolutionary intervention in Greece. The core argument is that these leaders, through either active participation or cowardly silence, enabled the British ruling class to crush the Greek workers’ movement, having systematically prepared the ground for repression long before open conflict erupted. The author insists this was no accident or misunderstanding, but a calculated class strategy.
The chapter’s key claim is that Churchill deliberately manufactured a pretext for force. It cites Aneurin Bevan’s revelation in Parliament that, from August 1944, the Prime Minister personally ordered that no credit be given to ELAS or EAM on the BBC, and that exceptions required his approval. This, the author argues, proves a conspiracy was being prepared months in advance. The Labour ministers, as Cabinet members, knew of this yet remained silent, making them partners in the plot. The Communist Party is accused of even worse: it continued to support the Churchill government, censored Will Lawther’s proposal for councils of action and withdrawal of Labour ministers from the government, and published only “hot air” protests designed to pacify its own rank and file.
The historical context is the immediate post-liberation period in Greece, where the working class, having borne the brunt of the anti-Nazi struggle, refused to disarm while fascist formations remained armed. The chapter praises this as a correct class instinct, a living application of the Marxist-Leninist lesson that arms equal power. The theoretical framework is a clear class analysis: Churchill pursued a consistent policy for British capitalism, while the Labour and Stalinist leaders peddled myths of “national unity” that left the workers defenceless.
The polemic is multi-directional. It attacks the Labour leadership for cowardice and hypocrisy, the Communist Party for treachery and sabotage, and the Stalinist “buffoon” Willie Gallacher for providing a fake, harmless opposition that Churchill could mock and control. The most devastating charge is reserved for Stalin himself, who is accused of a cynical horse-trade: Warsaw for Athens. Stalin remains silent, the author claims, because he values his sphere of influence in Poland and the Balkans over the fate of the Greek revolution, and is terrified of a revolutionary upheaval spreading across Europe. Churchill’s sneering contempt for Gallacher is presented as proof that he knows the CP is merely an agent of Stalin’s foreign policy, not a revolutionary force.