Talk:Harry Pollitt

Untitled
Sadly, the cited version of the Ballad of Harry Pollitt is so poorly recollected that it does not scan and would be impossible to sing; it is also poorly punctuated. The actual words for the first three stanzas, as sung on numerous occasions, are:

Now, Harry was a Bolshie, and one of Lenin's lads, Till he was foully murdered by reactionary cads, By reactionary cads, by reactionary cads, Till he was foully murdered by reactionary cads.

He came before St Peter, trembling at the knees: 'Oh, may I speak to comrade God, I'm Harry Pollitt, please? I'm Harry Pollitt, please; I'm Harry Pollitt, please; Oh, may I speak to comrade God, I'm Harry Pollitt, please?'

'Very well', said Peter, 'if you're humble and contrite And a friend of Lady Astor, then OK, you'll be alright; OK, you'll be alright; OK, you'll be alright; And a friend of Lady Astor, then OK, you'll be alright'.

Mountdrayton (talk) 23:23, 4 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Cutting this song. It's obviously WP:UNDUE to give over a whole paragraph to the lyrics of it and there's no evidence of popularity. Moreover its lyrics appear to state that Harry Pollitt was murdered which is obvious untrue. FOARP (talk) 11:31, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

NPOV edits
I've edited the article to be less of a hagiography than it previously was, and closer to a neutral position. Particularly:
 * Harry Pollitt supported the war in September 1939 but reversed this position in November 1939.
 * There is no evidence that Harry Pollitt was a "strong supporter of the international brigades". He was a communist who lived in the 1930's, but this appears to have been it.
 * Harry Pollitt's criticism of the Malayan counter-insurgency appears to have been primarily (according to the sources I can find) from the position that it was a "capitalist war" fought in the interests of rubber-planters. Anyone wanting to say otherwise needs to find sources supporting that position.
 * A lot of the changes in CPGB positions appear to have been on direct instructions from Moscow. Pollitt was in direct, secret communication with Moscow.
 * Harry Pollitt's electoral performances extend beyond his near-win in 1945, and encompass a lot of other quite heavy defeats. FOARP (talk) 12:39, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

incomplete ref
The three citations of Monty Johnstone added by FOARP are incomplete in the JSTOR source: "1930–194". Spicemix (talk) 20:09, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Fixed. WP:DIY is a great rule. FOARP (talk) 15:17, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

"Red lives" is not a reliable, independent source
I've deleted the information sourced only to the book "Red Lives" as it appears to have been written by members of the Communist Party of Britain's anniversary team as part of a centenary celebration. This source also attributes the authorship/publication of the book to CPB. WP:RS requires that sourcing been independent of the subject-matter, and this case, the membership of the political party that claims to be the successor to that led by Pollitt is clearly not independent of the subject. Even if it were independent of the subject matter, the publisher does not appear to be a well-established one with a reputation for fact-checking.

Additionally, the following statements based on this source are not supported by other sources. Particularly:


 * - Pollitt did not appear to play a key role in forming the British battalion. Instead this was set up by Wintringham and others. Our page on the battalion does not even mention Pollitt.


 * - Pollitt was not a "life-long anti-fascist". He clearly was not anti-fascist during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact. He was 30 years old before fascism even existed.


 * - Pollitt was not a "leading trade unionist". He never led a real trade-union.


 * - Pollitt was not a "revolutionary". He did not lead any revolutions.


 * - Pollitt does not appear to have consistently opposed imperialism/colonialism when the USSR was doing the imperialism/colonialism. He appears to have written on the subject of India and Malaya so it appears that he did oppose at least some instances of British imperialism/colonialism and this is the most that the sources support at present. Additionally, according to Kevin Morgan's biography of Pollitt, during WW2 Pollitt urged Indian independence leaders like Nehru essentially not to press their claim, so "life-long opponent of British colonialism" probably over-states things.


 * - Pollitt's financial support for German and Indian communists is not mentioned by other sources and needs better support for inclusion in the article. Particularly, that fact that members of CPGB did these things does not mean it was ordered by Pollitt. FOARP (talk) 15:58, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

With respect, I can't make sense of this gibberish you wrote. Claiming that Pollitt no longer opposed fascism because he took a strategic decision during the Molotov-Ribbentrop paact (there's no such thing as the "Hitler-Stalin pact"), trying to argue that Pollitt no longer believed in independence for British colonies because he recognised Japanese fascism as a threat? I don't know how to argue with this Ben Shapiro type logic. BulgeUwU (talk) 03:48, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Also why are you deleting any reference to how Lenin influenced his political beliefs. ? BulgeUwU (talk) 03:51, 25 September 2021 (UTC)


 * If you want to put something in the article it needs to be sourced to a reliable, independent source. This means that CPGB's own publications can't be used for potentially controversial statements as they are obviously not independent of the subject. We definitely should not be saying things when reliable sources actually say the opposite. Particularly:
 * Pollitt obviously was not a "life-long anti-fascist" since he was 30 years old before fascism even existed.
 * The sources are clear that Pollitt did not publicly support the war against Nazi Germany during the period November 1939-June 1941, and indeed followed publicly CPGB's "imperialist war" line, so it is obviously inaccurate to describe him as a "leading"/"life-long" or whatever anti-Nazi/fascist. He led a minor British party that opposed the war against Nazi Germany for more than a year during WW2.
 * Pollitt also wasn't anti-imperialism/colonialism when it was the USSR that was doing it (see his support for the the Czech coup and repression in Eastern Germany/Poland/Hungary) and the sources state that he supported this. He did criticise British imperialism/colonialism and this is the extent of what can be said, though this too was modified by the war.
 * As for being particularly inspired by Lenin's ideas, this also requires a source - the sources show him following Stalin in every particular, but those showing him adhering to Lenin are less common, and he was anyway on the far left even before 1917 so was Lenin really his inspiration?
 * Finally, please note that civility is one of the five pillars of Wikipedia. Insulting language is not likely to get you far. FOARP (talk) 07:10, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Hagiography in the lead section
Tothebarricades.tk and I have both reverted you on this, could you please stop trying to edit-war hagiographic and un/badly-sourced content into the article, or at least explain why you're doing what you're doing here? To put it simply, an pamphlet written by Pollitt himself about Malaya is not in any meaningful sense a decent source for the statements you are trying to use it for (i.e., that Pollitt "smuggl[ed] funds to anti-fascist Germans to resist the Nazis and organis[ed] monetary support to Indian republicans" and was "a leading [voice] against both fascism and colonialism"). FOARP (talk) 12:34, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

I’m not sure if this is still a live issue, but since I was mentioned - I objected to the phrase “lifelong anti-fascist” for two reasons, one of which is more important as far as Wikipedia goes. Less importantly, I think supporting the pact with Hitler nullifies your claim to be a lifelong anti-fascist about as decisively as entering a hot dog eating contest disqualifies you from being a lifelong vegan. But that’s not really the issue. “X was a lifelong Y” is just not the kind of statement that should be in an encyclopedia, especially when the article itself calls this characterization into question. Tothebarricades (talk) 05:24, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

JR Campbell? Or Albert Inkpin?
All the sources I've looked at show that Albert Inkpin was directly succeeded by Pollitt as general secretary, however that's not what the infobox says (or said until I changed it). JR Campbell's article says nothing about him ever having led CPGB and I can't find anything saying he ever led it. Inkpin's article says he was succeeded by Pollitt. So where does the idea that JR Campbell was CPGB leader come from? It seems an odd mistake to have made. FOARP (talk) 14:45, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Douglas Hyde quote
This quote is OK to use because:
 * 1) It is cited in a reliable source as an explanation of what "revolutionary defeatism" actually mean in the context of CPGB in 1939-41.
 * 2) The description aligns entirely with the way that other sources describe this policy. It is not at all a WP:FRINGE view of CPGB's policies during that time.
 * 3) Douglas Hyde is cited as the source and the reader can easily go and read his article to weigh him as a source.

In contrast we should not be relying on CPGB's publications, including those from Lawrence & Wishart (which CPGB owned), to support statements about Pollitt's acts as they are clearly not independent, and tend to be inaccurate (e.g., the SS Jolly George is typically described in these publications as being bound with armaments for the Whites, when it is very well documented that it was bound with arms for Poland, and they often hype Pollitt's role in blocking the shipment whilst ignoring e.g., Bevan's role). FOARP (talk) 13:37, 2 December 2021 (UTC)


 * You rightfully point out that publication houses such as Lawrence and Wishart aren't independent, yet you want to back your arguments with statements made by a man whose works were backed by the British secret service? Seems very contradictory. Also a brief look at Douglas Hyde shows that most of these beliefs stem from his miraculous religious conversion which caused him to do a 180-turn on almost everything, and that he was strong supporter of British propaganda which falsly claiming that Malayan revolutionaries were sponsored by foreign governments. He sounds like a nutjob with a proven record of dishonesty at best, and a government spook at worst. I don't think he should be treated as though he were an impartial expert. --BulgeUwU (talk) 13:48, 2 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Hyde being a religious convert is no more or less disqualifying than him having been a communist convert. Perhaps less disqualifying given that religious belief is still common whilst communist convictions are ..... less so. Malayan communist receiving outside support is disputed - I've read sources that said there were PLA officers with the MNLA (War of The Running Dogs does) and sources that say there weren't. Given the support readily doled out by Moscow and Beijing for movements all around the world (including, incidentally, CPGB and Pollitt) it hardly sounds like a discrediting thing to believe that MNLA received such support. And anyway, we're simply relying on a quote from Hyde, cited in a reliable source, to describe a policy that all reliable sources say CPGB had adopted. FOARP (talk) 15:01, 2 December 2021 (UTC)


 * It's not disputed, and your source is the novel "War of the Running Dogs" written by a Daily Mail journalist? A paper so racist that it forced wikipedia to introduce the Deprecated sources policy? I've read that book and its garbage, the author describes what people whom he has never met are thinking in their heads, he writes quotes with no citations and did so 4 times on the same page, he even tries to paint Malaya before the Emergency as a paradise by emiting all the racial pogroms and police killings from his book. This is your standard for sources? That's hilarious. BulgeUwU (talk) 19:43, 2 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I am in complete disbelief that you get your worldview from a Daily Mail journalist of all people, and using it to justify a belief in old debunked pro-colonial propaganda from the 1950s. BulgeUwU (talk) 19:50, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Hagiography in short description
Simply put, no, Harry Pollitt was not a "revolutionary". He did not lead any revolutions. Similarly, he never actual led a trade union (the National Minority Movement was not a trade union, but instead a very small grouping of different trade unionists within existing trades unions) so he was not prominent as a trade unionist and including this in the short description is undue. Finally, he was not prominent as a boilermaker so it is undue to include that in the short description. He was a politician so this is a viable short title, though I think simply "communist" might be equally good.Per WP:SDEXAMPLES the short description for a person should be simply "[COUNTRY][WHAT THE PERSON IS KNOWN FOR]", and Harry Pollitt is known for being a British politician (or British communist). FOARP (talk) 08:34, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Works section?
Commenting here first so that I don't step on anyone's toes, but I feel this page would greatly benefit from a list of Pollitt's publications. He spent his entire life publishing political literature yet there is no works/publications section to list what Pollitt wrote. I have access to a copy of Dave Cope's Bibliography of the Communist Party of Great Britain and would like to begin listing all of Pollitt's works. The History Wizard of Cambridge (talk) 11:06, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * WP:UNDUE as Pollitt wasn't prominent as an author (I note not even Lenin or Stalin has such a section). Additionally a book published by Lawrence & Wishart (i.e., by the communist party), and authored by a party-member, is hardly an appropriate source for this. FOARP (talk) 11:12, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm looking at wiki pages for British political leaders like Boris Johnson and Clement Attlee, neither of which are most notable as authors, and they all have works sections. It seems like the norm for wiki pages of British political leaders. But if you have a problem with a book published by Lawrence and Wishart (not that I think it matters because the book was published in the 2016) then this can easily be circumvented by using the book as a directory and googling the names of Pollitt's publications to find citations. The History Wizard of Cambridge (talk) 11:23, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I bring this up because you delete any of my attempts to cite Pollitt's works in the body of the article, and I'm trying to compromise. The History Wizard of Cambridge (talk) 11:25, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * There's a million things that could be said about Pollitt that are totally WP:MILL/WP:UNDUE (e.g., what his favourite brand of toothpaste was, the addresses he lived at, his phone number, or whatever). The communist party published his stuff - big deal! Wikipedia is not here to advertise his writings (see WP:PROMO) or list trivia (WP:NOTTRIVIA). What you'd need to show is that stuff he wrote was anything worth saying in a general-purpose biography of him, such as, for example, it being reviewed by anyone outside the party, commented on by anyone, being the matter of any kind of controversy, being mentioned in independent biographies of Pollitt etc. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, which means we summarise what is said in independent, secondary sources, not engage in original research to assemble a list of trivia about someone.
 * Citing content either to the works themselves or to party publications doesn't show this. It's like the pamphlet (not even an independently-published book...) about Malaya that keeps getting added - what's the relevance here? If it's relevant then you're going to need to do more than just cite that to the pamphlet itself.
 * Whilst we're on the subject BoJo was published by HarperCollins and Clem Attlee was published by Heinemann - both were authors who wrote at least one widely-reviewed/discussed book. FOARP (talk) 13:28, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You cannot compare a political writer's author works to their toothpaste. That's just silly. Also I never said anything about engaging in original research, read what I wrote again. The History Wizard of Cambridge (talk) 14:47, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The toothpaste point is just to point out that it is not up to us to decide what to write about Pollitt without any reference at all to what independent, secondary sources thought were worth mentioning about him. He may well have used Colgate for all that I know, he also likely wrote many pamphlets for organisations he controlled that disappeared into the ether basically-unread and that are not worth mentioning in a encyclopaedia article intended for the general reader.
 * What you wrote that was to avoid referring to a source that is clearly not independent of the subject (it's published by a publishing house that was owned by the Communist Party, and written by a communist party member - all of whom would be motivated to e.g., credit Pollitt with the writing of works he may not have written as other communists did). This article previous relied on many Communist-party-origin publications to say inaccurate/wrong things (e.g., that the Jolly George was "bound for monarchist White movement forces" - the Jolly George was not even bound for Russia, it was bound for Poland, and the weapons it was delivering were intended for the Republican Poles not the Russian Whites) so it is not justifiable to propose doing that again. The Lawrence & Wishart-published list could be re-constructed by googling to find citations - but this is basically a proposal to do original research to assemble the list. I assume the list would be something like the previous "Publications by Harry Pollitt" list, which was simply an exhaustive list of every single article/pamphlet Pollitt ever wrote, universally in publications that he controlled - that is, a list of what amounts to trivia/self-promotion. Where is the relevance here to the general reader?
 * The article as it stands of course DOES refer to multiple speeches and written works that Pollitt was involved in (e.g., The British Road to Socialism), but only where these are written works/speeches that are discussed in independent, secondary sources.
 * Finally, an exhaustive listing of all articles/pamphlets such as previously was included on this page would risk putting the article into WP:TOOLONG territory. FOARP (talk) 08:36, 23 August 2023 (UTC)