However, when I was in the CPGB in the 1970s there certainly was at least one active trade unionist who told me that his "card was held at King Street". But he wasn't a member of the Labour Party and all this meant was that he wasn't attached to any CPGB branch (though he did attend advisory meetings). There were also a number of other members of the union prominenti who had regular meetings with Ramelson at King Street to discuss problems in the movement (invariably union election slates or motions to union conferences or TUC) who were not CPGB members and sometimes were individual members of the Labour Party. I suppose these were the people the Cold War warriors branded "fellow travellers". But none of this was "secret" and as you can see the reason I know this is simply because the individuals concerned told me.
It's difficult to see what use a "secret" member would be to the CPGB at the time -- given that the main role of the rank and file in the eyes of the biggies in King Street was to sell the Morning Star, and support CPGB candidates in elections when they stood along with the CPGB slates in union elections. Hardly "secret" work...
Now left campaigns and slates were indeed "secret" in many unions until the bans and proscriptions on communists and factions were abolished in most unions in the mid-1970s. The exception was the old ETU which retained the bans on communists until the merger a decade later (if my memory serves me well). Secret members may have operated in the ETU but even there young communists (apprentices etc) could still openly remain members of the YCL (which was not banned) while older communist electricians worked in the Flashlight faction which was seen as a CPGB front at the time. (I was never a member of the ETU so apologies if I've misunderstood or got anything wrong about them).
pip,pip,
H A R Philby
(Col.ret'd)
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