Communist Party of Britain
The Communist Party of Britain (CPB) was formed in 1988 by a large disaffected segment of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), including the editorship of the party newspaper, The Morning Star. The founders of the CPB blamed what they saw as a domineering clique in the CPGB's leadership for precipitating a dramatic decline in the party's fortunes by introducing a new party constitution. The youth wing of the CPGB, the Young Communist League, had collapsed, and The Morning Star was losing circulation.The next year, the CPGB formally declared that they had never been Marxist-Leninists, and abandoned the party's programme "Britain's Road to Socialism". Members of the CPB perceived this as the CPGB turning its back on socialism.
Since then, the CPB has worked constantly and closely with the labour and trade union movement in Britain. It is a major player in the Stop the War Coalition, one of the movement's directors being a Communist Party member.
The Communist Party of Britain is the only political party in Britain legally entitled to use the hammer and sickle as an electoral symbol, although to indicate the party's commitment to peace, the hammer and dove is the most commonly used CPB symbol.
