C. A. Smith

C. A. Smith was a British politician who held prominent positions in several minor parties, drifting to the hard right and becoming an anti-communist activist.

Smith trained as a school teacher, and later worked as a tutor for the Workers' Educational Association.

In 1933, he attended a conference of left socialists, organised by the ILP. Following its conclusion, Smith and John Paton travelled to meet Leon Trotsky.[1] After this meeting, he argued broadly in favour of the Fourth International until at least 1935.[2]

In 1939, he suceeded James Maxton as Chairman of the ILP. World War II began the same year, and the ILP opposed it, but in 1941 Smith surprised the party by announcing that he supported the prosecution of the war. As such, he resigned both from the ILP and his role as chair. Shortly afterwards, he joined the Common Wealth Party as its Research Officer, and in 1944 he suceeded Kim Mackay as the party chairman.[3] With the onset of the Cold War, Smith became increasingly anti-communist, and increasingly a proponent of Zionism.^[4] Unable to gain support in Common Wealth for his ideas, he left in 1948.

Smith began working with a range of anti-communists, including Jack Tanner of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, the Duchess of Atholl (founder of the British League for European Freedom) and Conservative Party MP Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, founding Common Cause in 1951, which aimed to combat communism in the trade unions. He soon became its general secretary, but the group dissolved itself into Industrial Research and Information Services in 1956.^[5]

Notes

1. ^ Albert Meltzer, I couldn't paint golden angels
2. ^ Hugh Wilford, The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune?