3 - Out of the Shadows: Communist Youth Organisations 1957-1968

Summary

Abstract

This chapter examines and compares the social and political history of the communist youth movement in Britain and the Netherlands between 1957 and 1968. It looks primarily at the histories of the British Young Communist League (YCL) and its Dutch equivalent, the Algemeen Nederlands Jeugdverbond (ANJV; ‘General Dutch Youth League’). The chapter details these organisations’ changing relationship with their respective communist parties as the Cold War began to thaw, and their quest for their own identity. It explores members’ successful and not-so-successful attempts to collaborate with non-communist radical youth on important political issues, such as nuclear disarmament, student rights, and the Vietnam War, in a bid to break through their social and political isolation.

Keywords: Young Communist League, Algemeen Nederlands Jeugdverbond, Ban-the-Bomb movement, student movement, anti-war in Vietnam movement

I think that, until 1956, the YCL was in effect just a branch of the party, but it did have an independent existence and independent leadership. […] As the political divisions within the party opened up, these were reflected in the YCL and the YCL tended to take a much more critical view [than the CPGB]. There was always a sort of workerism in the party and the YCL, it was a cultural thing – ‘We are the party of the working class’. […] But that was by no means to say that when new members from middle-class backgrounds joined [the communist movement] they were somehow not really entitled to be there. I never came across that (Pat b. 1937, Manchester).

In the 1960s, the student movement really made an impact on the ANJV and turned it upside down. There was barely any working youth at the time. And [middle-class] students and working youth didn't always get along. Some ANJV members had a bit of an arrogant mentality towards students. There was friction, that's for sure (Mark b. 1950, Amsterdam).

British and Dutch youth growing up in the late 1950s and 1960s had an altogether different experience from any generation before them. With full economic recovery and the welfare state firmly established in both countries, Baby Boomers stayed in school longer and had more money to spend on clothes, cosmetics, records, magazines, and visits to the cinema. These changes not only benefited the middle and upper classes; the lives of working-class youth also changed, albeit less dramatically.