Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T10:43:54.522Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Communist Revival and Christian Opportunity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2024

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

After several years of decline, the British Communist Party is steadily growing in numbers and influence. The numbers involved are not, as yet, very great but the upward trend has been maintained for a sufficient length of time for it to be of some significance. The form it is taking and, more particularly, what app ars to be its underlying causes, should however cause Christians to stop and think.

In common with Communist parties all over the West, the British party lost some twenty-five per cent of its members during the months following the Hungarian People’s Rising. Among them was a high proportion of young intellectuals and some of its most promising younger leaders. The membership graph dropped sharply, then flattened out and more or less remained so until a couple of years ago when the Party began to recruit slightly more members than it was losing. Throughout the past year the graph has risen steadily month by month. Between early September and early November 1960, the Party’s membership increased by one thousand. The tempo of recruitment increased too. Before November was through the figure was up to 1,300. This represents, approximately, a five per cent increase in total membership in three months. The numbers recruited may not be spectacular, but the rate of increase is probably just about as much as the Party can effectively absorb at the moment. One must remember that the aim is to teach and train each member to become not just one more Communist but a well-instructed Marxist who is also fitted to be a leader wherever he goes.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1961 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers