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For a few years after its foundation in 1920 the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) attempted, energetically prompted by the Comintern, to work in solidarity with anticolonial movements in the British Empire. But after the Nazi victory in Germany the Comintern's principal concern was to defend the Soviet Union and the liberal democracies against the threat of fascism. British communists criticized the British Government for failing to defend the Empire against the threat from its imperial rivals. After the entry of the Soviet Union into the war in 1941 they vigorously supported the British war effort, including the defense of Empire. This was not though simply a manifestation of chauvinism. British communists believed that imperialism was suffering a strategic defeat by “progressive” forces and that colonial freedom would follow the defeat of fascism. These chimerical notions were greatly strengthened by the allies' promises of postwar peace, prosperity and international cooperation. In the last year or so of war British communists were clearly worried that these promises would not be redeemed, but nevertheless supported British reassertion of power in such places as Greece, Burma and Malaya. For the great majority of British communists, these were secondary matters when seen in the context of Labour's election victory of 1945 and its promised program of social-imperialist reform.

In the wake of the Teheran Conference of 1943, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) adopted the political line that later became known as “Browderism.” The Party dissolved itself in favor of a loose Communist Political Association, declared an effective end to the class struggle and argued that the war-time alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States could continue into the postwar era. The political content of “Browderism” scarcely changed until the eruption of the Cold War later in the 1940s. The British Communist Party, no less than that of the USA, had seen Teheran as an indication that in the postwar world there need be no return to the fierce class struggle characteristic of the prewar decades. It abandoned the insurrectionary model provided by the Bolsheviks, and set out to provide mettle for the wider labor movement rather than act as a vanguard party. Though some elements on the Party’s left sternly criticized the leadership’s post-Teheran policies, their comprehensive defeat ...

The formation of the Cominform in 1947 was a decisive moment in the Cold War. Although many rank-and-file activists in the Labour and Communist parties in Great Britain and Australia continued to cooperate with each other, the formal relationship between the two parties sharply deteriorated. In Britain, the formation of the Cominform shattered the Communist Party's hopes of post-war class peace. Communists' critical attitude to the Labour Party became openly hostile. However, no fundamental change to Communist Party policy occurred. In industry, the Party became more militant but, generally, continued to pursue an approach that involved collaboration more than confrontation. In Australia, the situation was different. Cominform perspectives significantly altered the position of the Communist Party, which shifted from conciliation to intransigence, from a desire to cooperate with the Labour Party to an intention to 'liquidate' reformism. Enmity was mutual: influenced by both the Cold War environment and the increasingly powerful anti-communist Industrial Groups, the hostility of labour to communism became palpable. The article examines the post-war decline of both communist parties in the context of the interplay between Communist Party policy, Labour Party antagonism, and the international environment of the early Cold War.