![]() | |
Office | Chairman of the Communist Party of Anglesey |
Term of Office | 1 March 2006 - present |
Predecessor | Kenneth Parker |
Successor | Incumbent |
Date of Birth | 14 February, 1959 |
Place of Birth | Holyhead, Anglesey |
Political Party | Communist Party of Anglesey |
Harry Pollitt is the leader of Anglesey and a founding member of the International Communist Party.
Early Life[]
Born in a small village on Anglesey, Harry Pollitt grew up living in the countryside on his family's farm. However, cheaper imports from foreign countries pushed prices down, and it became impractical and unprofitable for him to continue working on the farm. Pollitt moved into the country's biggest urban settlement, Holyhead, where he was still unable to find a job for some time: after visiting the labour exchange on a daily basis, Pollitt came into contact with some members of the Communist Party of Anglesey who were distributing leaflets amongst the unemployed workers. Paying little attention at that moment, Pollitt eventually found work at Holyhead's docks. Here he had more time to listen to the arguments of the Communist Party. At lunchtimes, a shop steward working in a warehouse in the same yard as Pollitt, Ken Parker, would organise lectures on communist theory or debates with other shop stewards from the Social Democratic Party. Enraptured, Pollitt found himself subscribing to the Communist Party's local newspaper and attending its public meetings on a regular basis. When the next elections to the country's municipal assemblies came round Pollitt even found himself handing out leaflets and explaining communist theory to others, as his mentor Parker had done to him. However, Pollitt was still not a member of the Party: the results of the election were to fix him firmly on a Leninist course.
Joining the Communist Party[]
The election was to prove to be closely fought, the vote between the Communist and Social Democrats in Pollitt's constituency was going to be split roughly half one way and half the other, judging by the mood of the people in the street, with the right-wing Nationalists due to come in third place. However, when polling day came, there were only two candidates on the ballot - a Communist (his old comrade Ken Parker) and a Social Democrat; the Nationalist candidate had been dropped at the last minute and had urged his supporters to vote Social Democrat to help to keep out the "red menace". Whether or not the Social Democrats were implicit in this is something they deny, although the tension between the Communists and the Social Democrats, relying on wholly reationary supporters, was evident. It was the loss of the constituency that caused Pollitt to join the Communists and to become an active member. Under the guidance of Parker, he was elected as a shop steward, and soon left permanent work in the docks to become a full-time official in the Communist-controlled Anglesey Union of Dockworkers. When the Communist Party finally gained a majority in the nation's legislature, despite not having a seat in parliament himself, Pollitt became a well-known figure in the public eye, not only in Anglesey but also abroad: frequent trips were made to sister parties around the world. Notably, it was in the period of multiparty government that Pollitt founded a close personal friendship with Matthijs of Hollandia, with whom he worked in the International Coalition of Socialist Nations, an organisation that Anglesey joined immediately on the victory of the Communist Party in elections.
After the ICSN[]
The counter-revolutionary attitude of the ICSN leadership became reflected in certain factions within Anglesey's ruling party, who attempted to draw the nation, with the explicit support of the social chauvinistic Social Democrats and the reactionary Nationalists, into a war with the NPO. Pollitt led an effort to eradicate the bourgeois perversions within the Communist Party, a process that was accelerated by the assassination of Parker by members of the Nationalist Party. In order to ensure the success of socialism in Anglesey and the consolidation of workers' power, the Communist Party became the only organising political party in the country. At the first post-ICSN congress, Harry Pollitt was reaffirmed as Chair of the Party and President of the People's Republic.