Labour Party
Lawrence united at the Congress with the American group and minorities of the French and Canadian groups and walked out alongside them after failed in their attempts to propose that the International should dissolve. He later claimed that he has been criticised at the congress for Stalinist views. In October 1954, he dissolved the British Section of the International Secretariat, tending to support the entry of its members into the Labour Party rather than the Communist Party. His supporters remained a loose grouping, with particular strength in car manufacturing trade union organisation. Lawrence had joined the Labour Party with The Club several years before, and in 1956 was elected leader of St Pancras Council. There he reduced rents, fought against restoring requisitioned property to the private sector, and declared May Day a paid holiday, raising the Red Flag over the Town Hall on May Day 1958 and as a result being arrested.
He worked increasingly closely with the Communist Party; his support for Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech and the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 led to the dropping of links with the Socialist Union. Following the Red Flag incident, he was expelled from the Labour Party, and subsequently joined the CPGB with some of his supporters. For refusing to implement rent rises, he was surcharged and jailed for three months in 1960. His disagreements with the British Road to Socialism led to him leaving the CPGB again in 1964, while he moved to work for the Press Association and became an activist in the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades.
Read more about this topic: John Lawrence (political Activist)
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