‘The courtrooms of the working class are the streets’: demonstrations during the ‘Great Communist Trial of 1925’

This article seeks to fill in a missing piece in the scholarship on ‘The Great Communist Trial of 1925’ in London. Surprisingly, there has only been one substantial study of the trial, by K.D. Ewing and C.A. Gearty in 2000. While their work presents a fascinating study of the legal side of the trial, there is little mention of the widespread pro-communist demonstrations that were taking over London’s streets and parks. This article will present the first complete examination of these demonstrations and show how they were organised by International Class War Prisoners’ Aid (ICWPA) and designed to achieve one goal: proving that British communism was not a foreign criminal conspiracy, but merely the latest manifestation of Britain’s tradition of respectable revolt. By taking a micro-historical approach to these demonstrations, this article will push back on narratives of interwar Britain as a time when the public allowed communists to be repressed with no backlash. In this case, the communists were able to win impressive public support, such as when 25,000 people marched through London and packed Hyde Park. Even though the communists might have lost their case in court, they won a bigger public relations victory that allowed the party to survive for half a century.