Talk:Harry Pollitt

message: Sadly, the cited version of the Ballad of Harry Pollitt is so poorly recollected that it does not scan and would be impossible to sing; it is also poorly punctuated.  The actual words for the first three stanzas, as sung on numerous occasions, are:
Now, Harry was a Bolshie, and one of Lenin's lads,
Till he was foully murdered by reactionary cads,
By reactionary cads, by reactionary cads,
Till he was foully murdered by reactionary cads.
He came before St Peter, trembling at the knees:
'Oh, may I speak to comrade God, I'm Harry Pollitt, please?
I'm Harry Pollitt, please; I'm Harry Pollitt, please;
Oh, may I speak to comrade God, I'm Harry Pollitt, please?'
'Very well', said Peter, 'if you're humble and contrite
And a friend of Lady Astor, then OK, you'll be alright;
OK, you'll be alright; OK, you'll be alright;
And a friend of Lady Astor, then OK, you'll be alright'.
Mountdrayton (talk) 23:23, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Cutting this song. It's obviously WP:UNDUE to give over a whole paragraph to the lyrics of it and there's no evidence of popularity. Moreover its lyrics appear to state that Harry Pollitt was murdered which is obvious untrue. FOARP (talk) 11:31, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: I've edited the article to be less of a hagiography than it previously was, and closer to a neutral position. Particularly:
*Harry Pollitt supported the war in September 1939 but reversed this position in November 1939.
*There is no evidence that Harry Pollitt was a "strong supporter of the international brigades". He was a communist who lived in the 1930's, but this appears to have been it.
*Harry Pollitt's criticism of the Malayan counter-insurgency appears to have been primarily (according to the sources I can find) from the position that it was a "capitalist war" fought in the interests of rubber-planters. Anyone wanting to say otherwise needs to find sources supporting that position.
*A lot of the changes in CPGB positions appear to have been on direct instructions from Moscow. Pollitt was in direct, secret communication with Moscow.
*Harry Pollitt's electoral performances extend beyond his near-win in 1945, and encompass a lot of other quite heavy defeats. FOARP (talk) 12:39, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV edits

message: The three citations of Monty Johnstone added by FOARP are incomplete in the JSTOR source: "1930–194". Spicemix (talk) 20:09, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Fixed. WP:DIY is a great rule. FOARP (talk) 15:17, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  incomplete ref 

message: Tothebarricades.tk and I have both reverted you on this , could you please stop trying to edit-war hagiographic and un/badly-sourced content into the article, or at least explain why you're doing what you're doing here? To put it simply, an pamphlet written by Pollitt himself about Malaya is not in any meaningful sense a decent source for the statements you are trying to use it for (i.e., that Pollitt "smuggl[ed] funds to anti-fascist Germans to resist the Nazis and organis[ed] monetary support to Indian republicans" and was "a leading [voice] against both fascism and colonialism"). FOARP (talk) 12:34, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Hagiography in the lead section

message: All the sources I've looked at show that Albert Inkpin was directly succeeded by Pollitt as general secretary, however that's not what the infobox says (or said until I changed it). JR Campbell's article says nothing about him ever having led CPGB and I can't find anything saying he ever led it. Inkpin's article says he was succeeded by Pollitt. So where does the idea that JR Campbell was CPGB leader come from? It seems an odd mistake to have made. FOARP (talk) 14:45, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  JR Campbell? Or Albert Inkpin? 

message: This quote is OK to use because:
:1) It is cited in a reliable source as an explanation of what "revolutionary defeatism" actually mean in the context of CPGB in 1939-41.
:2) The description aligns entirely with the way that other sources describe this policy. It is not at all a WP:FRINGE view of CPGB's policies during that time.
:3) Douglas Hyde is cited as the source and the reader can easily go and read his article to weigh him as a source.
In contrast we should not be relying on CPGB's publications, including those from Lawrence & Wishart (which CPGB owned), to support statements about Pollitt's acts as they are clearly not independent, and tend to be inaccurate (e.g., the SS Jolly George is typically described in these publications as being bound with armaments for the Whites, when it is very well documented that it was bound with arms for Poland, and they often hype Pollitt's role in blocking the shipment whilst ignoring e.g., Bevan's role). FOARP (talk) 13:37, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: You rightfully point out that publication houses such as Lawrence and Wishart aren't independent, yet you want to back your arguments with statements made by a man whose works were backed by the British secret service? Seems very contradictory. Also a brief look at Douglas Hyde shows that most of these beliefs stem from his miraculous religious conversion which caused him to do a 180-turn on almost everything, and that he was strong supporter of British propaganda which falsly claiming that Malayan revolutionaries were sponsored by foreign governments. He sounds like a nutjob with a proven record of dishonesty at best, and a government spook at worst. I don't think he should be treated as though he were an impartial expert.  --BulgeUwU (talk) 13:48, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Hyde being a religious convert is no more or less disqualifying than him having been a communist convert. Perhaps less disqualifying given that religious belief is still common whilst communist convictions are ..... less so. Malayan communist receiving outside support is disputed - I've read sources that said there were PLA officers with the MNLA (War of The Running Dogs does) and sources that say there weren't. Given the support readily doled out by Moscow and Beijing for movements all around the world (including, incidentally, CPGB and Pollitt) it hardly sounds like a discrediting thing to believe that MNLA received such support. And anyway, we're simply relying on a quote from Hyde, cited in a reliable source, to describe a policy that all reliable sources say CPGB had adopted. FOARP (talk) 15:01, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's not disputed, and your source is the novel "War of the Running Dogs" written by a Daily Mail journalist? A paper so racist that it forced wikipedia to introduce the Wikipedia:Deprecated sources policy? I've read that book and its garbage, the author describes what people whom he has never met are thinking in their heads, he writes quotes with no citations and did so 4 times on the same page, he even tries to paint Malaya before the Emergency as a paradise by emiting all the racial pogroms and police killings from his book. This is your standard for sources? That's hilarious. BulgeUwU (talk) 19:43, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

text:  I am in complete disbelief that you get your worldview  from a Daily Mail journalist of all people, and using it to justify a belief in old debunked pro-colonial propaganda from the 1950s. BulgeUwU (talk) 19:50, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Douglas Hyde quote 

message: Simply put, no, Harry Pollitt was not a "revolutionary". He did not lead any revolutions. Similarly, he never actual led a trade union (the National Minority Movement was not a trade union, but instead a very small grouping of different trade unionists within existing trades unions) so he was not prominent as a trade unionist and including this in the short description is undue. Finally, he was not prominent as a boilermaker so it is undue to include that in the short description. He was a politician so this is a viable short title, though I think simply "communist" might be equally good.Per WP:SDEXAMPLES the short description for a person should be simply "[COUNTRY][WHAT THE PERSON IS KNOWN FOR]", and Harry Pollitt is known for being a British politician (or British communist). FOARP (talk) 08:34, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hagiography in short description