Ideas and ideological attachments are a powerful motivating force over political
activity. This thesis studies how a group of British Labour parliamentarians developed
an ideological link to the Soviet Union and how this attachment acted as a prism
through which they viewed the world. This led to an opposition to the Cold War to
develop that was sympathetic to the objectives of the Soviet Union. This led pro-Sovietism
to become an established, but minority, tradition of British socialism. This
is explored through a study of the ideals and activities associated with these beliefs by
focussing on individual MPs.
Using MPs as case studies, and studying them within the context of a period of the
Cold War, we are able to understand how their activism became reactive to
international relations and how their ideas filtered into developing traditions within
the party's left-wing. The thesis rejects the notion that those who engaged in pro-Soviet
activism were agents of the Soviet Union and crypto-Communists and
develops a framework within which these figures can be understood as principled
socialists who shared the objectives of preventing an escalation of the Cold War and
establishing a socialist future
