Gordon McLennan

GORDON McLennan, who has died aged 87 of cancer, was the last but one general secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain at a time when the movement was riven by internal battles that eventually ended with the party’s demise after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

He was born into a working class family in Glasgow and worked as an engineering draughtsman but had been engrossed by left wing politics from an early age, joining the Young Communist League at the age of 15 and serving on the executive committee from 1942-1947.

Mr McLennan eventually became a full-time worker for the Communist Party in Scotland, first as Glasgow city organiser, then Glasgow city secretary, then Scottish district organiser and, in 1956, Scottish secretary.

Having joined the national executive of the party in 1957, he became national organiser of the party in 1966 and was responsible for the Young Communist League. He tried to take the party in a revisionist direction as he embraced eurocommunism, which looked to embrace social transformation that was more relevant in a Western European democracy and less aligned to the Soviet Union.

In 1975 he succeeded John Gollan, who was suffering from lung cancer, as general secretary but the party was already in decline and being torn apart by in-fighting between the Soviet-supporting traditionalists and the eurocommunists. In his 15 years of leading the party, Mr McLennan tried to reconcile the two factions but in the end it was to prove impossible.

His reign as leader began inauspiciously when Mr Gollan, his predecessor, revealed that since 1956, the party had been receiving substantial clandestine cash payments – initially up to £100,000 – from the Russian embassy. Mr McLennan always claimed he told Mr Gollan the payments had to be halted, although they continued until 1979. Three years earlier the cash-strapped party sold its large headquarters in Covent Garden – which had been bought in the 1920s with money sent by Lenin.

But membership was in decline and Mr McLennan struggled to drag the party away from Moscow. This led to rows with the communist newspaper, the Morning Star, and accusations he was abandoning his old comrades. In the Russian capital in 1981, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he had bravely condemned his hosts for trying to dictate policy to communists abroad. But his eurocommunism led to defections from the party and purges from within.

During the 1984-85 miners’ strike, Mr McLennan feared NUM president Arthur Scargill was leading the miners to disaster and once the strike ended a meeting with the union boss aimed at promoting unity among the defeated miners ended with a “furious row”.

However, he did manage to create a good relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev, and gave the reformist Soviet leader advice on how to deal with Margaret Thatcher.

Mr McLennan, a sociable and popular man, stood down as general secretary in 1990 and the following year the party was wound up by his successor, Nina Temple, who founded Democratic Left as an alternative. But Mr McLennan refused to join and instead in 1992 he signed up to the Communist Party of Scotland.

He contested numerous Westminister constituency seats for the communists: the Glasgow Govan constituency in the General Election in 1959, West Lothian in a 1962 by-election, Govan in the 1964 and 1966 General Elections and St Pancras North in the 1970 and February 1974 General Elections. He supported the Respect Party led by George Galloway in the 2005 General Election.

In retirement he threw himself into work with the National Pensioners Convention, becoming a member of its national executive and chair of its branch in Lambeth, south London, where he lived. A firm family man, he and his wife, Mary, were renowned for singing Scottish songs at political and social gatherings.

He is survived by Mary, their three sons and daughter, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.