Rajani Palme Dutt

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Rajani Palme Dutt (1896–1974) was a leading figure in the Communist Party of Great Britain. His father was an Indian doctor living in the United Kingdom and his mother was Swedish, a relative of Olof Palme. Brought up in Cambridge and educated at the Perse School, Dutt was suspended from Oxford for opposing the First World War.

In 1920 he joined the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain and in 1921 founded the magazine Labour Monthly, which he edited until his death. He was on the Executive Committee of the CPGB from 1923 until 1965 and was the party's chief theoretician for many years. He also played an important role for the Comintern by supervising the Communist Party of India for some years.

Dutt was unswervingly loyal to the Soviet Union and to Joseph Stalin. In 1939, when the CPGB leader Harry Pollitt supported the United Kingdom's entry into World War II, it was Dutt who promoted Stalin's line that the war should be opposed and brought the party into line, forcing Pollitt's temporary resignation. As a result, he became the party's General Secretary until 1941.

After Stalin's death Dutt remained a loyal Stalinist who disagreed with the CPGB's criticisms of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. He opposed the CPGB's increasingly Eurocommunist line in the 1970s and retired from his party positions, although remaining a member until his death.