Robert Griffiths (politician)

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Robert Griffiths is the general-secretary of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB). He was elected by the CPB's Executive Committee in January 1998, in place of Mike Hicks, who, along with others, subsequently left the party he had a major role in founding.

Employed as Plaid Cymru research officer from 1974 until 1979, he published, with Gareth Miles, Sosialaeth i'r Cymry (Socialism for the Welsh People) in July 1979, and the following January founded the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement (WSRM). The movement campaigned on a wide range of issues, including steel industry closures and holiday homes. In May 1982, the WSRM was active in support of Bobby Sands and the other Irish paramilitaries on hunger strike when Robert Griffiths was among those arrested and tried on bomb-related charges. Griffiths served time on remand, but, unlike some others, was found not guilty.

Griffiths joined the original Communist Party of Great Britain in 1984 but was expelled a few years later as the conflict escalated between the party's Executive Committee and the faction in control of the journal Marxism Today on the one side, and The Morning Star management committee and major districts such as London and the North West on the other. The immediate occasion for his expulsion was his authorship of the pamhlet Was Gramsci a Eurocommunist? - A Reply to Roger Simon. He participated in the formation of the Communist Campaign Group, an alliance of members and former members of the Communist Party of Great Britain set up to defend the Morning Star in the early 1980s, becoming its Welsh secretary. He also edited and contributed to a paper critical of both the CPGB's programme, The British Road to Socialism and its Alternative Economic Strategy. The CCG split from the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1988 on the basis of the CPGB's party's existing rules, principles and programme, while dropping the 'Great' from its title to become the Communist Party of Britain (CPB). Griffiths subsequently took part in extensive redrafting of the party's programme, renamed Britain's Road to Socialism.

He comes from the city of Cardiff, although he was a Communist Party candidate in the Pontypridd constituency for the 2005 general election and obtained 233 votes (0.6%). Labour held Pontypridd with 52.8% of the vote. In the 2001 general election he stood for the Newport East constituency, winning just 173 votes (0.6%).