From the late 1980s the seemingly firmly established communist movement collapsed with dramatic suddenness.

Willie Thompson is Reader in Contemporary History at Glasgow Caledonian University. He was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain from 1962 until its disbandment in 1991 and, in the 1980s, a member of the editorial board of Marxism Today. He now edits Socialist History, the journal of one of the Communist Party's successor organizations, the Socialist History Society. His previous books include The Long Death of British Labourism (1993) and The Left in History: Revolution and Reform in Twentieth Century Politics (1997).