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Introduction
The Common Wealth Party Archive reveals the history of the short-lived yet politically and historically significant Common Wealth Party (1942–45). As the only opposition to government during the wartime parliament, it fielded candidates in defiance of the Labour-Conservative truce and succeeded in returning three Members of Parliament in by-elections during the Second World War. The Archive at Sussex records the Party’s ideology and activities not only through contemporaneous publications, but also in the later recollections of its leading figures. This material is drawn from interviews conducted two decades after Common Wealth’s rise and fall. Two related collections document the work of two party members, Kathleen Allsop and Catherine Williamson.