Lenin addresses Soviet soldiers in Red Square, two years after the Communist revolution of 1917

Founded in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917, the British party did prosper for a time, electing MPs and councillors. It had a significant role in the trades unions and, unsurprisingly, attracted the attention of the security services.

The comedian Alexei Sayle was once a member of the Communist Party's youth wing. In a Sunday Supplement series on The Westminster Hour in February 2003, he talked to former comrades about the party's rise and fall.

Click here to listen to Part One of I was a Teenage Communist

Click here to listen to Part Two of I was a Teenage Communist

There are memories of Stalin's death in 1953 - "the struggle continues," one young Communist was told by his grieving parents - and of the disillusionment that set in after the news of Stalin's purges, the crushing of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Alexei Sayle talks to one-time party leaders, including former Communist general secretary Gordon McLennan, as well as the son of veteran leader Harry Pollitt.

Hear how the man carrying the money from the Soviet leadership got lost in a London fog and how the Britons in Moscow missed out when Khrushchev told the world the truth about Stalin's bloody record.

More recent memories come from two union leaders who were active Communists - car workers' shop steward Derek Robinson, nicknamed 'Red Robbo' in the press, and Jimmy Reid, who led shipyard workers in Glasgow in the 1970s.

Eventually the collapse of Communism in Europe and dissension within the British party led to its demise in 1991.

Producer: Martin Rosenbaum