Piratin was elected at the 1945 General Election as Member of Parliament (MP) for Mile End in Stepney, becoming one of the last two CPGB MPs. In Parliament, he worked with several left-wing Labour MPs, some of whom would be expelled by their party as crypto-communists and form the Labour Independent Group. He was defeated when he stood for re-election in 1950 in the new constituency of Stepney; his old seat of Mile End had been abolished due to boundary changes.
Until 1957, Piratin was the circulation manager of the communist newspaper The Daily Worker, but he left early that year, ostensibly over a matter of process. However, in 1991 he told Alison Macleod about his doubts at the time: "In 1956, Phil said, he drove to Oxford, to defend the Party line on
Hungary at a meeting of undergraduates. He got as far as outside the hall, stopped – and drove home again. Phil remained in the Party, but he never again worked for it full time. Piratin later became a businessman."[3]
Publications
Phil Piratin; Our Flag Stays Red, Thames, London (1948).
^Mayall, David (1995). Taylor, A. T. (ed.). Biographical dictionary of European labor leaders (illustrated ed.). Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 758. ISBN9780313299001.
