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This article focuses on the transnational organising of Shapurji Saklatvala, the communist MP for Battersea North during the 1920s. It examines his role in popularising the cause of Indian independence and the Indian labour movement within the heart of the metropole, demonstrating that
he was capable of developing solidarity efforts through drawing together a border-spanning network of students, lawyers, journalists, and labour activists into his organisation, the Workers Welfare League of India. His independent practice, which relied more on Battersea's radical milieu and
his own personal connections than communist party members, is demonstrated to have prompted rivals within both the social-democratic and communist camps to approach anti-colonial activism on the subcontinent with greater vigour, and facilitated connections that were forged between the wider
British and Indian labour movements. As the Third Period unfolded, Saklatvala's organisation gained greater support within the Comintern, but conversely lost the autonomy which had defined its early years. The ecumenical network he had developed splintered owing to the proscription of key
figures by the Comintern, and the Labour Party's invigorated attempts to build alliances with labour activists on the subcontinent, ultimately undermining the basis of the Workers Welfare League and leading to its demise.

The relationship between international communism, the national communist parties, and anti-colonial political movements is a subject which has drawn heated debates both amongst activists and historians. This professed anti-imperialism attracted new recruits in the non-European world,
enabling the organisation to begin to break out of the European and North American strongholds which had been basis of prior social-democratic internationalism. Within the metropoles, racialised outsiders entered party ranks determined to turn the propounded anti-colonial ideals into a political
reality. Connections were forged between labour movement activists and anti-colonialists, and between different colonial nationalist campaigners. This issue of Twentieth Century Communism features a selection of papers presented at a symposium at the University of Manchester, UK in November
2018. The symposium considered considered new trends in the history of communist anti-colonialism and internationalism in the twentieth century. 'Within and Against the Metropole' drew together scholars and activists from the US, Europe and the UK.