Furubotn was criticised for this, because Brendberg had been blacklisted for his trade union opposition work in the summer and autumn of 1940. Furubotn did not give way, but lived up to the idea he expressed in 1942: ``The criterion for the party's judgement of a comrade must principally be what he is today and not what he was yesterday''.(25) Brendberg was not the sort of man to get hung up on ideology, but very much a man of action with roots in everyday union and political work.

From time to time since the 1920`s Arvid G. Hansen (1894-1966)(26) had proved a tough opponent for Furubotn, and was to play a major role in the party when Furubotn resigned as leader in 1930. Since joining the labour movement in 1915 he had held a number of offices, and stood out in the NKP when he was given international posts in the Comintern. He was also known as one of the party's leading extreme left-wingers. With an academic background, he had the linguistic skills necessary for international work, among other things representing the NKP at a number of meetings of the Comintern's Executive Committee. He spent several years in Moscow, where he was responsible for training Comintern agitators. In 1940 he was active for a time in Oslo NKP circles, and was a leading promoter in the party of the Non-aggression Pact policy.(27) In 1942 he went to Sweden, where he stayed for the duration of the war. Arvid G. Hansen was a likeable and generally popular person and exceptionally well informed. He was the author of a number of books and pamphlets on political, ideological and literary subjects.

Håvard Langseth (1888-1968)(28) trained as an engineer in Germany. He became an active member of the labour movement in 1917 and joined the NKP in 1923, where he rose in due course to hold a series of important offices. By the late 1920s he was in leading party organisations as well as being engaged in international work. He was among other things chairman of ``Internasjonal arbeiderhjelp'' (International Workers' Aid) and editor of the periodical Solidaritet. With his wife, he created the organisation ``Sovjetunionens Venner'' (Friends of the Soviet Union) in 1927. He wrote large numbers of articles and pamphlets. In 1942 he went to Sweden - on a party assignment.

Surveying these three leading supporters from the old NKP guard who associated with Furubotn in1945, we note that between them they cover both the trade union and the political/ideological sides of the party. They were three strong personalities who had been prominent in leading party organs ever since its foundation. Like Furubotn, both Hansen and Langseth had extensive experience and thorough knowledge of the chains of command in the Communist movement. Of the three, Brendberg was the only labourer.

Of the party's younger leading lights, four stood out in 1945: Ørnulf Egge, Roald Halvorsen, Kjell Grude Kviberg and Samuel Titlestad.

Ørnulf Egge (1910-78) worked in a bank before the war, and was a member of the central committee of the Labour Party's youth organisation (AUF) from 1934 to 1940.(29) For several years he had co-operated closely with Haakon Meyer.(30) Meyer (1896- ) was one of the ideologically best equipped leaders on the Labour Party's left wing between the wars, and at the centre of a circle of young Labour Party radicals. Egge was considered a leading figure in Meyer's circle in 1940, but broke with it before Meyer moved in the direction of Quisling's NS (Nasjonal Samling) party. The Meyer group was an important element in the union opposition of 1940. The old guard of the NKP took strong exception to Egge's record, counting him and Meyer as two of Norway's leading Trotskyites before the war(31) - a claim less in keeping with reality than with Stalinist rubrics. In 1942 Egge joined the Communist resistance, and soon became one of the leading organisers of the NKP's underground activities.(32) In 1944 he was co-opted to the Central Committee, i.e. selected by the party leadership. From 1943 to 1946 he was in charge of NKP organisational work.