A member of various Maoist organisations in the 1970s, Cardew was killed in a hit-and-run car incident near his home in 1981. The driver was never found. Among the ultra-Left there are various conspiracy theories that he was killed by MI5, and he has subsequently developed martyrdom status in some old-guard, avant-garde musical circles.

However, as in all things ultra-Left, there has been a bitter Pythonesque schism among the comrades about Cardew's true political legacy. A heretical paper was delivered at the British Academy conference which caused an almighty row. "Cardew serves Stalinism: Saint Cornelius and reified constructions of the international proletariat" by Ian Pace, (a formidable pianist and lecturer at City University, London), seems to have pushed a revisionist Trotskyist agenda. One delegate described it as a "diatribe against Mao, Stalin, Hoxha and, of course, Cardew." (Imagine having the temerity to attack Hoxha. Tut tut. Whatever next?)

One delegate to the conference commented: "I was surprised at just how many people at the conference were actually Communists, rather than people studying music that bears some relationship to Communism. Lots of Americans, and mostly over 60. One guy had a guitar and illustrated his daughter's paper with live musical examples, including ‘Where have all the flowers gone?' and other 1960s favourites, and most of the audience joined in with all these songs.

"One woman — a professor from Harvard — even had tears in her eyes by the end of one of them. Not quite what I was expecting, and somewhat surreal, but educational more in a sociological than academic way. They all seemed like very friendly and good people, but the sentimentality of the idealism, and the borderline hippy-culture..."