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In the McCarthy era, people were actually put on trial by the state for possible connections to the communist party.
When one thinks of the McCarthy era, they think about public hearings which were used to "out" people as being communists/having communist sympathies (which in itself was not illegal), which then resulted in the real loss of livelihood for which there was no legal recourse. It was the power of insinuation mixed with moral scare and a public willing to go along with (or, in many cases, afraid to go against) the narrative of "us vs them" which the era is infamous for. Not actual laws or trials.
In the McCarthy era, people were actually put on trial by the state for possible connections to the communist party. In Britain today, we have a communist party who are able to function freely, in fact I know some of them. I can see how it would feel at the moment from Corbyn's end, though.