Happy 146th Birthday to Bob Stewart.

Our great grandfather Bob Stewart – founder member of the CPGB, Comintern agent and, in the words of Wikipedia, ‘spymaster’ was born on this day in 1877. To mark the occasion last year we posted photographs from an album celebrating his 70th birthday with portraits taken by Edith Tudor-Hart. We have similar albums from his 75th and 80th birthdays which we’d like to reproduce in the same way but I need to pull in some favours from my photographer mate first. In the meantime, here’s a few birthday related items from the archives.

First of all, here’s a cutting from World News and Views from 1952. Harry Pollitt gives a brief overview of Bob’s life up to that point. This is taken from one of the many MI5 security files compiled on Bob now held at the National Archives.

Also from the National Archives is this brief note on Bob Stewart’s 80th birthday intercepted by MI5 in 1957.

Finally, here’s two accounts of Bob’s birthday celebrations. One from his 80th and one from his 90th in 1967. The latter was also the launch of his memoirs ‘Breaking the Fetters’.  They’re from the journals of Charles  Desmond Greaves, Marxist historian, revolutionary socialist and campaigner for Irish unity. Much, much more is available at www.desmondgreavesarchive.com – huge thanks to Pádraig Durnin for bringing them to our attention.

February 16 Saturday 1957: Bob Stewart’s 80th birthday party took place at King Street [CPGB headquarters] this evening. I met many people I had not seen for years – Robson, for example, and Aileen Palmer who was friendly with Jimmy Shields.  Idris Cox’s wife was there, whom I had not seen since just after I returned from Ireland to take over the Democrat, and found her son a job for the summer in Powell Duffryn. I cycled from Cardiff to London that day – it would be in 1951 I would say.  R. Palme Dutt was there but did not stay long.  He is a bad “mixer”. Wal Hannington [Unemployed Workers Movement leader in the 1930s] sang a song, and at a crucial point in the proceedings after Harry Pollitt had pronounced encomia, Bob was set beside the table to cut his cake.  He did it as the camera clicked. Then Harry insisted on his cutting it again, with Harry standing by his side.  But twice did he cut, and twice did the flash-bulb fail to light, so the attempt was abandoned!  I thought it served him right.  But it must be said it didn’t cast him down. He was in the best of spirits all night!

February 17 Friday 1967: I was in the office all day or most of it.  I signed the lease, then tried to phone Toni Curran for the purpose of securing her signature.   After a provoking series of wrong numbers I found her line was out of order, and had to wire.  Likewise Coutts was in Weybridge, so I could not inform the landlords.

At 7 pm. I went to Bob Stewart’s 90th birthday party in the Holborn Assembly rooms across the road in the Mews.  There was a large gathering, not exactly the same as those at R.Palme Dutt’s. The “oration” was delivered by JR Campbell who took occasion for a smack at Larkin which Pat Devine thought in poor taste.  “I wouldn’t have said that if I’d known you were here,” says Campbell to me afterwards.  But I have long accepted him as a “Rangers’ man” and see quite well that he will respect the Irish movement for its strength and nothing else.  His remark implied that whereas when he was in Dublin Bob Stewart “talked sense”, Larkin’s oratory was eloquent but nonsensical.  Of course Larkin did have his idiosyncrasies.  I remember Gallacher [ie. Willie Gallacher] writing to me once that he infuriated Connolly as he gave the right conclusions for all the wrong reasons.

Bob Stewart himself seemed to have aged since Dutt’s affair, but gave a lively speech.  His head is as clear as ever.  Idris Cox was there.  I think he has abandoned his old talk that Wales is “not a nation”, which was what he told Margot Parrish, who had not the stamina to keep going until reason asserted itself.  Some people age badly, others hardly at all.   Despite her illnesses Maggie Hunter looks as fresh as a daisy, and her husband into the bargain.  They were asking after Cathal.  Maurice Cornforth however seems partially lame and hobbled out like an old man. Jack Cohen is sprightly but grey.  James Klugman on the other hand looks much better.  He chased round the world looking for remedies for asthma, but was cured by his own hospital!  I was depressed to learn that Pat Devine’s recent illness was cancer of the lung.  He has now given up smoking.  But the pain is still there.  And he walks very very slowly indeed.  I had a drink with him and Gloria afterwards.  Palme Dutt was there but did not stay long, and of all people Aileen Palmer once again.  I thought she had retired from everything.  It brought back the memory of the days twenty years ago when Bob Stewart and Jimmy Shields shared an office and she used to be the technical worker for them.   Mrs Bowman was there too.  I had not met her since I used to stay in her house in Dundee, and Dave who still works for the NUR [National Union of Railwaymen]. He, by the way, told me that “Seven Seas” want to cooperate with the republication of Jackson’s book.  So I must get the time off.

One thing Pat Devine said was curious.  He had been somewhere in Eastern Europe and met Derek Peters of Belfast, a very “orange” socialist who after returning home from Manchester became interested in Gaelic and appeared when Sean Redmond spoke at Murlough [at the Roger Casement commemoration. Peters was the first secretary of the NICRA].  He said he had taken a marked dislike to him, and could not understand this son of a policeman who seemed to have visited every socialist country in the world and was so full of himself.  Why should I be interested?  Well, somebody suggested we ask him to be Democrat correspondent in Belfast.

Afterwards I read Bob Stewart’s book, of which Cornforth told me he had sold forty copies tonight, and I recognised the use he had made of material I provided for him twenty years ago!