This Is the Land of the Future!

Bob Stewart in China.

Communist family history has had to take a back seat for a while as I’ve had to navigate the UK adult social care system during the last five months after my mother had a fall. I’m now at the stage where I’m clearing my parents’ house for sale for the benefit of venture capital. As I’ve said before, there hasn’t been a Marxist-Leninist in the family since 1978 but head on experience with the way elderly care is organised in this country may well alter that.

There is much of the bitter about the experience but also, occasionally, some sweetness. Back in the attic I uncovered a whole box of letters, telegrams, photographs and press cuttings that probably haven’t been looked at for over forty years. They’re of a more personal nature than material I’ve found before; mainly letters from Bob Stewart to my grandfather Bill and to my dad. They are lovely documents to have.

Here’s a letter Bob wrote to Bill when he visited China with Harry Pollitt in 1955. I’ve been writing about this trip using the MI5 files and the film footage available as sources but its wonderful to unexpectedly come across how he felt about it in his own words. Unfortunately, it appears to have been written just before Bob and Harry met Mao Zedong so I still don’t know what they talked about. But you can’t have everything. My favourite thing about this letter is the mention of my dad at the end. He would have been in his early twenties at the time and about to forsake the family tradition of a life of far left insurrection for catering and hotel management instead.

Alan Stewart.

37 KUO HUI CHIEH

PEKING

28/4/55

Dear Bill,

A line to assure you that I grow fatter and fitter every day. Weather not yet too hot. This is the land of the future! Formally despoiled by all the powers and drained of abundant wealth and sunk in abysmal poverty, it is now raising itself. There are colossal tasks ahead but they are being tackled with zest. I have been to shipyards & cotton, silk and jute mills. In the jute mill everything is automatic. I swallowed more dust and dirt in half a day in Dundee than the mill I saw produces in a year. Plenty of space to work in, air conditioned and of course with its own nursery and schools. I travelled over a new railway bridge just completed over the Huai River near where it joins the Yangtse and visited the construction site where the first road bridge over the Yangtse is being built. And all factories and building sites people are young. The oldest director we met is 37. He directed the work on the bridges I speak of. I have been to colleges, schools, palaces of culture, public parks that were formerly horse and dog racing tracks. I have been decorated by the Pioneers. I saw the Soviet exhibition in Shanghai in a towering, magnificent building- marble floors, marvellous lighting, all built in ten months by sheer man power – not a crane even to help. The exhibits were a revelation. Automatic lathes, looms, power plants, calculators- floor after floor of the most up-to-date machinery. Paintings, sculpture, books, carpets; The woman’s and children’s [?] shows really beautiful.

We were shown round by the architect – a Soviet woman and her Chinese colleagues. All machines were demonstrated to us by experts. Of course, we had coffee or chai, vodka or wine and, to crown our visit, an excerpt of the film ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ with Ulanova in the part of Maria in the exhibition cinema seated for one thousand. Over seventy thousand visit the exhibition daily. Queues a mile long start forming in the early hours. I have been to famous beauty spots at Hangzhou and Hankow and been in the Forbidden City. Now I am back in Peking for May Day. Then I proceed North where life has been and still is more severe than in the South but great iron and steel industries are already operating there. I have seen Canton, Shanghai Hankow etc. I travel by train as one sees the country and people better than by plane. Harry comes home for the election and I will be on my own. How long I will stay I won’t guess as my Chinese comrades map out programmes that would keep me here for months. I have been at opera and concerts where talented artists of the professional theatres and amateurs who seemed to me just as good performed. So you see I have not a dull moment. You can tell Robin that there are the finest cooks in the wide world catering for his Uncle Bob.

Love to all,

DAD.

POSTSCRIPT

Footage of the visit to China is available on YouTube under the title Harry Pollitt in China 1956. I’m assuming the date refers to the year the film was completed as the visit took place in 1955.