About

“Everything you get must be fought for.”

Bob Stewart, ‘Breaking the Fetters’ (1967).

Bob Stewart

Robert J Stewart was born in Eassie in 1877 and grew up in Dundee, Scotland. At the age of twelve he trained as a ship’s carpenter. He became involved in politics from an early age through trade unionism and the temperance movement. During the First World War he campaigned against conscription and was court martialled and imprisoned four times for refusing to fight. News of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia reached him while in jail. In 1920 he was one of the founder members of the Communist Party of Great Britain and was regarded as an ‘elder statesman’ of the organisation by the time of his death in 1973. He was the British representative on the Comintern and attended Lenin’s funeral. Although he stood for Parliament on a number of occasions most of his activities within the Party tended towards the clandestine. MI5 kept him under surveillance for over thirty years.

This site is maintained by his great grandsons. It is not an endorsement of the CPGB, nor is it hero worship. We find much to admire about the man but also much to criticise. It is an investigation into his life and the impact he had on his family through letters, photographs, artefacts and material from the National Archives. It is also an exploration of what Raphael Samuel termed, ‘The Lost World of British Communism.’

Who We Are

Ian Stewart lives and works in the south of England. A recovering Trotskyist, he drinks a lot of tea and dresses like a Tory which confuses a lot of people.

Alan Stewart lives and works in the north of England. Since starting this project during lockdown he’s spent most of his spare time in 1956. He cannot escape. Literally not a communist, he is Marx-ish rather than Marxist. He likes both types of music- New Order and Echo & the Bunnymen.