I found the following document – a celebration of Scottish history through a communist lens, in Bob Stewart’s files at the National Archives. Been waiting for an occasion to share it and today seems as good a day as any.
The following article celebrating forty years of the Communist Party of Great Britain was written by Bob Stewart and appeared in the September 1960 issue of the journal Labour Monthly. At the time Bob was 83 years old and had ‘retired’ from active work three years earlier. The piece is written from the perspective of being one of the last men standing’ from the formation of the CPGB in 1920.
“HISTORY will record that the birth of a Communist Party in Britain was the outstanding event of the 1920’s. The fact that it was nearly three years after the Bolshevik victory of 1917 indicates the difficulties encountered and overcome before it saw the light of day. Small as the event appeared, it was nevertheless the political culmination of more than a hundred years of British working class struggle against the rule of the capitalist class. These years had inscribed indelible victories as well as many defeats on the banners of the oldest working class movement of Europe.
Along the years it built the modern Trade Union movement which despite weakness, sectionalism and betrayal is still a powerful weapon and a training ground for militant workers. It embraced Chartism which meant the intrusion into politics of revolutionary ideas and practices on a mass scale. It eventually cast off the manacles of the Liberal Party even if it is not vet free from their illusions. It gave birth to the Labour Party out of the strange assortment of Fabians, Independent Labour Party, Social Democratic Federation which became the British Socialist Party, the latter becoming a leading component of the Communist Party, and was itself affiliated to the Labour Party. Due to historic circumstances which I have not space to detail, the Labour Party has rejected a scientific outlook. It rejected Marxism, abhorred revolution, and has spent half a century confusing and befuddling the working class with hopes that capitalism would change its spots or at least let the right wing leaders of Labour paint them a different hue.
Necessarily capitalism imputed foreign parentage to the C.P. as it had done to Chartism and to early Socialist or other progressive movements. The mud refused to stick. The C.P. was bone and flesh of the British working class. Of course it had and is proud of its international connections. That also is a fine tradition of our class. The more immediate circumstances attending the birth of the C.P. may be thus described. Prior to 1914-18 and during the First World War there were outside of the official Labour Party many of the most class-conscious and militant workers who were split up amongst a number of more or less Marxist sects, e.g., the Socialist Labour Party, Workers’ Socialist Federation, South Wales Socialist Society, and many lesser bodies in various localities. These were largely concerned about the purity of their gospel. There were also the shop stewards, the workers’ committees and many unattached rebels, New Age readers, Guildsmen, etc. Amongst them were great agitators and strike leaders who had with Tom Mann and others headed the struggles of workers on Merseyside, Clyde and elsewhere before World War I.
August, 1914, saw official Labour, like official Social Democracy, dip their flags of red and appear in the flamboyant colours of the capitalists they were supposed to fight against. A sorry spectacle indeed, relieved if but a little by the few who kept the flag aloft. The course of the war brought hellish experiences to the workers. Along came Military Service Acts, which gave rise to an Anti-Conscription movement, Munitions Acts, Rent Acts, high prices. Out of these struggles the clamant need for unity, discipline and wider understanding was arising here, as in every country.
Then came 1917, and the glorious victory of the Russian workers and peasants. The movement in Britain was reborn out of the fires of war. On July 31 and August 1, 1920, after months of negotiation, a convention was brought together in London by the Joint Provisional Committee of the Communist Unity Conference, representing chiefly British Socialist Party, Communist Unity Group, South Wales Communist Council. (The unification was completed in the early months of 1921. The Leeds Congress in January, 1921, brought in the Scottish Communist Labour Party, whose leading members included William Gallacher and J. R. Campbell; while the left wing of the Independent Labour Party, including Shapurji Saklatvala, came in a month or two afterwards.)
At this founding convention in August, 1920, well-known figures included Bob Williams of the Transport Workers Federation, A. A. Purcell, Colonel Malone, William Mellor, Joe Vaughan, Arthur McManus, Tom Bell, William Paul and Albert Inkpin. Of the Provisional Executive elected I fear I am now alone. Some have done their day and passed on. Others sought other fields and have faded from my memory. The convention was serious and full of zeal, sharply divided on the question of affiliation to the Labour Party, but when Paul and Hodgson had finished debate and affiliation was carried the Conference agreed in unanimity. I recollect that after the convention finished on the Sunday, a group comprising Bill Hewlett of Wales, Bill Jackson of Sheffield, Frank Simpson of Perth, George Anderson of Coatbridge, Fred Douglas and myself from Dundee were steered by Jock Laurie of Aberdeen to what he called the ‘Merble Airch’. Before long we were spectators at a B.S.P. meeting. Jock said, ‘the speaker’s gey cauld’. Off he went and how he managed it I had not time to find out before I was hustled through the crowd and found myself making what I suppose must have been the first report back of the first Party Conference, which was received with great enthusiasm. Then to the train, where fate had delivered a very orthodox clergyman into our carriage, and did we baptise him!
That was our send-off. What have we to show for our Party over the years? Not enough but still a lot. We played our part in pulling capitalism’s hands off Russia. We backed and fought for British Miners when officialdom turned their backs and even their guns on them. We expelled even big Bob Williams for his part in the Triple Alliance betrayal of the miners. The defeat of the miners opened the way for attacks on engineers, textile-workers, seamen, etc. In all of these struggles our members were active. In the heat of these struggles some succumbed and left us for easier paths. We fought the opportunist heritage brought in by local Councillors or personal egoists. The Government of the day soon recognised the new type of Party. Raids were frequent, our General Secretary, Albert Inkpen, was arrested and sentenced, active workers, especially in the minefields, were doing time. Our organisation was still lamentably weak and sectarian. Printers were blackmailed into refusing to print our articles and pamphlets. We started our own printing works. Our editors faced libel and sedition charges, so that we needed a double shift, sometimes a treble one.
By 1924 we had our first taste of Labour Government, rather sourish at that. Johnny Campbell put the cat among the pigeons and very much upset MacDonald & Co. By 1924 we began to put new life into the trade unions through the Minority Movement whose secretary was Harry Pollitt, later Arthur Horner. So 1925 opened new economic battles. Government was compelled to subsidise mineowners and assume emergency powers. To prepare for the next round they arrested twelve of our leading members. They were found guilty of conspiracy to utter seditious libels. Six, with previous convictions, were given twelve months.
Six were offered release if they would forswear their allegiance. But one and all refused and served six months’ sentences. Further attacks on the miners were more than decent workers were prepared to put up with, so came the General Strike and wholesale arrests, office raids. This greatest confrontation of the classes in Britain in our time sent their leaders shivering to sell the pass and leave the miners to their fate. Fierce punishment befell the workers in consequence of this betrayal. Victimisation was common and hard, hard times kept knocking at the door. The miners survived their desperate ordeal. . . .
1929. Once again a Labour government which succumbed to American capitalist pressure. The defection of McDonald, Thomas and Snowden and their descent into a ‘National Government’ did not stop the economic rot. Unemployed relief was cut to the bone. These tested our membership and they withstood the pressure and nobly headed or fought in the ranks of the unemployed, joined in hunger marches, fought the police and won concessions. Meantime the German monopolists had been set on their feet again by American and British investments. But being unable to rule in the old way, they washed out the remnants of democratic practice and forged a rod of iron for Hitler to wield while they cheered him on to the fight against the growing Soviet power. Fascism reared its black flags in Britain too, but the working class showed its strength and routed it. In 1935 we scored a real Parliamentary success by the return of William Gallacher who by his Communist attitude did much to add to his own and the Party’s prestige. We led the fight and formed the British section of the International Brigade which saved the honour of the British working class in the battlefields of Spain. 1939: that fatal year that saw the outbreak of that most vicious war of the centuries. Here also our Party gave freely of its dearest and best to bring the war to a victorious end. When it ended the British workers’ stored-up anger burst through to the defeat of Churchill and placed their hopes on the Labour Government, which shooed them off with meagre reforms and played a sorry second fiddle to American big business so that once again our Party is leading the fight against further war.
Now we have established the Party as a potent factor in British politics. Our numbers have grown. We have lost many brave and able leaders but we have raised able successors. Our camp of Peace grows daily and despite provocation we know that the forces of Peace will prevail. All our efforts are turned in that direction. Our literature is improving daily. Our Daily Worker is known the world over. We are no longer the feeble body of propagandists that we were in 1920 but a strong virile Party worthy of the class we find it an honour to serve.”
Bob Stewart, ‘LABOUR MONTHLY’, September 1960.
It is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of our great grandfather, Bob Stewart. As a major figure in the early days of worldwide Communist movement in Britain, the news was announced in The Morning Star the Monday afterwards. The announcement shared the front page with the major news story of the time – anti Pinochet protests at the Chilean embassy. A week later the paper reported his funeral at Golder’s Green Crematorium. The following month, reflections on Bob Stewart’s life by his contemporaries Rajani Palme Dutt and Peter Kerrigan were printed in Labour Monthly. We reproduce them below.
With a deep sense of loss Labour Monthly joins in paying honour to the universally loved veteran and Grand Old Man of the British and international working class movement, Robert Stewart. Right up to the completion of the 96 years of his event filled and fruitful life he remained active to the last, despite disabilities to give inspiration, counsel and guidance to younger comrades. My personal memories of him are so close already as a foremost fighter before the foundation of the Communist Party and his leading role in its foundation and in all its battles, that my thoughts turned back to the joy and pride which I felt at an early congress when I had offered some suggestions as a rank and file delegate from the floor in the discussion and Bob Stewart in his reply from the platform referred to what I had said as constituting ‘the most useful contribution’ in the discussion. Praise from Bob Stewart was praise indeed. Bob was always for us a wise counsellor and guide, with a record of manifold struggles, and an indomitable spirit, equally in spells imprisonment or in positions of responsibility and leadership. Harry Pollitt justly called him ‘a model and an example to all of us.’ John MacLean, honoured by the Bolshevik revolution to be nominated as the Soviet diplomatic representative in Britain before recognition, and a very close friend of our journal, already in 1912 described Bob as ‘the finest propagandist in Scotland.’ When he was first elected by the Fourth Congress of the Communist Party to the Central Committee in 1922, the first Central Committee elected by the Congress as a whole, it was a measure of the universal respect for him that Bob Stewart was one of the seven members chosen. Alike in his fourteen years of service on the Central Committee, as a representative in the international movement, in his subsequent service on the Control Commission and the Appeals Committee, and in all his ceaseless activity in every field, and personal contact, Bob helped to shape generations of working class fighters. On his 83rd birthday in 1960, when various trends of ideas were arising among some sections, Bob gave his characteristic guidance: ‘The acid test for a socialist anywhere is his attitude to the Soviet Union.’ All the condolences of Labour Monthly are expressed to his family and relatives. The inspiration Bob Stewart has given us lives on, and will live on, through the years to come.
Rajani Palme Dutt
BOB STEWART’s death breaks one of the longest living links in a chain of revolutionary struggle bridging two centuries. Even a brief factual record of the highlights of his tempestuous career would fill many pages. Scottish prohibitionist socialist, skilled carpenter, trade union organiser, conscientious objector in world war one, four times imprisoned for his refusal to fight, foundation member of the Communist Party and its first parliamentary candidate at Caerphilly in 1921, for many years on its Central Committee, and one-time Acting General Secretary, delegate to the Communist International, active on South Africa and Ireland, always in the thick of the struggle whether as parliamentary candidate fighting Churchill in Dundee or elsewhere in mass demonstrations of the unemployed and at political meetings.
Bob carried on his varied activities with unflagging energy and enthusiasm, until a few years ago when advancing years and the onset of blindness confined him to his room. The documented record appears, complete with dates and brief explanations, in James Klugmann’s first two volumes, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and, in more detail, written by Bob himself in his autobiography, Breaking the Fetters, published by Lawrence & Wishart in 1967. I want to speak of him from my own personal experience because this may be a contribution to creating a more complete picture of the whole man.
I will always remember my first meeting with him. It was in 1921. I had been paid off from my job in engineering and was chairman of the Springburn branch of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. We held a weekly meeting in the Princes Picture House, with invited speakers like Pat Quinlan and others mentioned by Bob in his book. The speakers had to climb a ladder from orchestra stalls to a narrow strip of platform on which was a table and two chairs in front of the picture screen. Up the ladder came this man, with the striking face, a long, rather badly broken nose and piercing eyes.
My most lasting impression was the speech and method of delivery. No one I have listened to since could do so effectively what he did. He would break away from the main theme to make a witty or acid comment. Sometimes he would develop the point, but always he would return to the main content. The thread was never broken, and when he had finished you were left in possession of the case he was making in its entirety. Of course, there were better orators than Bob Stewart, men like Harry Pollitt, Willie Gallacher and Tom Mann, to mention only some. But he was supreme in the way I have just mentioned.
He had an undying hatred of capitalism and its oppression, and could be devastating in criticism when he felt it necessary. One example comes to mind during this period. It was 1922 in Glasgow, when he was Scottish Organiser of the Communist Party. At that time there were a number of Party members, of whom I was one, who were strongly opposed to the Party decision to apply for affiliation to the Labour Party. We were at a Party conference and Bob read out the letter of resignation from one of them, which ended by saying that in the meantime he proposed to go back to his books. I shall never forget the way he spoke of anyone dropping out of all activity. and ‘going back to his books’ in the situation then confronting us. On the other hand, Bob was always prepared to help us younger, inexperienced and impetuous ones, with guidance and advice. He would listen carefully and then deal with the arguments showing how the particular problem could be solved, and often with a personal example or anecdote.
Bob was always a staunch trade unionist from his apprenticeship days when, in his last year, he joined the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. He was elected to the yard management committee at Gourley’s Shipyard, Dundee. However, he left because the employers offered to continue his job for a year at the improver’s rate ten shillings below the basic journeyman’s rate. From job to job, until, back in Dundee again, he became shop steward at Gourlay’s where he also worked on building the Discovery, which took Captain Scott on the national Antarctic expedition. It was in this period that Bob met and married Margaret Lang, and commenced a partnership which lasted till her death forty-eight years later, and to whom he pays tribute in the foreword to his book. I suppose in one way the high point of Bob’s earlier trade union activities came in 1915 during the first world war when he became local organiser of the Scottish Horse and Motormen’s Union, at a wage of 30 shillings a week, and went back into the trades council as a delegate. He would have been about 38 years of age at the time. He lost that job when, in 1916, he received his first prison sentence for having conscientious objections to killing his fellow men in an imperialist war and refusing to do military service.
I have dwelt briefly on these aspects of Bob Stewart’s career because the more outstanding political features are on the record and are better known to those who have been colleagues or have studied the history of the Communist Party and the British labour movement. Bob was an outstanding political leader, tested many times in class battles. He was a staunch internationalist and life-long friend and supporter of the Soviet Union. As I will always remember him, he was a great humanist, whose memory will be cherished as long as we who knew him live.
Peter Kerrigan
At the moment I’m working on a biography of Bob Stewart. Hopefully this will build on what he revealed in his memoirs and will offer a fuller picture of his political and clandestine life and how this affected his family. I’ve just finished writing a chapter on his activities in Ireland in the 1920s when he was tasked with trying to set up an ‘Irish Marxist Party’. As part of the research, I came across this news article from The Scotsman that hopefully gives a little more of an idea of how Bob’s activities were viewed at the time.
Alan Stewart.
ACTIVE CAMPAIGN OPENED.
TO PROMOTE A ” WORKERS ‘ REPUBLIC . “
(FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.)
Fishing in troubled waters is, and has always been, a favourite pastime of Communist agitators , and in the Irish Free State they have had opportunities for its prosecution, of which they have promptly availed themselves from time to time. During recent years they have made repeated attempts to take advantage of the unsettled conditions in order to spread discontent and carry on their propaganda . It will be remembered that when a considerable part of the South was held by the armed supporters of Mr De Valera they seized the opportunity afforded by the disorders to raise the Red Flag and to establish Soviets in Tipperary and Clonmel . The only consequences of their activities then, however, was the destruction of creameries and other works and the ruin of the workers.
Subsequently there was a lull in the Communist propaganda, although now and again Mr Jim Larkin and a few others made efforts to instil life into the movement. Larkin has been twice at least in Russia during the past eighteen months, and the fact that he is a welcome visitor there is in itself significant . He claims to be a recognised link between Moscow and Ireland, and to have been appointed to some sort of official position as a delegate or deputy from the Bolshevists to the Free State.
A DANGEROUS DOCTRINE.
Lately there has been a revival of Communist agitation, and an active campaign has now been inaugurated in Dublin, where a public “demonstration” has been held beneath the folds of a Red banner said to have been sent by “the Russian proletariat” to their “Irish comrades.” The chief speakers at this “demonstration” came from Great Britain. They were Mr Saklatvala , the Communist MP for North Battersea and Mr Robert Stewart , of Dundee. Mr Saklatvala (who spoke for nearly two hours) declared that the revolutionary method was the only one that would befriend the working classes and Mr Stewart pledged himself that before the end of next month an organisation will be established in the Free State for the promotion of a Workers’ Republic. Mr Stewart, who recognises, as Irish agitators have done before, the value of land hunger as a , political weapon, appealed to workers if they wanted land to take it, and legalise their action afterwards. A dangerous doctrine and all the more dangerous that it has always been a popular one among a large class in Ireland. One of the troubles which the Free State government is experiencing arises from the illegal seizure of land in some of the Western counties at this moment.
While the Government do not, it is understood, take the Communist irruption into the Free State very seriously at present, they are watching developments with great care. They recognise that the real danger of the campaign which has been inaugurated lies not in its political propaganda, however pernicious, but in the possibility of resort being made to the weapons of terrorism and violence. Any association with Moscow cannot fail to be disquieting , especially at the present juncture.
The Scotsman Friday 24 April 1925
POSTSCRIPT
A shorter version of the story appeared in the Irish Weekly and Ulster Examiner on Saturday 25 April 1925.
A Workers’ Republic
Addressing a meeting in the Mansion House on Sunday Mr. Saklatvala said the revolutionary method was the only method that could befriend the labouring classes. They seeded a great revolutionary measure by which boards of directors could be set aside and representatives of the working class take their places. British Labour betrayed the Irish workers when they were fighting for their freedom.
Mr. Bob Stewart, Dundee, said if the workers wanted the land of Ireland for the people they must take it and legalise it afterwards. Before the end of May he would have established in Ireland an organisation whose object would be a Worker’s Republic.
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!
To the best of my knowledge the last person in my family to still be fully committed to a Marxist-Leninist revolution died in 1978. He was my grandfather William Stewart and he was lovely. However, even though those that remain have spent the intervening forty-four years failing to overthrow the capitalist system, communism has loomed ever present in the background in our lives for all sorts of reasons. It is a bittersweet inheritance. I suppose there is nothing surprising in its presence as, from the inception of the CPGB in 1920, communism essentially became the family business for the next fifty years. Practically everyone was involved.
At the end of 1955 – a few months before Khrushchev would acknowledge the crimes of Stalin for the first time in his ‘secret speech’ MI5 picked up some office gossip about the Stewart family through one of the bugs it had placed in the offices at the Communist Party’s HQ in King Street, Covent Garden. Reuben Falber, who, when Bob Stewart finally retired in 1957, would go on to be responsible for distributing funds from Moscow, was overheard talking to fellow party worker Betty Reid about a recent scandal involving Bob’s nephew Greg – a Cambridge student who had just been unforgivably rude to one of the comrades at Central Books. Here’s part of the transcript in the security files:
‘They’re a family that-well, they’re a law unto themselves because you’ve got a combination of the old fellow’s prestige and money. BETTY asked where the money came from. Regret FALBER’s reply was whispered and could not be followed.
(From the MI5 Security File on Bob Stewart KV2/2790 – The National Archives)
The ‘old fellow’ is, of course, Bob Stewart and quite clearly the whole family had something of a reputation within communist circles. In fact, Betty Reid, in a conversation recorded about eight months later, was of the opinion that the Stewart children – William, Rab and Nan, had been “thoroughly spoiled all their lives.” This kind of attitude is elaborated further in an earlier document I came across in my grandfather’s security file on a recent visit to the National Archives. It’s dated 17th October 1932 and appears to be a memorandum from Special Branch to MI5 concerning the activities of Bob and his three children. I reproduce it here in full partly because I think it’s an interesting account of how the Stewarts and other similar families were viewed within the movement but mainly because I love the description of my grandfather.
The following information has been received.
WILLIAM STEWART, who used to drive the Soviet Ambassador’s car has given up driving altogether and is now employed in the Embassy as a ‘trusted’ man. He recently stated that he was engaged there on work of a secret nature, which included a little clerical labour.
His hours are from 5pm until 1am and his wife also has a job at the Embassy.
He is forbidden to undertake Communist Party of Great Britain work.
He now wears a small moustache, Charlie Chaplin style, which gives him an altered appearance, and carries an ash walking-stick. He often wears a light green shirt, brown jacket and shorts (at other times grey flannel trousers), light brown rabbit-skin hat, and brown shoes. He apes the appearance and mannerisms of a university student.
His father, ‘Bob’, is at present in Belfast where he is assisting the Irish Revolutionary Workers’ Party.
His brother, who lived with Ralph Edwin BOND, and was attached to St. Pancras Local Communist Party of Great Britain, has now secured a situation at Arcos Ltd. as also has his wife. Both have been transferred to Islington Local.
His sister, who was active in the Young Communist League of Great Britain, and who went to Russia on several occasions, has gone to live there permanently. She also was employed at Arcos and married a principal of that concern. As he has been recalled to Russia, she has accompanied him.
The state of affairs here outlined indicates how the movement is ‘exploited as a meal ticket’ (to use the phrase of certain disgusted genuine Communists) by certain fortunate families.
The CAMPBELL family is another case in point. The sum of over £20 weekly is received in John Ross Campbell’s home from Soviet sources.
The WATKINS’ are in the same position, whilst there is a host of others.
There is keen resentment in the ‘movement’ over this condition of things. It is freely expressed that no man and wife should be allowed to hold a situation while other ‘Comrades’ are unemployed. This objection has taken root and considerable trouble on the point seems likely to develop.
SUPERINTENDENT.
(From the MI5 Security File on William Stewart KV2/4494 – The National Archives)
Alan Stewart.
Frankly, the 1920s do not seem very different to our own times. Huge inequality, increasing poverty and a government wholly indifferent to the situation, more concerned with preserving their interests and dismantling the rights of ordinary people. Liberal voices and the fourth estate hostile to any ideas that may remedy the situation. Perhaps the main difference between then and now is that, in the twenties, unemployment was the source of hardship whereas these days most people tipping into poverty are in work.
During the 1920s and 1930s there were numerous marches and protests to combat unemployment and hunger and my grandfather Bill Stewart was on one of the first. I recently discovered two documents that shed a little light on these times. One of them was my grandad’s own handwritten account of his experiences, written sometime in the 1970s for The Morning Star. The other was a letter to Bill from trade union legend Tom Mann- a colleague and friend of his father Bob Stewart.
The envelope is addressed to ‘Comrade William Stewart – WITH THE MARCHING UNEMPLOYED’ to be picked up at the Aylesbury post office on or after the 20th February. The marchers had made it on foot from Glasgow to Buckinghamshire in a little less than a month. The letter is on the headed notepaper of the National Unemployed Workers Committees Movement – an organisation set up by the CPGB to highlight the conditions of the unemployed after the First World War and on the back Tom Mann has scrawled something along the lines of ‘Good luck Will- you’ve stuck it grand.’ There’s even a signed photograph. The letter reads:
To Comrade Will Stewart and the Boys on the March.
Dear Comrades,
I send you a word of hearty good luck and sincere congratulations on your splendid march.
In London we are eager for all details as to how you fare on the road. We
are doing our best to prepare nicely for you on your arrival.
You have done splendidly and are now within a few days of your destination. In spite of all obstacles you have achieved your purpose so far and we believe will carry it out to the letter.
I am hoping to meet you at Watford on Friday, continue in the
same spirit of Comradely devotion to our great cause and you will do much to bring about betterment now and the great Industrial and Social change for the future.
Hail to the Marchers;
Fraternally Yours,
Tom Mann
William Stewart’s own handwritten account seems to have been written sometime in the 1970s almost fifty years after the event. It sheds more light on what it was like to be on the march and the issues they faced on the way. Wal Hannington was a founding member of the CPGB and the head of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. If any one could identify the Geo Middleton mentioned I’d be extremely grateful.
I have just been reading your article in this morning’s Morning Star on the Hunger Marchers, and I think that apart from the actual primary importance of the political side of the campaign, please let us tell the up and coming militants what made an ‘Unemployable Person’ (as the title often was quoted) a Hunger Marcher.
I took part in the first Scottish Hunger March from Glasgow to London, we gathered in the centre of Glasgow made up of Clydeside engineers, jute workers from Dundee, fish and dock workers from Aberdeen Scottish miners from Fife and elsewhere in fact a representative section of the working class of Scotland. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor altogether some 300 marched off with Wal Hannington, Geo Middleton and a braw lad from the Isle of Arran. I must not omit the mobile soup kitchen of this ‘great little army’. It was an old tin Lizzie which had been an ornate ice cream cart common in Scotland. For our purpose it was fitted with an old wash house boiler (as used these days for cooking pigs swill) a few sacks of boiler coke and firewood and of course a ‘cook’ of whom more later.
The month of January was not best weatherwise in Scotland and as we progressed on our way snow was falling as we marched through Thornhill singing the old marching songs of the Movement in which we were soon to become as efficient as any body of marching troups and when London’s Trafalgar Square was reached our rendition of Macgregor’s Gathering and the Hunger Marchers song was worthy of a Red Army Choir.
I am transgressing, to get back to purport of these notes I must go back to our march across the border into Carlisle, here along a country road came the power of the law in the shape of a PC Sergeant and Chief Constable resplendent in blue and yards of black braid and a flashing silver nobbed cane. Wall gave the command to stand to attention coming abreast of the Chief Constable – he stepped forward saluted Wal and said ‘Mr Hannington you have a fine body of well disciplined men. I had visions of a rabble.’ Our well organised army of determined men had evoked a Chief Constable’s admiration. Sad to say this was not the case as we progressed.
What comradeship and warmth we received – the big splendid meals of hot vegetable soups and through Lancashire the tons of hotpot consumed as we lay down on school floors or club floors tired but proud with the great justification of the duty we were performing for our class. Proud of the bands of working class women who cooked and fed us at each halt on the way – of butchers who handed us joints of meat – bakers who gave us bread and buns – of the Co-op Womans Guild who organised their local Co-op resources on our behalf – of women, whose homes were full of their own unemployed fathers and sons, took and did washing for us.
Each marcher had an Army blanket which on the march was rolled and worn bandolier wise over our overcoats and with each man wearing an Army haversack we did look as if we meant business – marching in battalion formation of companies and sections, (we had no lack of military advisers- many of the lads were ex-servicemen).
Our commander and his deputy Wal Hannington and Geo Middleton respectively were tremendous, not forgetting the role they played – for want of a better name – political commissars.
To get back to my story and to emphasise the main purpose of writing is to show that it was in the organisation and the day to day problems and details dealt with by “Our Command’ without this the impact on the community would have been lost. All working class organisations rallied to us as the march continued south.
We had a cyclist courier on an old boneshaker who would ride ahead to alert local comrades of our impending arrival and make arrangements for our rest at night – all important when we had forced our march to some 30miles in one day on some occasions.
We were approaching Warwick – our scout or courier said we would have to go to the ‘Spike’ that night and he was not too sure of the ‘Workhouse Master’. As we marched in that evening there stood the Master well dressed in tweeds and stout brown brogues – the envy of the Army booted marchers. His eyes showed his amazement at our discipline quietly he said ‘this is not what I expected’ and he re-arranged all the quarters and implemented the meals after which he asked Wal and I to share his supper in his own quarters and as the meal of lamb and pickles progressed and Wal explained the reason and the purpose of what the march involved he grew in admiration and from a hostile attitude almost came to flattering of our efforts. He voluntarily waved the 3hour work rule then in force – (any person using the workhouse overnight was compelled to do such things as cleaning, wood chopping and coal carrying. This was not always the case as in later cases when a downright refusal had to be made at other workhouses). As Wal and I said good night to him and walked across to the main building and our floor space Wal said to me “Billy another couple of hours with that bloke I would have had him packing up and joining us.
On down through Lancashire among the lassies in their clogs and shawls ladling out mountains of hotpot full of meat scrounged off local butchers and cigarettes from their own meagre supplies – though on occasions a Tobacconist gave a supply of Woodbines, Shag and papers
What an army from Glasgow to London without a courtmartial! At no time was anyone reported for drinking such was the effect of good leadership and voluntary discipline in our day to day organisation of ordinary working blokes with intellect enough to understand how worthwhile this great effort was. Many had little knowledge of The Working Class Movement when the march started other than they were against the system that had unjustly degraded them but the hell of it had not broken the spirit that took them on the march.
One wee chap whose feet were a bit sore as we marched along half whispered to me ‘Hey Bill I’ve been thinking we missed a wee thing at the start of this — job – we should have sent a telegram to Budyonny to hae sent us some o his Red Cavalry horses – ma feet always walked better in stirrups? Later I learnt he had been in the Scots Greys.
The bedding down at night were like any barrack room except the arguments were on a higher plain and as the march progressed the full sense of class and political involvement came to the top and the knowledge of fully participating in the struggle of the masses and the need to implement their knowledge grew in their eagerness and enlightenment so that when London came everyman Jack was fully conscious of every facet of the political causes that prompted our actions as working class militants.
God, how my father loved to tell stories. At his funeral I spoke about the times in my twenties when I used to ring home and he would talk and talk to the point where I would put the receiver down and walk off for five minutes to make a cup of tea. When I picked up again, dad would still be going strong, never knowing he’d been speaking to empty space. In the week following his death I searched everywhere for any recording I had of him and his voice. I imagine a lot of people who don’t stop talking only ever think of themselves but I don’t think this was true of dad. He was interested in everything and everyone. Our friends became his friends and he was always happiest surrounded by people. In short – he was a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, in his last years vascular dementia dulled a lot of this. Buttonholing strangers for random conversations and endlessly repeated reminiscences of his wartime childhood were the norm for a while. Whereas in the past his stories entertained us, now they just made us apprehensive. They were to be policed and quietly managed. He had no filter. There would be myself, my partner and our small child together with my parents on a day out and when we sat down for lunch in a cafe dad would often turn his chair around and begin regaling the family behind us with his criticisms of ‘the colour bar’ in the 1960s, or the Napoleonic wars, whatever came to mind at that moment. These strangers would look bemused and often a little alarmed wondering why this person had attached themselves to their party before we got his attention to turn back to us. However, the illness didn’t dull his sense of the absurd. A few years before he died, during one of the rare times our small family was all together, he told a bizarre anecdote about his father trapped on a cargo ship with a polar bear drunk on Siberian honey. I had originally remembered the bear as being loose on a Russian submarine but my brother put me right – his memory of the story makes much more sense.
Although I can’t recall the exact words, dad’s tale left indelible images in my mind. Here’s my attempt at a retelling:
An icy breeze buffets the gulls gliding in the stone grey Leningrad skies. The docks seem busier than usual – all the activity focussed on a cargo ship berthed on the western side already sitting heavy in the water ready for its voyage. On the quayside, amongst the bedraggled dockworkers, stands a group of soldiers with rifles on their shoulders smoking and chatting nervously amongst themselves. Sailors weave past them, hats pulled down and jackets fastened tight against the Baltic air as they make the final preparations for their journey. Just one more item of cargo to load.
A crane rattles and wheezes into life. The crowds of dockers, soldiers and sailors all stop for a moment to gaze up at the large cage now being loaded on to the deck. Inside lies a huge mass of white fur which undulates slowly. Wheezing and snuffling sounds can be heard – the beast is heavily sedated. However, it is the large, black claws, each one the size of a hunting knife, that seizes the bystanders’ attention. This very large, very dangerous polar bear is on its way to London. It is a gift from Stalin himself.
With some difficulty sailors and dockworkers push and heave the massive drugged carnivore into a small compartment down in the hold where it settles down to snore away the effects of the anaesthetic. There is relief when the bar is shut down against the door and the key is turned – every man fully aware of the damage their cargo could do if it woke up and decided to clamp its jaws around their head. The final preparations are made for the journey and before long the steamship is manoeuvring its way out of the harbour towards the Gulf of Finland and out to the Baltic Sea on its way to England.
Unfortunately, the comrades haven’t read their AA Milne. In a oversight that they would soon regret, the sailors have stored a consignment of Siberian honey next to the sleeping bear. It may as well have been a powder keg. There are barrels and barrels of the stuff and, while a small group of off duty sailors sit around and pass the time playing cards, a pungent, earthy smell diffuses throughout the hold.
One of the sailors there is called Bill- a communist from Scotland. He’s there to make sure everything runs smoothly. That Stalin’s magnanimous gift is delivered without a hitch. As the cards are dealt once again, Bill becomes aware of a low growl and a scratching noise coming from the bear’s compartment. He ignores it as do the rest of the company and the game goes on. They imagine the bear is simply dreaming in the way they’ve seen their pet dogs chase rabbits in their sleep. But the bear is not dreaming. Instead the bear is emerging slowly from its slumber and has caught the scent of the wild honey.
Before long, the smell begins to intoxicate and torment the beast. It begins to get more and more agitated. To begin with the card players merely shout at it to keep the noise down before returning to their game. The growls get louder and then suddenly there is a thudding noise as the bear slams itself against the door in an effort to get to the barrels. It’s at this point the men stop playing and look nervously at each other. There is another thud. The sailors get up. While the others step warily back, Bill takes a few steps towards the bear’s compartment but instinctively stops. It is a very bad idea. Another thud accompanied by an almighty roar and the sailors scatter in panic. They shout to their comrades on deck that the bear is escaping. They shout to their comrades to bring rifles. Another thud and the sound of wood splintering. The sight of a claw, an eye, bared teeth. It’s only going to take a few more goes at battering the door before the bear escapes.
Bill shouts at the others to get out immediately and they scramble for to the steps that will take them up to the deck. Bill is the last to leave and, as he does so, the bear finally smashes through the door sending splintering wood everywhere. The sound it’s making is terrifying. It heads straight for the steps just as Bill gets onto the deck, the swipe of a paw missing his leg by inches. The ashen faced sailors are joined by their comrades as they look down the hatch, the bear snarling up at them. Someone brings along a rifle and attempts to push it into another’s hands. The man refuses. As does another. And another. Soon the whole crowd around the hatch are ignoring the chaos down below, shaking their heads and remonstrating with the man with the rifle. Not one of them is prepared to shoot the animal no matter how much danger they could be in or the damage that could be done. Shoot a gift from Stalin? How would you explain that? Staring at the floor they’d all rather take their chances with the bear.
Looking at the nervous crew Bill decides there is only one solution. He slams the hatch down and locks it, trapping the bear in the hold. The reaction down below is instantaneous- those on the deck can hear the animal going beserk. This seems to last an age- the sound of a bear wrecking every single barrel in the hold. Each smashed casing and the devouring of its contents propelling it into a further frenzy. What is to be done? Nothing it seems and most of the crowd drifts away from the hatch to worry and fret while leaving Bill and a comrade to stand guard. Eventually the bawling and growling gives way to huffing, slurping and chomping. Gradually these are replaced by a whimpering, the sound of a bear dropping to the floor and a heavy wheezing. Its a while before Bill opens the hatch. When he does, he is awed by the scenes of destruction that meet his eye. Every part of the bear’s fur seems matted and drenched with honey, its eyes rolled narcotically to the back of its head and its tongue lolling out of its slavering mouth. It is lying awkwardly on its back atop the wreckage of the entire consignment. Honey oozes out across the floor and splashes the walls. Bill will always remember this sight. A miracle no one was injured. With luck, they can now keep the bear sedated, clean up the mess and fix the worst of the damage. They can deliver their gift. Stalin need never know.
I can still remember the looks my brother gave me as we sat in a Chinese restaurant listening to Dad recount this tale. We hadn’t heard him in full flow for quite some time. It was more lucid than we were used to at that point but also more bizarre. And funny too. Much funnier than my attempt. He was more like his old self. Dad, for his part, maintained it was all true and that his father, Bill, had been one the sailors. It’s since become one of the main things we remember Dad by. Somehow typical of him but also, as it was one of the last of his tales he managed relay to us, more unique than ever. In the intervening years, the only other time I heard him talk at that length and detail was when we spoke on the phone a week before he died. For years all he’d managed was, “I’m being well looked after!” before passing the receiver back to Mum. In that last conversation he spoke for half an hour about how much he loved his parents, our Mum, my brother and me and our partners before speaking beautifully about his grandson. I knew then that it wouldn’t be long and it wasn’t a surprise when my mother rang distraught later that week. That last conversation will stay with me forever. However, the memory of it doesn’t make me laugh which is what Dad was so good at and which is why I have always wanted the polar bear story to be true.
I knew that grandad did work on Soviet steamships so there was a chance it could have happened. I had his discharge book which gave me the details of the ships he sailed on and their destinations but this stopped in 1927. Anyway, the Stalin element suggests that the incident took place in the 1930s but by that time my dad had been born and Bill had a chequered career ranging from working for the Soviet Embassy to being the catering manager at Tottenham Lido. When would he have had the time to go to Leningrad to load a polar bear onto a steamship in the first place?
I knew that if I started to pull at the threads of this tale it might not hold up. In fact it might unravel completely. All the same, I thought it was worth looking into. So, last year I sent an email to the Zoological Society of London. I began by explaining the story and apologising for it being so preposterous. The email continued:
I recently uncovered lot of documents detailing my grandfathers time on the SS Koursk- a steamship transporting goods from USSR to Britain which was operated by ARCOS during the 1920s. So, I have the Russian sailor part of the story but I don’t have the polar bear part. So, my question is. How would I find out whether the USSR gave London Zoo (or similar) a polar bear during the 1920s or 1930s? Is there any further information you could give me?
There might be no proof any of this happened. My dad told a lot of stories and this was one of the best. Wish I’d asked him more about it when he was alive.
The reply I received was remarkably unfazed as though they received requests like mine all the time. On reflection, I’m sure they do. They told me it would take a few days to research as the animal records weren’t kept in the Library and they needed to check with another department. A couple of weeks later I received the following:
Dear Alan,
I have searched our animal record cards to locate the polar bear that was shipped from the Soviet Union. There was only one polar bear which seemed a possibility, but I cannot be sure that it is the polar bear that you were told about. I have attached a photograph of the record card to this email.
So, on 30th September 1935 Captain Melenkhov and the crew of the SS Stalingrad presented London Zoo with a male polar bear called Mischa. In all probability this was the bear I was looking for. I managed to find an image of Mischa fairly easily. Standing upright in the Mappin Terrace enclosure. A huge beast. One you definitely wouldn’t want to get too close to. He looks fairly benign but then look at the size of those paws and imagine the strength behind them. You know how bears are. They can turn on you just like that. Much later Mischa became a father to the much more famous Brumas -the first baby polar bear to be successfully reared in Britain and a huge hit with the public. His image adorning a seemingly endless range of memorabilia. So, this was the polar bear part of the tale- whether I’d be able to find the truth regarding its journey to England though was another matter entirely.
The SS Stalingrad, was a cargo-passenger ship built for ice navigation making regular trips across the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic transporting goods back and forth between Russia and the United Kingdom. That means it was more likely to sail out from Vladivostok, Murmansk and Archangel rather than the Baltic port of Leningrad. During the Second World War, while it was part of a convoy carrying munitions from the UK to Russia via Reykjavik, it was sunk by a torpedo from a German U-boat. 21 lives were lost.
However, though our grandad had served on similar vessels in the past, by 1935, having recently become a father, he was rarely at sea. Did he make it onto the SS Stalingrad at all? My brother thinks that if he made this trip it was a one off. Possibly because he could be trusted & spoke English. After all, his sister was working in Moscow, and his father was a Comintern Agent. However, I think now it’s just as likely that Bill Stewart wasn’t on the crew. That maybe he just had friends on board and that he met up with them when they docked at Surrey. That he had nothing to do with trying to calm down a raging, Stalinist bear, blitzed on honey in the middle of the Baltic but that he heard all about it later. Or, of course, he may have made the whole thing up.
That first photograph I found of Mischa had lent a little bit of credence to the story and, as I put the whole thing aside for a few months wondering how to write about it, I just accepted that Russian sailors had stored an adult polar bear in the hold. There was something I’d missed on the card from London Zoo though. Next to the category ‘Habitat’ it said ‘Born in the Artic Circle in 1935’. I only noticed that, however, once I’d found another photograph of Mischa. This time on board the SS Stalingrad on its arrival in Britain that same year.
Of course, Mischa hadn’t been a raging beast crammed into the hold ready to burst out and attack the crew until it was overcome by a stupor brought on by its gargantuan consumption of nectar. In reality one of the crew had picked up an infant bear of considerably less terrifying stature somewhere around the Arctic Circle during the ship’s voyage. Whether it was an orphan or not I do not know but Mischa clearly became a kind of ship’s mascot and the cute little thing might have been able to give you a nasty nip but would have found smashing through a compartment door next to impossible. Evidently Captain Melenkhov wasn’t sure what should be done with it on arrival in England and so presenting it to London Zoo seemed as good an idea as any. The story wasn’t true. It was wholly exaggerated. It was nonsense.
And then I realised what the story was. And I realised why my dad came to be telling it to us just as dementia started taking hold. When Mischa arrived in London, dad was a little over two years old. The tale of the polar bear drunk on Siberian honey was simply a story told by our grandfather Bill to his son Robin. Bill hadn’t been there. He may have had only the slightest connection to the whole incident but he made it his own. It was told to enchant, to amuse and to delight. To bring the teller and the listener closer together. I remember recounting a similar story to my toddler at a visit to the Natural History Museum once as we filed past a row of stuffed bears. “Look- that’s the bear that stole Daddy’s hair,” I said, going on to invent a suitably outlandish tale which my child, now a teenager, still remembers. My dad’s story was better though and the care he took to tell it showed the care our grandad took in embellishing it in the first place and none of it is surprising as clearly we are all a ludicrously sentimental lot in our family.
When I realised the whole saga was just a story told by Bill to Robin I cried for a bit. And then I was ok.
Alan Stewart.
It is the 145th anniversary of Bob Stewart’s birth and to mark the occasion I’d like to present some photographs of an album commemorating Bob’s 70th birthday in 1947. The album was put together by his daughter Annie ‘Nan’ Caplan and contains photographs taken by Edith Tudor-Hart which have rarely been seen. Tudor-Hart was a documentary photographer in the 1930s who was recruited by the Soviets as a spy. Her nephew, Peter Stephan Jungk, directed a wonderful film all about her life called ‘Tracking Edith’ and I cannot recommend it enough. She is also the subject of Charlotte Philby’s book ‘Edith and Kim’ which should be out any day now. Apparently Bob has a walk on part.
The album contains many letters, cards and telegrams from figures central to British Communism and although most of the information they relay about Bob’s life and career is mainly well known I imagine this is the first time they have been put in the public domain. My brother and I also have similar albums from Bob’s 75th and his 90th birthdays and at some point we may donate all of these to the archives of the CPGB at the People’s History Museum in Manchester but we’d just like to hold on to them for a little longer.
The photographs were taken by my friend Jonathan Turner. He’s an excellent photographer who, when not helping a mate out, focuses on social documentary and portraiture. I am very grateful to him. Please have a look at his work on his website: http://www.jonathan-turner.com
Alan Stewart.
The 1921 census, which went online earlier this year, is likely to be an invaluable resource for anyone researching their family history. It has to be said it was fairly easy to find Bob Stewart’s whereabouts on the night it was taken – the 19th June, 1921. My great grandfather was in Cardiff. More specifically in HM Prison Cardiff doing three months hard labour. The relationship to head of the house made me laugh- ‘inmate’. Bob’s occupation is listed as ‘organiser’ and his employer is ‘Communist Party’. However, his place of work was noted as ‘no fixed place’ indicating he was spending much of his time this early on into the CPs existence travelling- something that would characterise the next thirty years. Once he’d got out of the clink of course.
He’d been sentenced to jail for making seditious speeches in Aberdare and Mountain Ash – the most diabolical comments being that miners were treated worse than German prisoners. The hard labour consisted of sewing pillowcases until a prison warder got him turning an old oak prison floor into handmade furniture for the warder’s home. At the end of his sentence Bob had been selected as the Parliamentary candidate for the Communist Party in the Caerphilly by-election – their very first candidate.
This experience is the subject of a highly entertaining chapter from Bob’s memoirs which I’ve reproduced below. Just a few notes on some of the people who make an appearance. Albert Inkpin was the first General Secretary of the Communist Party and Arthur McManus was the first chairman.
In 1921 I was attending the Party’s National Executive in London. It was close to May Day and McManus, who was booked to speak at a May Day meeting in South Wales, said he could not go and asked me if I would like to take his place. “Sure,” I said, “I have never been to South Wales and it will be a new experience.” As it turned out it was.
I went down by train to Aberdare but before reaching there the train stopped at a small station and along the platform came a group of fellows shouting, “Bob Stewart, Bob Stewart!” I stuck my head out of the window and said, “That’s me.” “Can you do a meeting for the Party in Mountain Ash tomorrow night?” they asked. “Yes, I’ll be there.” So, after the meeting in Aberdare I travelled to Mountain Ash. The meeting was in a cinema and was crowded out. As usual at the time, the “splits” were in the boxes taking notes of my speech, but this happened at all meetings so I ignored them. The meeting finished and the local fellows said they were very pleased with the attendance and the effect. The repercussions were then still unknown.
I returned to London, and on the following Saturday, 7th May 1921, came the police raid on the party offices at King Street, Covent Garden, when Inkpin the general secretary was arrested. The raid was made without a warrant, under the Emergency Regulations Act. It was carried out by Detective-Inspector Parker, acting under the instructions, so he said, of the Director for Public Prosecutions.
During the raid all personnel in the office were rounded up from their individual rooms and brought to the general office on the ground floor of the building. The rooms were ransacked and, while this was going on, the homes of the office workers, even those of the girl clerks, were being searched. The police authorities certainly put on all the trimmings to build the raid up into a first-class political scare.
When Inkpin came into the general office and he exploded at Parker for the unwarranted intrusion into private property. “I demand to see your warrant to search these premises,” he said. “I don’t need a warrant,” replied Parker. “I am acting under the Emergency Regulations.” Parker then started to question Inkpin about the publication and sale of the Communist Party pamphlet called The Statutes of the Communist International. “Who wrote the book?” asked Parker. “What do you mean who wrote it?” said Inkpin. “These are the Statutes adopted by the 2nd Congress of the Communist International.” “Where did the books come from?” persisted Parker. “They came from Moscow, from the Communist International,” replied Inkpin. During the interrogation Inkpin again protested to Parker about the manner in which the police were acting, forcing their way into all the rooms in the building, sorting out files of correspondence obviously with the intention of taking them away. But Parker brushed this aside and kept on asking questions about the pamphlet The Statutes of the Communist International. Inkpin continued to answer truthfully this was a record of the decisions of the Communist International which was sent by the International not only to Britain but to most countries throughout the world.
Now Detective-Inspector Parker might have been a good man at detecting crime, but he did not seem to have the elementary knowledge required to comprehend the simple working of an international body. Maybe, of course, he had had his instructions not to try to understand. Anyway, after fifteen minutes of this sham he stopped asking questions and started giving instructions. To Inkpin he said, “I am going to arrest you under the Emergency Regulations Act No. 19. I am further going to search the premises and take possession of anything I think fit under an order signed by the Chief of Police.” He then turned to another detective and said, “Mr Hole, here is the order,” and to “Inkpin, “Come with me.” “What, without a warrant?” said Inkpin. “None necessary,” was the reply and he turned to leave. It was then he spotted me standing in a corner trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, but obviously not succeeding. “Who is that man?” he barked. “That’s Mr Stewart,” said Inkpin. “Get his name and address, and the name and addresses of all the others.” And with that little lesson of how democracy works in this land of the free he turned, taking Inkpin with him, and disappeared out of the door.
The place was alive with police and plain-clothes men. I ran from room to room trying to salvage what I could, but the police ransacked the place, almost everything went, even to the paper and the stencils. There were a number of spare files of our paper Communist and I knew that McManus had some papers ‘filed’ away for safety. I said to the policemen who were carting all the material away for examination., “Here, take these away; they are only in the damned way here. You’ll be doing something useful then.” “We don’t need these,” was the reply, “we have files of them ourselves.” So that saved something. After the raid, in the evening, I went out to try and contact some of the Executive members. I went to the Corner House in the Strand and luckily, I bumped into a few of them and learned that there was to be a meeting at Bill Mellor’s house later to discuss what we could do under the circumstances. After the discussion, I had an argument with McManus because I said I thought that Mellor was deciding to leave us-to get out. McManus said I was a fool, but I was eventually proved right; William Mellor, despite all his thunder and aggressive revolutionary phrases, was afraid of being on the wrong side of the police authorities, and a short time after left the party.
After the meeting, I was sent to get a lawyer for Inkpin, to Torrington square, to see WH Thompson, a lawyer who was on the left. I found him in a strange way. I was ascending the stairs to his place when a young fellow came running past me. Suddenly, he stopped and said, “Jesus Christ! Bob Stewart!” “The latter’s right,” I replied. “What brings you here?” This fellow had been a conscientious objector in Wormwood Scrubs when I was there, so we wore the same old school tie. I explained the position. He worked for WH Thompson. He said, “He’s not here but I’ll tell you where to find him. He has gone to see his girl friend,” and he gave me the address. I found WH, explained the position, where Inkpin was- Snowhill Prison- and he assured me that I could leave everything to him. I returned to my hotel in Villiers Street, near the Strand, a good evening’s work done. As I entered two big fellows ‘took’ me, one on each side. “Your name Stewart, Robert Stewart?” one of them said. “Yes, a good Scottish name.” “Well, we want you, we have a warrant out for your arrest.” Naturally, I thought it was in connection with the raid on the party office, but as soon as I got to Cannon Row Police Station I discovered I was booked at the request of the Welsh police for speeches made in Aberdare and Mountain Ash. So, I was stuck in a cell, arrested for sedition. I was interrogated by an inspector, a very clever fellow, to his own way of thinking. “Ah! I know you,” he said. “I have heard you speaking in Dumbarton.” “Up on the rock?” I asked. “Sure, there was always a big crowd there.” There was never a meeting on Dumbarton Rock in all history, so I continued to kid him but he twigged it and finally closed up.
Next day I was taken to Wales, to the Abercynon Gaol where I rested the night, and the day after I went before the magistrate. He was an old fellow, sitting at his desk. “Your name Robert Stewart?” he asked. “Yes, but what’s going on?” I replied. “You’re in Court.” “What Court? Only you, me and a policeman?” “Yes, and you are remanded to the Assizes.” And that was the strangest court I was ever in, but then the Welsh do many things in strange ways. Back I went to the cell and the policeman said, “I want to take your fingerprints.” “Not mine, I am no criminal, I draw the line at that.” “We’ll see about that,” he said and went off but he did not return for the fingerprints.
In due course I was taken to the Assizes at Pontypridd. A bunch of snuffy magistrates, local publicans and others of that ilk. The prosecutor was a little fellow called Lloyd. The charges were seditious speeches. Little Lloyd had a real go. He built up a terrible case against me, and said I should be ashamed to call myself a British subject, I was an agitator coming into the district in troublesome times stirring up strife and hatred, saying the miners were being treated worse than German prisoners and that Jimmy Thomas was a traitor to the working class- which appeared to be sedition, I don’t know why. In passing I may add that the selfsame Mr Lloyd was some time later pinched for embezzlement , but I suppose that that would not trouble his loyalty to Britain. The witnesses said their piece. The local secretary, who was a canny lad named Foot, was very good. But the other party witness, Billy Picton, undid the good work. Billy was one of the aggressive type; good in an industrial struggle, but not much use in a court of law. Asked about my reference to miners being treated worse than German prisoners, he replied, “Well, it’s bloody true, isn’t it?” – not very helpful in a court in which the scales have already been loaded against you. In the long run the trial came to an end. The magistrate said a lot of wise words, then asked if there was anything known about a past record. Innocent like, of course. Then out came the dossier. Tried, court-martialled; tried, court-martialled, on and on. When he finished reading out the record, I looked at him and said quietly, “A good record.” The magistrate said that this sort of thing must not be allowed to continue, it would not continue, and so on. The sentence would have to be appropriate to the offence. I would be made an example. The sentence was three months’ hard labour. Three months’ hard. You can do that, as the old lags say, on the door knob.
Well, there I was inside again. In Cardiff Gaol. Interesting, because Cardiff being a big seaport the gaol is very cosmopolitan- men from all nationalities are inside and going around the ring at exercise you saw all colours and all kinds of men. For the first three days I sat sewing a pillow case. That was my hard labour, putting in stitches and pulling them out again. Of course, reading the Bible in between. This was the compulsory reading, but a very valuable book for left wing propagandists. One day the artisan warder came to see me. “What the hell are you sewing pillowcases for?” he demanded. “You’re a carpenter, aren’t you?” I told him what I thought about his pillowcases, his prison and his magistrates, but he only laughed. He turned out to be a good sort. He didn’t like clergymen and that was an instant bond between us. The prison chaplain at Cardiff and I could not get on. Charlie Chaplin we called him. This was because of the way he walked, not because of his humour. One day in my cell he said to me, “Mr Stewart, in cases of your kind, it is the wives and children I am sorry for.” I said, “Don’t you try telling my wife you are sorry for her, because if you do you will end up being sorry for yourself.”
The artisan warder stopped the pillowcases lark and took me down to the workshop. There was method in this because part of the prison was being demolished and an old oak floor was being scrapped. “Can you do anything with this, Jock?” he asked me, showing me a bit of the wood. It was a good bit of oak. “You could make some nice things with that,” I said. And I did- bookcases, hallstands, cupboards, small stools and many other pieces of oak furniture found their way into the warder’s home from the floor of the Old Cardiff Gaol. I am quite sure the government got none of it.
One day the warder gave me a shout when I was working. “Come here, Jock, I have a job for you.” So, I picked up my tools. “No, no,” he said, “all you need is an oil can. We’re going round to the execution chamber to oil the joints of the hanging apparatus.” Two men, sentenced to death for murder, were to be hanged the next day. “I’ll not oil your bloody hanging apparatus.” “What! You not in favour of hanging?” “Oh yes I would hand prison warders at a bob a time,” I said; “the trouble is they usually hang the wrong people.” “Well come and see how it works,” he said. So off we went to the execution chamber. He oiled the necessary places then gave me a demonstration of the proper way to operate it by pulling the lever and pointing to the drop. He seemed to take delight in it.
One day towards the end of my term, in came Jock Wilson, the Welsh Party Organiser, to see me; well, really to tell me something- that I had become a parliamentary candidate because Alfred Irons, the MP, had died. A by-election was pending at Caerphilly and the party had decided to contest their first ever parliamentary election as a party and I had been chosen as the candidate. Well, anyway, being in gaol, I couldn’t speak back. There had been quite a barney with the prison authorities. A report in The Communist appeared as follows:
We had expected difficulties to be put in the way of Robert Stewart’s Candidature in the Caerphilly mining constituency. They have already begun, and the Prison Governor has taken a hand. We wished to know when Stewart would be released for the purpose of the election campaign.
The party had sent a letter to the Governor of Cardiff Gaol in the following terms:
Dear Sir,
I should be very much obliged if you would kindly let me know on what date Robert Stewart, the National Organiser of the Communist Party, whom we understand to be present in Cardiff Gaol, will be released.
Yours faithfully
(signed) Fred H. Peat, acting secretary
Back came the reply:
HM Prison,
Cardiff
23rd July, 1921
In reply to your letter of inquiry it is regretted that the information asked for cannot be given.
I am your obedient servant
(signed) HJ Perwin
One night before the end of my time I was pleasantly surprised when the head warder came and asked if I would like to be released a day early. “Fine,” I said. But really the authorities were afraid of a demonstration, because when I had been taken from Pontypridd to Cardiff Gaol to start my sentence there was a bus load of policemen in the front and a bus load of policemen behind all the way. Certainly a good few tons of policemen to hold mine nine stones of communism. No doubt they were also taking no chances when I was leaving.
Out of the gaol, I went to Alf Cook’s house to discuss the political situation, and I had just arrived when a telegram was delivered from Moscow informing us of the death of Bill Hewlett in a monorail accident in Russia. It had been a bad accident and Jim Stewart of Lochgelly was also injured. So, I had the sad task of making arrangements for someone to break the news to Mrs Hewlett.
Breaking the Fetters 