Memoirs – Breaking the Fetters

Breaking the Fetters Chapter 26: Looking Forward.

Portrait of Bob Stewart taken by Edith Tudor-Hart.

Oft in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound us,
Fond memories bring the light,
Of other days around us.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

At the Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held in Moscow in 1961, I met among others an old man whom I discovered was one of Lenin’s oldest companions, even in the days before the Russian Communist Party was formed. We had a long discussion about politics past and present, and the Communist Parties past and present, with particular emphasis on the difficulties of the days long since gone; and naturally, as old people do, we discussed ages. Petrov, the man with whom I was having the discussion, was then eighty-seven years, and I eighty-four years. In all this welter of reminiscence I said to Petrov, “We must meet at the dawn of Communism.” “All right,” he replied. “We shall meet in Moscow in 1980.” So that’s a date, though I have had doubts of whether Petrov and I will be able to keep it. However, I heard Petrov speak on a radio programme from Moscow in April 1966 and my spirits revived. I certainly have no intention of throwing in life’s sponge at this interesting stage in world politics and so the meeting may yet take place.

Much more certain than the meeting between Petrov and myself is the dawn of communism. In all my political life, since the early days of work in the Dundee jute mills, through all the vicissitudes of political, trade union and social work, I have never lost my faith in the people to change the economic and political system which holds back progress to a full and happy life. Of course there have been the ups and downs. That is life, and it is part of political life as well. But as I look back with a mature eye to the days of the early struggles of the Communist Party, I can see the giant strides that have been taken in Britain.

One of our first tasks on the formation of the party was to get clear what revolution meant. Our political enemies naturally pictured the revolution as a bloody civil war, as a destructive act, neglecting entirely the aim of the revolution, which is to transfer political power from the capitalist class to the working class. It is that transfer of power which constitutes revolution, whether it is accompanied by civil war as it was in Russia and China, or in a different set of circumstances, as it happened in Eastern Europe after the Second World War. In Britain and the countries of Western Europe it seems reasonably certain it will be a peaceful revolution achieved within the present parliamentary system, but changing Parliament from a showpiece into a workshop, legislating in the interests of the people.

We explained our main aim, the transfer of political power, patiently in speech and print; and gradually it became understood if not always accepted. Our second trouble in the early days was to get our own people to accept the idea that revolution in one country cannot be just a carbon copy of revolution in another country. In the early days it was common to find at our meetings five Russian posters to each British poster. Exaggerations took place and in some districts the party looked more Russian than British. There was a Smolny Institute in Sheffield. All this was very well intentioned but certainly wrong in the field of British political work. We soon learned that the major part of our policy and work must be for our own country-which does not exclude, nor can it, the greatest possible interest in the countries outside Britain, and in particular the greatest interest in what was then the only socialist country in the world, Russia. Even to this day there are people who talk of the Communist Party as a foreign or Russian party. Well, this was also said of the early socialist movement. It was falsely accused of being a German importation.

In its forty-six years of existence the Communist Party in Britain, in addition to being effective, active and militant in the workshops, has secured a large following of workers who respect it even if many of them, as yet, have not joined. The party has had great success in education for scientific socialism, in all aspects of Marxist philosophy. In its daily news-paper, the Morning Star (for many years the Daily Worker), in its weekly and monthly publications, in many thousands of pamphlets and books, there has been the necessary explanation of the political events which has been read, appreciated and discussed by millions of people. In the times when the labour movement was in retreat, the political discussion and action arising from these political explanations held the movement together and laid the basis for future advance. It may be idle to speculate where the British socialist movement would have finally landed if it had not been for the work of the Communist Party, but it is a fact of life that many times in the last forty-six years, in government and out of it, the Labour Party has moved far away, very far away, from socialist principle and practice. The criticism of the work of the labour movement by the Communists has many times assisted in bringing the movement back to policy and practice that represented the interests of the working class and condemned capitalism.

This condemnation of the capitalist system is at the centre of working-class politics. Condemnation is needed, not because the individual boss is bad, or a group of bosses treat their workers badly, although this frequently happens. We don’t object to capitalists as good husbands to their wives and good fathers to their children. What we object to is the miserable way they make their living, by exploiting the workers, by making profit out of the labour of the workers. The capitalists are parasitical, yet they get a much better living than the workers. The aim of the Communists in politics is to end capitalism and the capitalists’ parasitical existence. The Communists take a Marxist scientific view of events. We don’t live in the clouds, although it was a member of the Communist Party who first soared into space and it is the Soviet Union which leads the world in space exploration.

We know how and why capitalism came into existence. It was not born overnight. It had to destroy the handicaps and barriers to its progress from the reactionary feudal system which it superseded, and with quite a bloody red hand. There was no nicety about the emergence of capitalism. In many countries kings literally lost their heads. The British capitalists conveniently forgot about King Charles being beheaded when Russian capitalism was overthrown, and they condemned the killing of the Tsar. They forgot they themselves had set an example.

The Communists know that capitalism is not an everlasting system, and that just as it displaced feudalism and mercantilism in order to develop the production processes and meet the needs of the people, so now is socialism necessary to break the capitalist stranglehold on production to meet the needs of the present day. Feudalism became a fetter on production and the capitalist system took the fetter off. Now the people will end the capitalist system which has become a barrier to developing production. Socialism must come to provide a better and more scientific system in which the means of production will be owned by the community and work will become a virtue and not a drudge.

In the early days of the party we had to argue from theory alone. We have now in the course of history reached a stage when theory has become practice. As Lenin said, “Theory is grey but the tree of life is green.” So the green tree is growing, and now in the Soviet Union and China and in the other socialist countries there is the evolution of new industrial techniques to meet the requirements of the twentieth century, and the twenty-first which is not so far away. It was easy in the early days for the capitalists and the Labour leaders to sneer at the size of the Communist Party, to jeer at our utopianism, but great developments have taken place and are continuing to take place in the socialist countries. The opponents of socialism can’t jeer away a new town, vast new industrial automated plants, great new industrial regions, some of which produce more than the entire production of some of the advanced capitalist countries.

For example, the British or United States railwaymen can’t say to the Russian railwaymen “Wait till you catch up with us”, because the Russian railways are now far in advance in all modern railway techniques. This is not because the Russian railwaymen are born better, but because their industry is more modern and because socialist practice in the Soviet Union has electrified more railways than has all the capitalist world put together.

People all over the world can see, if they want to see, the fundamental difference between socialist industry and capitalist industry. In the socialist states the trade union office is in its rightful place, inside the factory, not pleading for a bigger share of the cake, but as an essential part of the running of the factory and taking part in every discussion and decision on production and labour conditions. There are no brass hats in the factory who have the last word on what is to happen to wage increases and hours of labour. In the socialist states the day of the brass hats is over and their obstructing power flung into the dustbin of history.

In 1917 there were 300,000 Communists in Russia. Today there are 12,000,000. Twelve million devoted scientific workers can make a tremendous productive difference in an old economy. As they lead the Russian workers in operating the new modern industrial techniques in the vast new industrial plants, great new production targets are set and broken, set and broken again and again. Production is rising to vast new heights.

I remember vividly my first journey to Russia in 1923, the tremendous thrill I experienced when I crossed the frontier. “Ours!” I said, “a country which the workers own and control.” On that first trip from Riga to Moscow I shared a compartment with Vassili Kolarov, his wife and two young sons. Kolarov, who became head of the People’s Republic in Bulgaria, was the bosom companion of Georgi Dimitrov with whom he worked for many years, sharing the disappointments of the stagnant periods and the joys of the revolutionary periods. Georgi Dimitrov of course became famous after the Reichstag fire trial in Hitler Germany, but at that time, in 1923, he was just “one of the boys” with whom I later had the pleasure of working.

Looking back on the Russia of my first visit, how right I was to be immensely proud of entering a country which was owned and controlled by the workers, in which capitalism had been overthrown! How right I was in my judgment that this land of socialism would transform the lives of the people and in doing so set an example to the workers all over the world!

It is not a question of rivalry between country and country. Progress does not rest on the character of persons or nations. It is a question of science being applied to the most important thing that human beings engage in, that is making a living, and in our day making a living means giant production for giant populations, the elimination of hard labour, using the machine to release the workers from hard toil and to reduce the hours of labour and give the workers more and more leisure time. There are so many things to do, so many things to learn, that no person lives long enough to do and learn even a fraction of them, even the cleverest of us, and most of us are not too clever. At the age of ninety years there are many things I still want to do, still want to learn to do.

On looking back over the many years of work of the British Communist Party we should remember the positive as well as the negative features. Never at any time did we admit the hill was too steep or the mountain too high to climb. Our attitude has always been “How can we overcome?” and by our work we have overcome the one-time hostility of many millions of people who, while in open discussion they will not say too much, nevertheless in private conversation will admit how impressed they are with the work of the Communists and the Communist Party. Millions of people now understand perfectly well that the Communists are not the “troublemakers” the capitalist press, the T.V. and the radio would like to brand them, but honest, sincere people who work for a fundamental political change. This has been a long process.

In the early twenties the Communist Party fought with the miners, tried to mobilise the entire labour movement to the side of the miners. The Communists gave everything they had in support of A. J. Cook in his fight for “Not a minute on the day–Not a penny off the pay’. It was the Communist Party who expelled Bob Williams from their ranks because of the part he played in destroying the triple alliance of miners, railway and transport workers.

In the General Strike we knew more of what was happening than the General Council of the T.U.C. We did not spend our valuable time playing football matches with the police. We gave the striking workers leadership as their militancy developed. This contrasted with the T.U.C. leaders who got diarrhea and went chasing round corners following Lord Samuel and looking for a way to sell out.

After the strike it was the Communist Party who organised to reform the ranks of the working class and the unions for the political and industrial struggles of the 1930s. In the fight against the sell-out of the Labour Government by Ramsay McDonald and his associates, and against the anti-working-class legislation of the National Government that followed, the Communists were always part of the vanguard.

Then came the fight against fascism. I remember well the formation of the British battalion of the International Brigade which went to fight fascism in Spain. At first many ordinary Labour people were hostile to the idea, but as the struggle against fascism deepened and the fight for Spanish democracy against Franco developed, so did the understanding of the necessity of the fight against fascism grow. The International Brigade grew in popularity, and when they were repatriated from Spain under a decision of the United Nations I remember the amazing scenes at Victoria Station in London. Tens of thousands of people filled the station and crowded the surrounding streets to welcome the British soldiers home. Everyone felt that the Brigade had honoured Britain by their fight against fascism and had upheld the good name of the British labour movement.

In the struggle decisive changes take place in people’s thinking, and this leads to further action. The Communists said the war that ravaged Spain would come to Britain if rapacious fascism were allowed to proceed unchecked. We were right, not because we were good astrologers or prophets, but because we were Marxists and could read events better than other political parties.

In my many decades of work I have met, discussed with, worked with, and become friends with some of the finest people who ever breathed. Men and women whose main aim in life was to serve mankind. Men and women who came from many nations and whose skins were of different colours but whose aim in life was the highest of all: to serve. Many of these people are found in the pages of this book. Many younger than myself have died, leaving their mark on politics and political parties. Some of them greatly influenced my thinking and I want to write of a few of them who made a decisive impact on British political life. Not in order of merit: that would be quite impossible because they all had merits of different degrees, and in any case my prejudice, if I have one, favours the men and women who come from the workshops, a bias not entirely separated from my experience of life.

A man who influenced masses of people in Britain was Harry Pollitt, for many years the General Secretary of the Communist Party. An outstanding politician, Harry was virtually born in the working-class movement. His home was a socialist organising agency. His mother was a clear-thinking and capable socialist, and from boyhood Harry was forever on the stump. No doubt this early training was invaluable, because he developed into one of the finest orators in the British political movement. This fact was widely acknowledged by his bitterest political enemies, and remember he spoke from platforms in the days of great orators in other parties, Winston Churchill and Aneurin Bevan to mention only two.

But Pollitt was not only a very fine speaker. He had organising qualities few possessed. Always for Harry the question was “What is to be done?” Not only did he pose the question but he worked on it and tried to answer it. He applied himself diligently to everything he did and was extremely careful in the preparation of his speeches. This stood Harry in good stead when the shorthand notes of the reporting policeman would be put against his own notes in the Court cases in which he became involved. One thing Harry Pollitt proved beyond all doubt. The speaker who likes to speak has every chance to become a good speaker. Many times I have tired listening to speakers telling me how difficult it was for them to speak. Well, if they found it difficult to speak no doubt their listeners would find it more difficult to listen. The good speaker is one who feels he has something to say, a message to give. Anyone who heard Harry Pollitt in any meeting, big or small, found his speech lucid, powerful and sincere. While speaking of the needs of the present Harry could always paint a picture of how socialism could be won and the joy it would be for the working class. That was his great achievement. In both speech and organisation he brought many thousands into the struggle for socialism in Britain and many into the membership of the Communist Party.

Another man who loved to speak, and who was sometimes impatient of others speaking, was Willie Gallacher. He was an experienced workshop man who, in the period of the First World War, by his forthright stand against sectarianism, did much to weld together the famous shop stewards’ industrial movement which played such an effective role in Glasgow and many of the great industrial centres such as London, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham and other cities. Every. where the name of Gallacher was known as a working-class leader in the industrial and political movement. He was a man without self-interest whose life was devoted to the working-class movement and who made an unrivalled contribution to the work of the British Communist Party.

Internationally Gallacher became a well-known figure. When he met Lenin, he complained because Lenin, while praising his courage, attacked his political ideas. Gallacher told Lenin that he (Gallacher) was an old hand at the game of politics. Lenin’s justified criticism of Gallacher was published in that internationally famous book Left-Wing Communism–an Infantile Disorder. This book was sorely needed in the early 1920s when the young Communist Parties were making so many fundamental political errors. Because of Lenin’s advice, Gallacher discarded his anti-parliamentism and helped many others to do so. The negative attitude that a good socialist could not remain good if he went into parliament was strongly held in the twenties.

One very good characteristic of Gallacher’s was his ability to admit to being wrong on occasions, a characteristic not readily shared by a few of the leading Communists. Gallacher’s parliamentary career stands out as an example to those who believe that Members of Parliament can remain true to socialist principles and fight for them in Parliament. When he first entered Westminster he was portrayed as a revolutionary who wanted the streets to flow with blood. But he proved in his fifteen years in the House of Commons that he was a first-class parliamentarian. In fact he was one of the few who knew the rules of the House sufficiently well to break them and get away with it. His first thought in Parliament during any business before the House was: Will the working class gain? On that he took his stand, and his hundreds of speeches recorded in Hansard from 1935 till 1950 are essential reading for any serious student of British political history.

Harry Pollitt and Willie Gallacher are dead. Many others who gave all their life for the advancement of the working class are also dead. Albert Inkpin, Arthur McManus, Tom Bell, Tommy Jackson, big Jock McBain, the names are countless. All of them great working-class politicians and great companions in the day-to-day struggle.

There are a number like myself who are blessed with long life and are still working hard. R. Palme Dutt was one of my early mentors and mentor to many leading Communists. He comes from a remarkable family of highly educated people and I doubt if anywhere in the world, certainly not in Britain, one could find a political journalist who has made such a regular, consistent contribution to the elucidation of British political problems, particularly in relation to the colonial and ex-colonial countries. There is also that wee pawky Scotsman John Ross Campbell, familiarly known as J.R.C., who was in the early days editor of the Glasgow Worker and became, many years later, editor of the Daily Worker. He is one of the best working-class politicians and economists Scotland has ever produced. His speech is remarkably clear, witty and always down to earth. In those early days his workshop notes in the Glasgow Worker had a very wide readership.

And so I could go on, lists and lists of names, industrial and professional, all of whom made big political contributions to the struggle for socialism. One thing above all these older leading Communists understood was the fundamental Marxist principle: “That which is coming into being and growing is more powerful than that which is ascendant but is already dying away.”

The leading Communists of the past educated, trained and prepared the many thousands of Communists of the present who by their diligent and successful work have been elected to leading positions in the labour movement. This re-creation on an ever increasing scale is the guarantee that the British people will take the road to socialism.

The great world political argument rages. For Socialism. For Capitalism. The Communists understand that the aim of a modern political party must be to end capitalism. Not to keep it on its feet to totter around preventing the introduction of dynamic socialism. Not to agree to sacrifice by the workers in the interests of the bosses, but to end capitalism for all time. The Communists by their scientific analysis know that socialism will finally be victorious, and while in the Western capitalist countries the capitalist fetters may bind the hands of the workers for a few years yet, without doubt the tools are ready, well and truly sharpened to break the bonds.

In little more than a decade the call will change. Then it will be “For Communism!” I am certain, positively certain, that the world will see the dawn of communism, and I will frankly admit, despite having had more than my three-score years and ten, and a full and exciting life, that I hope, fervently hope, I shall be able to accept the invitation of my good comrade Petrov and be there in Moscow to see the Dawn. In any case, whether or not I live till 1980 or sign off sooner, as William Morris wrote:

“The dawn and the day are coming

And forth our banners go.”

Breaking the Fetters Chapter 21: Ireland.

On my return from Moscow I was sent to Ireland to work. At that time, in 1924, there was no Communist Party in Ireland, although since its inception the British Communist Party had given direct assistance to the Irish revolutionaries. After the Easter Rising of April 1916, there had followed turbulent years of working-class struggle. The Government of Ireland Bill was piloted through Parliament in the autumn of 1920. It provided for the partition of Ireland, with both North and South having a Parliament with restricted powers, subordinate to Westminster. There was a state of war until the summer of 1921, followed by six months of bargaining and intrigue, which ended in the offer of fiscal independence for the twenty-six counties of the South. The handing over of power to the provisional government was accompanied by brutal economic oppression and wage reductions, often amounting to one-third. There was a deep economic crisis and strikes were widespread.

It was clear that the political and economic conditions in Ireland necessitated a Marxist party with a solid basis in the Irish trade union movement. My work was to see how this necessity could be achieved. I was glad of this opportunity because I had met Jim Connolly in 1913 and I was also well known among the Irish for my work in Dundee.

Big Jim Larkin was then the best known trade union leader in Ireland and headed the biggest and most militant trade union, the Transport and General Workers Union; and naturally any hope of success in my task rested on my ability to interest Larkin in the formation of a Marxist party.

Jim Larkin will always be revered as one of the great line of Irish rebels whose names will never be forgotten in the history of the Irish working class. As a very young man he was already in the leadership of many industrial struggles in both Northern and Southern Ireland and in 1909 at the age of thirty-two he founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. He said at the time that the total assets were two chairs, a table, a candle and an empty bottle to hold the candle, and a potential membership drawn from the Dublin carters who had just concluded a strike. By hard, patient and militant work he built the union into a real fighting organisation. In 1911 he launched a newspaper called the Irish Worker which sold 95,000 copies weekly and which was in itself a great trade union organiser and a splendid forum for left political opinion.

In 1914 Larkin went to the United States, as he said to interest the American Irish in the Irish at home, but he was soon at work in the United States trade union movement. His militant trade union principles and his left political opinions got him into trouble with the authorities. He was arrested and charged with “criminal anarchy” under a law which proscribed “the advocacy of force and violence”. He was tried in New York and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. He did four years in the prisons of the United States and in 1923 he was released from Sing Sing by governor Al Smith, who at the time said: “Larkin has suffered enough for his beliefs.”

On his release he came back to Britain, where he had a great welcome when he arrived at Southampton. Many people, including Bill Gallacher, were at the docks to welcome him back home.

I spent months working with Larkin in the attempt to found a Marxist party in Ireland. He was, like myself, a total abstainer and one of his hates he had many-was strong drink. One of his first acts when he became a trade union official was to stop the then prevalent practice of paying the dockers their wages in public houses. He was a professed Marxist and fully supported the Soviet Union.

Working with Larkin and the other Marxists, both in Dublin and in the country districts, I soon found that one of my greatest difficulties was to keep the peace among our own people. Larkin was the biggest problem because he always personalised his politics. He would denounce this scoundrel, that scoundrel, in fact almost everyone in Ireland was a scoundrel. I think his experiences in the gaols in the United States may have had something to do with this attitude, but it certainly was anything but helpful in the political position we were in at that time in Ireland.

All the time I was in Dublin I lived with Larkin and his sister Delia and his brother Peter, who were political personalities in their own right. Peter had been a leader in the trade union movement in Australia and had done time in the Australian jails for fighting for the workers’ right to organise. But despite their similarity of political beliefs there were family squabbles. Jim did not speak to Delia and Delia did not speak to Jim, so they had to talk to each other through Peter. When Peter was missing I was used as the go-between. It was a dreadful position for grown-up people to create, particularly when to make any political headway friendship and comradely tolerance were an absolute necessity.

The house we lived in at Gardiner Street had a very large living-room. During the day and in the evening all kinds of people kept coming and going. It was a clearing house for all problems political and economic or even purely domestic. As people came and went there were no introductions so that you had not the faintest idea whom you were speaking to, or anything about them, and yet you were expected to engage in serious discussion and to give your opinion on the subject.

At that time in Ireland I knew it was much safer to keep certain discussions and opinions to the circle of people whom you knew and understood. In all this welter of coming and going, discussion and argument, Big Jim would sit in his easy chair talking to everyone, butting in the conversation and lighting match after match trying to get his pipe going, so that after a while he was entirely surrounded by burnt matches. It certainly was an odd scene looking round the circle. It was in this room that I had my first discussion with Sean O’Casey, the Irish poet and playwright, but I did not know who he was then. O’Casey used to say of Jim that it was his ideal to see workers with a loaf of bread under their arms and a bunch of flowers in their hands.

However, these were but small difficulties, easily got over in a day’s work.

I got on well with Larkin and I was one of the few men he really trusted politically. Lenin said of Larkin, “His remarkable oratorical gifts and seething Irish energy performed miracles among the Irish workers.” That was justified. He was a powerful and popular speaker, and every weekend we were out in the country or in a Dublin hall speaking at meetings and selling the Irish Worker. The paper had a big sale because there was usually something sensational in its pages. Larkin was continually in trouble defending himself against libel actions in the Courts. The Court verdicts were always against him and his debts piled up. But, of course, it brought huge crowds to the meetings and sold the paper.

The aim of the group I was working with was to plan a political campaign leading to and culminating in the formation of an Irish Marxist party. In Ireland at that time politics took a wide sweep. Poverty in some places was desperate, and it was necessary not only to recognise this politically but to do something about it. So we were constantly engaged in relief work. But a special more urgent relief became necessary. Flooding took place in Donegal and we placed part of our organisation on this relief work. I got together a three-woman team to take charge of the work: Mother Despard, Countess Markievicz and Helen Crawfurd from Scotland.

Countess Markievicz, Mother Despard and Helen Crawfurd

These were three remarkable women. Countess Markievicz was one of the famous Booth sisters, daughter of Sir Henry William Gore-Booth, a family of the Sligo aristocracy. In 1900 she married a Polish count, Casimir de Markievicz, but despite her background and marriage she was a revolutionary in politics. She took part in the Dublin rebellion in 1916, and was sentenced to death, which was subsequently commuted to penal servitude for life. She was released from prison in 1917. She was M.P. for St. Patrick’s, Dublin, 1918-21; M.P. for Dublin City, 1921-22; and re-elected for the Irish Free State in 1923, being the first woman elected to the Dail. Mother (Charlotte) Despard was one of the leaders of the British suffragette movement and without doubt one of the ablest women politicians of this century. Her work in the Women’s Labour League, the suffragette movement in defence of women’s rights, and her work in the care and needs of children, was outstanding by any standard. She was highly intelligent and an able organiser. Helen Crawfurd was a foundation member of the British Communist Party, a Scotswoman who was always in the thick of political struggle and one of the finest women politicians I ever worked with.

These three women formed a wonderful trio. With entirely different backgrounds they had worked miracles in the struggles for women’s rights, yet it took the flood relief in Ireland to bring them together. They organised relief in the form of food, clothes and household goods from Britain and the continent, and even made trips to America to get relief from there. I remember making a trip to Donegal myself during this period, and in doing so I learned a valuable political lesson about working in the Irish countryside. In Ireland at that period you couldn’t give anything away without a priest. In these small towns, even though the people were in really desperate straits, you needed a priest with you before they would accept relief goods. The people, of course, showed their gratitude and goodwill to all who did the relief work, but if the priest was not there it was very difficult indeed.

Very likely because of such lessons I have a healthy regard for priests.

During this relief campaign I met Father Flannigan. He was a hard worker and spoke at many meetings with Larkin and myself. He used to say to me, “Bob, your Lenin was a great Christian and should have spent his life preaching the Christian doctrine.” Naturally I tried to refute this and convince Father Flannigan that he was a Marxist and should join the Communist Party. He never did, but he worked miracles on the relief work and gave great assistance in building relief and welfare organisation.

I well remember another Irish Catholic priest in the same mould. In the late nineteen-twenties I was again in Ireland trying to organise a peasant delegation to visit a Congress in Berlin. To do this I sought the assistance of Peador O’Donnell. I knew Peador O’Donnell well: he was a member of the IRA and a staunch republican. He was also a famous author and wrote many novels, including The Gates Flew Open, being his experiences in the Irish prisons. I managed to interest Peador O’Donnell in the sending of the peasant delegation and we went to Galway to see what could be done. He was well known to the local councillors and prominent citizens, so we organised a meeting on a Saturday evening, which was very successful, in fact too successful, the drinking and discussion going on well into the Sunday morning. I remember the hotel keeper coming into the meeting with an emphatic protest that we must finish, because he said: “Never in my hotel have people been awake at two o’clock on a Sunday morning.” Before we retired Peador O’Donnell said to me, “Bob, I am going to Mass in the morning and if you come along I will introduce you to a rebellious priest if ever there was one.” Well, that coming from what I considered was a real rebel was something that intrigued me, so I inquired: “Who is this fellow?” “His name is Father Fahy and he has been expelled to the country for battering a bailiff who took an old woman’s cow to pay for her debts.” “I think I will come to the Mass,” I replied. Next morning we drove in a jaunting car to a very small village where we met Father Fahy. As we entered the room he was putting on his robes and his back was to us. “Father Fahy,” said Peador O’Donnell, “I have brought a man who has no soul to save.” “Ah well,” was the reply, “it will save him a great deal of trouble.” Then turning round he said, “But I know this man. I saw him often in Dundee when I was there. He is a great speaker.” “Ah,” I said, “you are Father Fahy of St. Andrew’s Cathedral.”

There was a famous Dundee story of Father Fahy. During the 1914-18 war (I was in jail at the time, but the story was well known) a number of soldiers from the Black Watch, Irishmen by birth, came to St. Andrew’s Cathedral for Mass from Father Fahy. However, along with the Mass he gave them a severe lecture, telling them they should be ashamed of themselves serving in the British imperial army, adding they should be patriotic Irishmen and go home to fight for Ireland. One of the soldiers reported the incident and Father Fahy was carpeted.

Not having a soul to save we did not waste time on Mass, but we got to talking over old times in Dundee. Politics and elections were discussed. “Well,” said Father Fahy, “Scrymgeour can thank the Catholic Church for his becoming an M.P.” Then he went on to tell me that in the 1922 election the organised Catholics came to the conclusion that Churchill did not stand a chance of retaining the Dundee seat. With two votes to be cast the three most likely to get them were Scrymgeour, prohibitionist, Morel, Labour, and Gallacher, Communist. “Morel as the official Labour candidate was certain to win,” said Father Fahy, “so we Catholics decided to give our second vote to Scrymgeour instead of Gallacher.” The Catholic voters then in Dundee were nearly 50 per cent of the total electorate. A glance at the election result of 1920 will show Father Fahy was right. Prohibitionism and Catholicism have little in common, if anything. But the Catholic vote, although be it said some Catholics did vote for Gallacher, certainly made Scrymgeour the Member of Parliament.

But to return to the position in Ireland in 1924. With the tremendous political campaigning and the prodigious relief and welfare work we got a good political footing in many Irish counties, but most important and best of all in Dublin. We decided the time was opportune to launch the call for the formation of a mass Irish Marxist party.

After much deliberation and argument we drew up a manifesto and organised a mass demonstration in the Mansion House. It was essential to get Larkin to sign the manifesto and I discussed this with him many times, always with the same result. “All right, Bob,” he would say, “I am thinking about it. What are you worrying about? I will likely sign it.” And he went about with the manifesto in his pocket for days but it was never signed.

The demonstration in the Mansion House was one of the best ever held in Dublin. The hall was packed to capacity, with hundreds standing in the aisles and the corners. Over two hundred people applied to join the new party. All we needed for a successful launching of the party was Larkin’s acceptance of the manifesto. But this he refused. My own opinion is that Big Jim would never accept the democracy of a disciplined Marxist party. He always had to be in the centre of the stage all the time, and so to join a party where the emphasis is put on collective work was not for him. Shortly after this I left Ireland with the feeling that a great political opportunity had been lost. In 1924 the political situation in Ireland was ripe for the formation of a Marxist party based on the Irish workers’ organisations, principally the trade unions. Larkin’s refusal to play his part in the creation of such a party greatly weakened the fight. The result was that much of the good work done over the years preceding 1924 ran into sand and failed to bear fruit.

Breaking the Fetters Chapter 25: The Right Wing Labour Leaders Sell Out.

Early in the summer of 1931 I went to Northern Ireland, to Belfast, along with Bill Joss of Glasgow, a man who knew the “Irish question” from A to Z and from Z back to A again. I remember him giving the Irish some lectures on Ireland and Irish history, both political and economic, that left them speechless and if you can do that to an Irish audience you are a master of your subject. Although their mouths were shut, many eyes were opened.

The Irish Workers’ League (the Marxist party) had its main basis in Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Waterford, but was finding it difficult to get a trade union basis in Belfast. Bill Joss and I were there to try and help with this problem. We were no longer working with Larkin but with Sean Nolan and a number of the local members.

The republican movement was quite strong in Belfast and Dublin, and I thought it right and necessary to try and work closely with them. Their politics were quite progressive and most of them detested the booze, so for me at least there was this added bond of unity.

We held our meetings on the Customs House steps and they were very rowdy; many a donnybrook took place. During our meetings the place was alive with police trying to keep order and, I must admit, on occasions trying to keep the crowd from “getting at” the speaker usually me. Our opponents had another way of stopping us speaking. They would bring out the band with the big drum and stop in front of the meeting place, playing at top pitch. In this field of competition I could never compete and I never found a public speaker who could. On such occasions we packed up and then came back later when the band had blown themselves out or had gone for a drink.

Some time after I had left Ireland, Harry Pollitt told me of a chat he had had with the Chief Constable of Belfast. The Chief asked him, “Where is that flat-nosed bugger Stewart? The trouble I had with that man! He spoke for hours and hours at the Customs House steps and my young policemen got fed up waiting for his meetings to finish. He insulted the police. He insulted the Irish authorities. He insulted everybody in Ireland.”

The last rebuke was wrong, the rest correct. I have done a bit of insulting in my time, but that’s permissible when dealing with political enemies who insult the working class every day of their lives. I remember one meeting at the Customs House steps. The news broke that there were to be cuts in wages and unemployment benefits. This meant a big cut in policemen’s wages as well. I couldn’t resist a dig at that. With dozens of police around, I said, “Here they are, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, big, strong, intelligent, known throughout the world as the wildest and bravest men in any fighting force the Government says their wages are to be reduced by 10 per cent and not one of them gives a whistle.” I thought that would have caused a riot, but no, the audience burst into laughter and a few of the policemen even joined in. That’s what makes Ireland such a bloody nice place to work in. You never know what’s around the corner.

In the late summer of 1931 the Labour government was running into trouble and it looked certain that a general election was not far off. I was still parliamentary candidate for Dundee and the party there asked me to come over from Belfast to do a few meetings. The Belfast lads did not want to let me go, but I promised I would only be away for a week or so, and on that understanding I left. I walked out of the frying pan into the fire.

When I arrived in Dundee there was the usual welcoming party, several hundreds strong, and as always it was decided to have a demonstration, a march through the town to the Albert Square. It was not a big demonstration, but the Dundee police didn’t like it, giving a bit of provocation to the marchers en route. However, we got through the town and were entering the Square without trouble when I heard a commotion behind me and, looking back, I saw a young fellow being manhandled by the police. I went back to see what was wrong and try to smooth things over, but before I could say anything a couple of hulking policemen grabbed me and I was frog-marched all the way to the Bell Streel Gaol. Naturally there was a near riot as our supporters let go at the police for this unwarranted provocation. If they had let us alone for another ten minutes it would have been all over in peace, but maybe it was not meant to be peaceful as far as the police were concerned.

My wife ran about getting the bail money and I and five others got out. The papers were full of the incident and the word got around: “The police have got Bob Stewart and are kicking his arse off.” An exaggeration, but that’s what happens in such cases. I was speaking at an open-air evening meeting in Lochee, a Dundee suburb. Thousands assembled to hear the workers’ side of the story. The people were really incensed, and demonstrations went on for over a week. Mounted police were drafted into the city and further arrests were made daily. Another bad slip by the authorities, because this only further incensed the workers.

The Court case was a Fred Karno farce. At one point I laughed outright at the absurdity of it all. Two of the policemen who had picked me up and this was done literally-were big Geordie Clark, and big Ed Anderson. Both world champion athletes. They tossed the caber at the Highland Games like someone using a match to light a pipe. They were built like Aberdeen Angus prize bulls and both looked like one. Real Scottish policemen of the period. Mountains of oatmeal, and little in the top piece.

It was a snotty-nosed little magistrate called Paterson who heard the case. The charges were:

a) In Meadowside he (that’s me) assaulted George Clark, constable, and struck him with his fist.

b) Committed a breach of the peace.

c) Molested constables Clark and MacFarlane in the execution of their duty while arresting Grant.

d) Assaulted William Gorrie, constable, and kicked him and after arrest struggled with the constables and refused to walk.

In cross-examination, big Geordie Clark was forced to admit that I had been frog-marched to the police station. The magistrate asked me to plead and I said I would not; it was a lot of nonsense and absolutely irrational. “Do you think,” I asked, “if I wanted to assault policemen I would choose the world heavy-weight champions? Please grant me a little intelligence.” But Baillie Paterson, like most magistrates, was only a figure-head. The real strings were pulled from behind. He found me guilty. What a laugh; me, guilty of assaulting the world heavyweight champion and punching him in the face! Me, a wee fellow not half Geordie Clark’s weight! He could have thrown me as far as the caber with one hand. There never was justice in the courts and certainly this case was the proof.

So I went up the river to Perth Gaol for thirty days and, to add insult to injury, the magistrate in his best pompous style advised me “That in future, Stewart, you should keep away from crowds.”

While I was away from the crowds and in Perth penitentiary, the great Labour split came and with it the fall of the Labour government. In late August Ramsay McDonald had made his now infamous sell-out radio speech. A National Government, with the Tories well entrenched in the new cabinet, was formed all to defend the pound sterling on which, claimed Ramsay Mac, “the well-being not only of the British nation but a large part of the world has been built”. Cuts in unemployment benefits to the extent of £70,000,000 per annum, and cuts in wages. Means tests for the unemployed. But this only for the working class. No cuts in profits and dividends. No means tests for the rich.

On October 22, a few weeks after MacDonald’s “save the pound” appeal, the Daily Express published: “Baldwin’s ordinary shares have advanced this year by €650,000 in value”. Stanley Baldwin, leader of the Tory Party, and brought into the National Government cabinet by MacDonald, held huge blocks of shares in Baldwin Limited, a great steel combine. On the day the Daily Express published this news, Baldwin was stumping the country telling the unemployed they must accept a dole cut of 10 per cent to save the pound and save the nation. Equality of sacrifice was the slogan of the National Government.

In his sell-out of the working-class movement, MacDonald pretended to give it a decent burial. In his broadcast, with an affected broken voice and, presumably, tears in his eyes, he said: “I have given my life to the building of a political party. I was present at its birth. I was a nurse when it emerged from infancy. At the moment I have not changed my ideals.” But he had sold out to the capitalist class just the same.

I profoundly believe McDonald actually thought he was presiding over the death of the Labour Party and the British working-class movement. His ego was that big. But historically the working-class movement has an indestructible habit of moving on, despite all the predictions of its destruction, and MacDonald lived to see that.

With the Labour Party demoralised by the split, the National Government called a general election for Tuesday, October 27. I had come out of Cardiff Gaol to fight my first parliamentary contest at Caerphilly in 1921. Now I came out of Perth Gaol to fight my last parliamentary contest at Dundee in 1931. This time the prison authorities were not so lenient; they let me out of gaol on the Saturday before polling day, giving me two full campaigning days -if you include Sunday.

The candidates for Dundee were Marcus for Labour and Scrymgeour for Prohibition, the sitting members who had been returned in 1929. In the election they teamed up together, with Scrymgeour still seeking the Labour and Catholic vote. The anti-Labour forces put up two new candidates, Florence Horsbrugh (now Baroness Horsbrugh) for the Tories, and Dingle Foot for the Liberals, both, of course, standing on the Nationalist ticket. I was the outsider as the Communist candidate at least that was how it was meant to be, but this time we did shake some of the political pundits.

The main brunt of the Nationalist campaigning fell on Dingle Foot who was then a young man of twenty-six years of age. This is the same Dingle Foot who is now a Labour Member of Parliament, having successfully changed his coat and maintained his membership of the House of Commons. He is one of the Foot family of professional politicians which includes Lord Caradon, formerly Hugh Foot, and Michael Foot, the left wing Labour MP. The ‘old man’ Isaac was no fool at professional politics.

At this time Dingle was bitterly anti-Labour, anti-working class. In one of his speeches he said, “The National Government stands for sense and solvency, Labour for sob stuff and starvation.”

My election agent was a little fellow called Sweeney. He called at the Perth Gaol and we went over the election address which was despatched in the usual efficient manner. The people knew we were campaigning all right. Apart from holding our own meetings, our fellows went to the other candidates meetings and question-time became a furious battle. Most of the Foot and Horsbrugh meetings ended with three cheers for Bob Stewart and the singing of “The Red Flag”. When I came out of prison on the Saturday, my first job was to lead a delegation to the Public Assistance for a number of hardship cases. There were some families then in real poverty. On the Sunday night we held a huge meeting at the Albert Square with an audience of 5,000 and great enthusiasm. Some of our lads began to talk of victory and I had to caution them, although the support we were receiving was our best ever in any election campaign.

But I was long enough in the political tooth to understand what was going on. The election campaign was one of the dirtiest in history. Every stick was used to beat the candidates standing against the National candidates. We were called traitors, saboteurs, wreckers no word, no turn of phrase, was bad enough to stampede the people and gain National votes.

In Dundee unemployment was high and to find work was an impossible task for the unemployed. In the final days of the election, the local newspaper, the Courier and Advertiser, published an interview with a Mr. Charlie Finch, who was reported to be about to open a bottle and glass factory in Dundee, employing 950 workers. But, emphasised Mr. Finch, he would only open the factory if the National Government were returned. Well, they were, but I never heard of the opening of Mr. Finch’s glass factory. This was the sort of thing that went on. Nothing was base enough to blacken the opponents of the National Government, nothing too low to win “National” votes.

Nine days before the poll the Courier and Advertiser published a prominent article praising another “National” leader who was then making his way in the world. His name was Adolf Hitler and according to the Courier he was the man who was to save the German nation.

On the final rally night-Monday-Dingle Foot invited all the candidates to speak from a platform in the Albert Square. He was providing loud-speaking equipment and a microphone. This was the first time this had ever been used in a Dundee parliamentary election. All the candidates refused, except me, so Foot and I had the meeting to ourselves. I asked for the other candidates’ time but Dingle would not agree. The local newspapers estimated that there was an audience of 20,000 but my reckoning was nearer 30,000.

At first Foot tried to play it funny. He was no doubt put out at being the only candidate to appear with the Communist candidate, but he would know later that this did him a power of good.

He started by saying, “I hope that when Bob Stewart and his pals come to power and I am hanged they will let me choose my own lamp-post.”

I intervened to say, “Dingle is growing up a bit too fast, we will reserve the lamp-posts for the important people,” and that cut him down to size. I remember his concluding remarks that night.

He said, “Do you want a member of the Trades Union Congress or a Member of Parliament for Dundee? I want you to send me to Westminster not as a bondsman of the Trades Union Congress, or as a catspaw of Moscow, but as a member of the National Government.”

I wonder who he thinks serves the nation now?

The split in the labour movement and the slanderous campaign of the National candidates, in which the former right-wing Labour leaders, MacDonald, Snowden, Thomas and others, were the most vehement of all, was too much for the working-class forces to surmount.

If anyone still thinks that the labour movement is strengthened when the right-wing leaders abandon and rupture the movement in this way, they ought to read the history of the 1929-31 Labour government. Working-class political success rests on the ability of the labour movement to purge itself of the right-wing leaders by political exposure, before they can sell out and not after.

In the 1929 general election, the Labour Party had won 288 seats. In 1931 Labour won only 51 seats and had a net loss of 228.

The Dundee result showed Florence Horsbrugh to be the first Tory candidate to be returned for Dundee this century (she remained M.P. for Dundee until 1945). Dingle Foot was top of the poll, the result being:

D. Foot 52, 048

F. Horsbrugh 48, 556

M. Marcus 32, 573

E. Scrymgeour 32, 229

R. Stewart 10, 262

Dingle Foot was so delighted when Sheriff Morton declared the result that he called for three cheers for Stewart, Marcus and Scrymgeour. Smart fellow!

Breaking the Fetters Chapter 24: The Second Labour Government.

The Tory government elected in 1924, largely because of the Zinoviev forgery, ran almost its full term of five years; 1929 had to be election year, and the election came in the spring. Parliament was dissolved and the date of the election set for May.

The 1929 parliamentary election will be remembered for two things: the return of the second Labour Government and the flapper vote. This was the first election in which women of twenty-one years of age voted. Before then the minimum age for votes for females was thirty years. Some people at the time said it was the flapper vote that made the return of a Labour government possible. This was definitely not true. The flapper vote did not assist the Labour or Communist candidates in 1929. While I have always wholeheartedly supported the elementary right of every adult to have a vote (except in extreme cases, such as insanity, etc.) I am not starry-eyed about the result and do not believe that new voters, the vast majority of whom have not been engaged in political action or discussion, will go to the polls and vote left with their first vote. I would say the same for votes at eighteen years of age. Very right and proper, but for those who think this will mean a mass increase in the left vote I fear there is a disappointment in store.

I was again the Communist candidate at Dundee in 1929, along with four others contesting for the two seats. No doubt because of the flapper vote, the Tories retained Frederick Wallace, a handsome military Tory gentleman who claimed to have fought the Russian Reds in 1919 after he had defeated the Germans. This sort of talk got him into serious trouble all through his campaign. The Liberals put up Henderson Stewart, a good looker and an able debater. Later he contested East Fife and was M.P. for that constituency for many years, pairing for a time with Bill Gallacher, who was M.P. for West Fife. Neddy Scrymgeour was the sitting member and was forward again in the interests of prohibition–although, be it noted, Neddy had been seven years M.P. for Dundee and all the time the public houses in the city had increased in number and the amount of whisky and beer consumed had likewise increased. In fact, during the years of Scrymgeour’s tenancy of the Dundee parliamentary seat the only trade in the city that had flourished was the liquor trade. Jute, ship-building, jam had their ups and downs but the liquor trade did well. In the 1924 general election Edmund Morel had been returned for Labour but died only months after taking his seat. In the resulting by-election Tom Johnstone, one of the early pioneers of the socialist movement, had stood for Labour and won. The Communists had not contested, giving Johnstone a clear run. By 1929 Johnstone had fallen out with some of the local right wingers and told them “where to put” their parliamentary seat, so a little lawyer fellow called Marcus stood for Labour in 1929. He was of Russian descent and was born in Grodno. His father, Nathan Marcus Tashen-ovsky, emigrated in 1911 and later Marcus became naturalised and took the family second name. At the start of the campaign the Scottish Nationalists declared they were to put up C. M. Greive, who was a rising young man in Scottish literature under the name of Hugh McDiarmid. I can’t remember why Hugh did not stand, but many years later he had a parliamentary contest in the 1964 general election as a Communist against the reigning prime minister, Sir Alex Douglas-Home.

The issues in the election for us were clear. Since the General Strike wages were at poverty level and unemployment was over two million. In Dundee in particular wages were below the national average in jute, and unemployment in all industries was rampant. The flapper vote was also important. In Dundee the 1924 electoral register showed 42,804 men and 35,493 women. The 1929 register showed 46,246 men and 62,880 women. It was estimated that in Dundee in 1929, 36,000 women voted for the first time in their lives. A number of candidates “cast their fly” for the flappers, and Harry Hope, a candidate in the neighbouring North Angus constituency, had the following advertisement in the newspaper on polling day:

TO THE WOMANHOOD OF ANGUS

VOTE HOPE

As can be readily guessed this left itself open to some bawdy jokes. The Dundee Tory candidate Fred Wallace added a bit of Christmas spice to his advertisement which read:

TO ALL WOMEN AND MEN OF GOODWILL

VOTE WALLACE

This showed the new importance of women. Up till then no one gave a damn for the women’s vote, accepting that most women did what some man told them to do.

I never had any claims to be beautiful, and as I was no chicken I treated the flappers as I did all others, with the greatest of respect, and sought to win their vote by reasonable political argument.

The campaign was a lively one, marred by a dirty attack by the Tories and the local press on Michael Marcus. Antisemitism was vigorously peddled by Tory canvassers who openly said a vote for Marcus was not a British vote but a vote for a Russian Jew. Unfortunately Marcus was neither a forceful personality nor an astute politician; he may have been a good lawyer, but he never really hit back in the right way at this sewer-type politics.

The Tory meetings were usually “snorters”, with many of our lads roasting the candidate at question time. Wallace had the real boss’s attitude, always wanting to dish out orders and tell everyone what they should do. But he wasn’t telling our fellows what to do at election meetings, they had been around too long for that. So Wallace complained to the press that at his meetings he was faced with dan audience of lions with Communist teeth”.

Of course he asked for much of what he got and maybe he baited the lads a bit. He was very fond of boasting how good a soldier he was and how he had fought and won in Northern Russia. I think he spoke so much about his military prowess that he began to believe it himself. Any-way, at his final rally he really let his verbosity get the better of him and shouted: “Men of Dundee, men of the fighting Black Watch with whom I had the great honour to fight shoulder to shoulder, we want our native land to flourish!” The truth was he was never in the Black Watch and according to the Dundee Courier, which took pleasure in giving him a full biography, he was with the Royal Artillery well behind the Black Watch in the fighting line. Strange how all the Tories contesting Dundee always wanted to appeal to the Black Watch for support. The funny thing was that if it had been left to the ex-Black Watch men to elect an M.P. the Communist candidate would have been a cert. Many of our supporters were men who had served in the Black Watch during the war, and had had enough and didn’t want any more wars. That’s why they campaigned for the Communist candidate.

But Wallace detested the Communists and Russia. One night our lads must have really got under his skin. The Courier reported he had had a rowdy meeting and had “thrown back” at his “tormentors” in the audience: “The practice of socialism has been operated in Russia since 1917 and has been a ghastly failure.” And for good measure, and to see that the voting public really got the message, in the same edition the Courier published a letter which said: “Bob Stewart and Marcus have not told the Dundee electors that under the Soviet government there are five million unemployed in Russia, that Moscow is swarming with beggars, that common people are huddled together worse than pigs, and that al homes in Moscow are under control of the government.” That last phrase could give a clue to the origin of the writer. My guess was he was a Tory landlord. Of course I tried to answer back, but in good British democratic parliamentary style the non-union D. C. Thomson press published neither my letters nor my speeches.

In the campaign we hammered home the lessons of the General Strike and the need for working-class unity. All the other candidates dodged the issue with general platitudes, except Wallace who said, “The General Strike marked an epoch in British industrial history, because for the first time for nearly a century since trade unions were formed, there has developed in the minds of trade union leaders the realisation that the strike weapon has outlived its usefulness.”

Our campaign, while not at the same high level as those of previous elections, was quite good. I remember a meeting in the Kinnaird Hall with over a thousand present, at which Tom Mann spoke for two hours, taking off his jacket midway through his speech because he said he was becoming a little heated. So was the candidate, waiting for his turn to speak. There was not much time left for me after Tom, but he did a valuable job in the election. He was a well built, handsome man and very, very popular with the women jute workers. He certainly could, with success, have made a play for the flapper vote on looks and physique. He was a powerful working-class orator, with a great gift of making friends readily.

At our final rally I had a speaker from Germany, comrade Gaspar, a member of the executive of the German Communist Party. He spoke that night of the emergence of the German fascist party and the utter refusal of the German social-democrats to unite with the German communists in face of the fascist menace. I wonder how many Dundonians in 1939, when Hitler declared war, thought of the speech made by Gaspar on working-class unity in the Caird Hall ten years earlier.

The main thing I remember about the 1929 parliamentary election campaign was the inability of the party to win votes from numbers of men and women who openly admitted that the policy of the Communists was correct. There was a profound fear that after five years of reactionary Tory government, the Tories might again be returned to power. There was an intense desire to get the Tories out, and to do this many voters who would otherwise have voted for the Communist candidates, voted Labour to get, as they said, a Labour government. Many thousands of men and women recognised the weakness of Labour with the right wing in control of the Labour Party, but they saw a Labour vote as the only alternative to Baldwin and the Tories. While in Dundee this feeling did not have the same effect as in the other constituencies where the Communists were contesting, near the end of the campaign in Dundee, Marcus, the Labour candidate, said publicly, “Give the second vote to Scrymgeour,” hoping Scymgeour would reciprocate, which he did. The Dundee result was:

Scrymgeour (Prob.) 50, 073

Marcus (Lab.) 47, 602

Henderson Stewart (Lib.) 33, 890

Wallace (Con.) 33, 868

Stewart (Comm.) 6, 163

The election resulted in a decided swing to Labour, which won 288 seats. The Tories won 250 seats and the Liberals 53.

Ramsay McDonald again visited Buckingham Palace and became prime minister. But in less than two years from McDonald’s taking office the truth of all the Communist Party had been saying in the 1929 parliamentary general election campaign was to become a living reality for the British working class.

Breaking the Fetters Chapter 22: The First Labour Government and the Zinoviev Letter.

On my return from Ireland I found the country in a political ferment. A Labour government, with Liberal support, had been formed arising from the general election of November 1923. This government, headed by Ramsay McDonald as prime minister, had run into trouble and was in no way solving the deep economic crisis. The cost of living was high, wages were low and unemployment still at a very high level. Despite this the big political discussion was taking place on foreign policy. The de jure recognition of the Soviet Union had been effected in the early days of the Labour government, and demands were being made by Labour M.P.s for this to be followed up by normal trading and diplomatic relationships.

This demand soon ran into difficulties. The Tories were vehemently against. They demanded compensation for British property in the Soviet Union which had been nationalised by the Soviet government, and also trading rights for British firms on Soviet territory. The first was realisable, but naturally the Soviet government would not entertain the latter. In Parliament Lloyd George supported the Tories, so with a Tory-Liberal coalition the minority Labour government was in difficulty. Pressure by Labour M.P.s, however, forced the government to open discussions with the Soviet government on compensation for confiscated British property, trading relations and a British loan to the Soviet Union.

The Soviet delegation arrived in Britain in April 1924, and negotiations under Arthur Ponsonby from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs began immediately. By August all the problems had been settled except one: the compensation for British property. Then news came that negotiations had broken down. The Tories were jubilant, saying this showed that it was impossible to negotiate with these Bolsheviks. In this critical situation, when it was obvious that the future of the Labour government was in jeopardy, a number of Labour M.P.s went into action. One of them who played a leading part, and who later told the full story, was Edmund Morel, M.P. for Dundee, a man I knew well. Morel was secretary of the Union of Democratic Control, a champion of the colonial peoples and founder of the Congo Reform Association in 1904. Among his many books and pamphlets outstanding was Red Rubber, an exposure of the rubber slave trade in the Congo. Morel and the others had discussions with the Soviet delegation and then went to Ponsonby with a suggested formula. At first this was accepted, but later rejected by Ponsonby, and it was deadlock again. On the critical day when Parliament was to re-assemble and a parliamentary statement of the negotiations was to be made in the House of Commons, Labour M.P.s again saw the Soviet delegation and only four hours before the parliamentary statement was due agreement was reached by all parties in what were really last-minute negotiations. Edmund Morel later told the story of what the argument was about. The British government wanted the words “valid claims” inserted in the compensation agreement. The Soviet delegation suggested “valid and approved by both governments”. The Soviet government demanded they should have a say in what was “valid”. The eventual compromise which was finally accepted used the words “agreed claims”.

This draft treaty on trade was, however, never put into effect. It was clear that the Tories violently opposed any trade with the Soviet Union and, with the Liberals supporting them, the defeat of the Labour government was only a matter of time. The Communist Party estimated that the general election was at most only a few months away.

The party called for a closing of the working-class ranks and for an end to the divisions in the labour movement and a fight for the return of a majority Labour government based on the unity of the working class, with Communists being accepted with full rights in the Labour Party. We decided that no Communist candidates would run against Labour candidates when the election took place and instructed our branches to submit the names of Communists to the Labour selection conferences to go forward for selection with the Labour nominees. In some constituencies the nominations of Communists were ruled out by right-wing Labour, but in others Communists were nominated and eventually selected to stand as joint Communist-Labour candidates. In this way Saklatvala contested Battersea and won the seat. In all, seven Communists stood as Labour-Communist candidates and in Leeds Tom Mann lost a selection conference by two votes. Gallacher was only narrowly defeated in the Motherwell selection.

In Dundee, however, the position was different. It was a double-barrelled constituency, two seats for the city. There was only one Labour candidate, Edmund Morel. The other M.P. was Edwin Scrymgeour, the prohibitionist, who, while occasionally supporting Labour, was not officially connected with the Labour Party. We took a decision to contest Dundee and I was chosen as the candidate, thus becoming the only “clear” Communist candidate in the election. However, it was not the British-Soviet draft treaty that defeated the Labour government. The defeat came on a much smaller issue. Johnnie Campbell, who was then the editor of the Workers Weekly, the paper of the Communist Party, had written an article which the Crown held to be seditious. This contention was one which might have been difficult to sustain in Court and, on second thoughts, the Attorney General withdrew the charge. The Tories, hell bent for an election at any cost, raised an outraged cry. The Tory press claimed intimidation of the Labour government by the Communists and in parliament the Tories tabled a vote of censure on the government. This vote of censure was defeated, but a Liberal amendment to it seeking an “appointment or a select Committee to investigate ” the withdrawal of the charge against J. R. Campbell was carried against the government by 364 votes to 198. Next day, October 10, Ramsay McDonald announced the dissolution of Parliament.

Our party was first in the field in the Dundee hustings. I commenced my campaign with meetings on the 14th October. With me I had Harry Pollitt who, because he had been in Dundee with Gallacher in the previous elections, knew Dundee as well as his home town of Gorton. He was also a great favourite with the local shipyard workers, many of whom were to him “fellow boilermakers”. Also with me was Helen Crawfurd, a wonderful woman speaker invaluable in an election in a women’s town. And also Johnnie Campbell. Poor Johnnie, he always had to open his meetings with an apology: “I would much rather have discussed the election without dragging in personalities, but I will have to because if I don’t, you will.” After all, he was supposed to be the cause of the election, although he soon disposed of that in his speeches. Still, it was all grist to the mill and filled the meetings to capacity, with Johnnie always in top form.

The Dundee Tories and Liberals had made a pact for the election, running one candidate each, two votes -one Tory, one Liberal. The Liberal was Sir Andrew Duncan, a barrister from Kent, who boasted of Scots ancestry. This brought him his first mistake in the election. At his first meeting he was laying on the charm and said, “I come as a Scotsman among Scotsmen.” Then a voice from the audience put him right: “Hauf o’ wiz are Irish.” This was indeed true. At any Dundee meeting 50 per cent or more of the audience were Irish. Scrymgeour, who had lived all his life in Dundee, knew this and always deliberately campaigned for the Irish Catholic vote.

Early on in the campaign Harry Pollitt also gave Duncan a knock. Sir Andrew let it be known in the press that he wanted a debate with a trade unionist, preferably a shipyard worker, no doubt to show he knew the trade union position very well. The boilermakers got together and accepted the challenge and put forward as their speaker Harry Pollitt. The brave Sir Andrew then changed his pipe music. He would not debate with a Communist, he said, much to the glee of the local shipyard workers who put his gas at a peep for the rest of the campaign.

Sir Andrew Duncan’s running mate was a Tory called Frederick Wallace who had already contested Dundee in the 1923 General Election.

The Labour candidate was Edmund Morel, who as I have said had taken an important part in the British-Soviet negotiations on the trade treaty. When the Labour government was first formed he was tipped to be the first Foreign Minister, but he was much too left for Ramsay McDonald, who took the Foreign Ministry himself as well as being the Prime Minister. Morel was a strong candidate, a good speaker and always on the left, but he always hedged at being officially associated with the Communists. Privately he would say he hoped the Communists would win the second seat, but he would never say it publicly.

Edwin Scrymgeour was the sitting member and, while he stood as a prohibitionist, he campaigned for the second Labour vote. I said at the time he was the candidate from heaven who would steal a vote from all parties, Tory, Liberal, Labour and Communist, and then say he had a mandate for the abolition of the liquor trade. This in fact was a great joke at the time, because Dundee was one of the most “drunken” cities in Britain and many of those who voted for Scrymgeour could be seen every Saturday in life fou’ with the beer and whisky.

This election was one of the most rousing in Dundee’s long history of tousy election campaigns. From the day I opened my campaign on October 14th to my final meeting on the 28th I spoke to full houses only. On many occasions there were overflows. This went for every candidate. From the City Hall holding three thousand to the smaller halls holding a few hundreds, all were packed out. The main issues in the election, in fact almost the only two issues, were British-Soviet relations and employment with good wages. In Dundee these fused together because Dundee is a big textile town and before the war of 1914-18 a large flax manufacture was based on the export of flax from Russia. This had dried up and many flax workers were unemployed, so the question of British-Soviet trade was not an academic one in Dundee. It was on diplomatic relations between Britain and the Soviet Union that the big election fight took place.

I had just returned from my spell on the Communist International and my knowledge of the Soviet Union was standing me in good stead. I knew what I was talking about and could discuss developments in the Soviet Union at first hand. Morel, with his knowledge of British-Soviet trade discussions, was also campaigning well on this issue. This rattled Sir Andrew Duncan and his Tory running mate, and as they tried to answer the questions their meetings became rowdier and rowdier. They were under a constant barrage of interruptions, which was not unnatural because they began to insult people at the meetings. Many of the audience had been in dire straits and unemployed for months, and they retaliated by showing their disgust in good election fashion. The singing of “The Red Flag” at the end of the Tory and Liberal meetings became a commonplace event. The local newspapers, seeking to find a reason for this, accused the Communists of trying to break up the Tory-Liberal meetings. I was mad about this and wrote to the papers pointing out the Communists had a campaign in operation and this was stretching our resources to the limit and occupying 100 per cent of our time. We had no time to think about other candidates’ meetings.

So it was Morel and I for recognition and trade with the Soviet Union, Duncan and Wallace with their “down with the Bolsheviks and trust the boss” attitude, and in between came Scrymgeour talking of God and Heaven, the iniquity of the drink trade, appealing to the reason of the Labour voters, and in particular to the Irish Catholic voters. As the campaign went on he became more and more anti-Soviet, no doubt through pressure of the Catholics and in order to win Catholic support.

Of course the election hustings were full of good give and take questions and answers, with the Tory and Liberal mostly on the receiving end. The following question, noted by the press of the period and kept for posterity, is a good example. At Sir Andrew Duncan’s final rally, after he had concluded his final speech and was no doubt saying to himself, as all candidates do, “Well that’s finished,” the chairman asked for questions. Up jumped one bright fellow to ask: “As the only difference between Churchill and you is that Winnie sent us to war to slash the Germans whilst you stayed at home to slash wages, is there any reason why we should not give you the same dose as the Kiel Canal rat catcher?” Amid a storm of cheers Sir Andrew was heard to whimper, “I stand on my record.”

As the election campaign neared its end it became increasingly clear that Labour was gaining ground. It was at this point that the Zinoviev letter incident broke (1). This was one of the crudest political frauds ever inflicted on the British voter. It was a forged letter purporting to have been sent by the Communist International to the British Communist Party. On the Saturday before the election all the press in Britain had banner headlines: “Soviets Intervene in British Elections,” “Red Hands on Britain’s Throat”, and so on. Immediately Rakovsky, the Soviet Chargé d’Affaires in Britain, indignantly and emphatically denied the authenticity of the letter and categorically stated it a forgery. All Sunday the country waited for an explanation from Ramsay MacDonald, who was Foreign Minister, but nothing came. On Monday the local paper in Dundee, The Courier, carried a huge banner headline:

COMMUNIST PLOT-RAMSAY MACDONALD SILENT

While such a denial from the Soviet Ambassador was to be expected the fact remains that the socialist government, the foreign office, and Mr. McDonald personally were satisfied it was a genuine document and not a forgery.

Arthur McManus, who had taken my place on the Communist International and who was an alleged signatory to the letter from Zinoviev, was speaking at Manchester two days before the poll. In the audience were police and C.I.D. men. McManus denounced the document as a forgery and challenged the police to arrest him, but no one moved. The last thing the Foreign Office ever wanted was an investigation into the origins of the document.

On Tuesday, MacDonald made a statement casting doubt on the genuineness of the document, but the damage was done. The British electorate went to the polls without a clear statement from MacDonald, and the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in British political history had paid off. The result of the poll was a resounding Tory victory. On dissolution of Parliament the state of the parties was:

Tories 258

Labour 193

Liberal 158

After the election it was:

Tories 403

Labour 157

Liberal 38

The Liberals who had precipitated the election were smashed and never again returned as a main British parliamentary party. That was the outcome of their anti-Soviet policy and their demand for an investigation in the Johnnie Campbell case.

Edmund Morel held Dundee, with Scrymgeour second. The result was:

Morel (Lab.) 32, 864

Scrymgeour (Prob.) 29, 193

Wallace (Con.) 28, 118

Duncan (Lib.) 25, 566

Stewart (Comm.) 8, 340

After the count we mounted the platform to say our piece, but the Tory and the Liberal would not speak. They were sorely disappointed because they had really believed that the Zinoviev scare had won them the seats. Morel, knowing this, went for them, saying he would demand an immediate investigation from Parliament, which I think he did. Scrymgeour, safe in the second seat, found time to thank God for being good to him and thus saving the second seat from the Communist menace. He did not add but must have thought, “Yes, and with the aid of the Irish Catholic vote.”

With such a resounding victory at the polls the road was now open for a direct attack on the British working class. It certainly came.

Footnote (1): Some facts regarding the notorious letter came to light years after-wards. The letter was dated Moscow, September 15th 1924. It purported to be signed by three people: Zinoviev, President of the Presidium of the I.K.K.I., McManus, Member of the Presidium, Kuusinen, Secretary.

Zinoviev was not president of the presidium of the I.K.K.I. (Communist International) although he was president of the I.K.K.I. itself, and therefore would not sign himself as president of the presidium. Also, he always signed as G. Zinoviev. Secondly, McManus always signed as A. McManus. or Arthur McManus. Thirdly, Kuusinen was not the secretary of I.K.K.I The secretary was a man named Kolarov. To add to this mountain of obvious forgery the letter was headed from “the Third Communist International”. There was no Third Communist International. It was always referred to as “the Third International’ because it followed the First and Second Internationals, which were not Communist. These were such infantile mistakes that even a cursory examination would have shown the document to be a blatant forgery.

In later years it came to light that a Foreign Office official, Mr. J. D. Gregory, who was dismissed from the Foreign Office after an inquiry into some illegal currency deals, was stated to have been involved with some Russian emigrés in the forgery of the letter. This was never ultimately proved, but the whole story of the Zinoviev letter, dealt with in W. P. and Zelda K. Coates’ book A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations, is fascinating reading for all students of political history.

Breaking the Fetters Chapter 20: Moscow and the Comintern.

“The oppressed peoples of the whole world, under the banner of the Comintern, overthrow imperialism!” Soviet poster by Gustav Klutsis, 1924. Shamelessly nicked from @sovietvisuals.

I went to Moscow early in 1923 as British representative to the Communist International, or the Comintern as it was called more briefly. I was a bit diffident about accepting this job because I regarded myself as an apprentice in Communist Party work. My wife and daughter came with me and I left my two sons with my sister, so the arrangements were quite good. I liked the job very much. I was living in the heart of the revolutionary political world. I was meeting people who knew much better than I the main world political events and could interpret them much better. I was taking part in discussion with leading working-class politicians from all over the world, all with their special problems, and if at times I could not make a contribution at least I could listen and learn.

In the Comintern I did a fair amount of foreign work. Because I had a British passport, I was better able to cross frontiers and move about freely than many of the other foreign representatives. At this time, the Comintern was very much in its formative period and the communist parties of the various countries had serious conflicts of opinion on many political questions. There were many commissions in the work of the Comintern, trying to smooth the way and deal with the problems.

Troubles had grown in the Swedish Communist Party and the Comintern sent a delegation of which I was a member to help to sort things out. In Sweden I was known as Comrade XR (Executive Representative). Half the Swedish party were really right-wing social democrats, both in theory and action.

The party was led by Seth Hoglund, a social democrat who certainly put no R in revolution but had a very good anti war record. The party was split in two; the left-wing section was the more aggressive and was able to retain control of the party paper. Hoglund was a likeable chap, not in any way vicious but a true social democrat and for quiet, steady reform. The leadership afterwards passed to Samuelson and some others, but they too quarrelled and some left the party.

At this time Scandinavia was very important. Politically, despite some setbacks, the left forces were making good progress. There was also another practical reason. The Norwegian party had a good standing among the seamen, which enabled comrades to get across the seas illegally. Bill Gallacher, Sylvia Pankhurst and a number of others crossed the North Sea in this way. Irish sailors did the same before Eire became a state, ready to smuggle people across on the Irish boats. De Valera was got out of Lincoln Gaol and smuggled across in this way.

Many people with whom I worked and whom I met during my time at the Comintern are now dead. A few are still alive. Some made their political mark, some dropped out of political life in the development of the struggle, because being a Communist in politics is never easy, no matter in which country you are domiciled.

Stalin in the early 1920s- “quiet, painstaking and efficient.”

Naturally the reader will ask what I thought of Stalin. I always speak of people as I find them. I worked with Stalin on a commission on Germany after the defeat of the German party in 1923. I found him a quiet, painstaking and efficient chairman. He chaired the commission which was composed of members from all parties resident in Moscow and from the Russian party, which was represented by Kuibishev, who later became Minister for Planning in the Soviet Union. The discussion in the commission went on for weeks, and one interesting point was that after every session the delegates and their interpreters met singly with Stalin to make sure that if they had not spoken during the discussion, he would be aware of their views. In this way I had several talks with Stalin. I remember that one particular discussion he and I had dealt with the way in which the German party central committee worked. In my opinion there was too much bureaucracy and I said that certain changes in work should be considered. The Comintern could not enforce changes, since the national parties were independent; but the Comintern could, and did, make suggestions. At the end of our tête-a-tête Stalin made a number of pointed remarks and agreed with me on the need for change, but there was a great battle of personalities in the German party at that time. The need for unity was so important that one had to cut the suit according to the cloth and not seek changes that might possibly widen the division.

This commission usually started work about midnight. As a rule I was getting ready for bed when the telephone would ring, and then it was down to the Kremlin for an all-night sitting. They did not rush it, these people. Many of the Kremlin lads were long-distance men. I remember one night Terricini- the delegate from Italy I think his first name was Angelico, but he was certainly no angel -was delivering his point of view in French and doing it very well. He had been at it for over an hour and a half when Stalin intervened to say,

“Tovaritch Terricini, French is a beautiful language to listen to but it is now three o’clock in the morning.” Terricini nodded to show he had heard and then continued with his speech, as if no intervention had been made.

During this German commission discussion, some leading members of the German party went after Clara Zetkin; they baited her unmercifully and this really sickened me. It was an exhibition of political cannibalism that should never be tolerated in working-class politics. Clara Zetkin may have had some weaknesses and faults we all have but she had many decades of selfless working-class struggle behind her and a great reputation both in the international communist movement and in Germany. I protested vigorously against the manner in which some of the German comrades were acting and, with several other delegates supporting me, Stalin said, “We hold a high opinion of Clara Zetkin, our Russian women have learned much from her work, and we will not permit this type of vilification.”

Radek was another member of the Comintern with whom I worked in close association When the first Labour Government was formed in January 1924, Radek, Theodore Roth-stein, Clara Zetkin, some others and myself, worked on a manifesto to be published in Britain in the name of the Communist International. Radek was the most remarkable reader I have ever come across. He had an insatiable appetite for newspapers and had a wide and fundamental knowledge of world politics. Lenin’s criticism of Radek was that he read too many bourgeois newspapers and I think he inferred that Radek was influenced by them. But Radek was most helpful to me. He was also a humorist with a ready answer to any question. He wore long side-whiskers, like the Ancient Mariner, but one day when I met him they were shaved off. “Oh, what’s happened to the growth?” I asked. “Got to go to Germany so I must have a disguise,” he replied. Another time when I was having a difference of opinion with Walton Newbold, who was once Communist M.P. for Motherwell, and was lamenting about it, he said, “Never mind Newbold, Bob, he not only sits on his arse, he sits on his brains as well.”

Kamenev, Zinoviev and other leaders of the Soviet party, Dimitrov from Bulgaria, Pieck from Germany and many others from other countries, I met both at work and socially, but as a rule the discussion was mainly political. I never found it easy or even practicable to discuss everyday “common-place” happenings through an interpreter. Language to me was always a great barrier and I am sure it is for everyone.

Radek was the one who spoke all languages. I heard him speak and communicate with ease with people of many nationalities. I never knew how many languages he spoke. He was a Pole by birth. He once said to me, “Bob, there are good Jews and bad Jews, and the worst of the bad Jews are Polish Jews and I am one of them.” I don’t think the part about Polish Jews is right, nor in my contact with Radek was it true of him. In Moscow, in all his work with me, he was a most able and helpful member of the Comintern.

Photographs by Henry Sara from Bob’s time in Moscow including some from the school he mentions here. See the ‘Comrades: Henry Sara’ post for more information.

Naturally, apart from the leading comrades I got to know in the course of my work, I also met the ordinary Russian people. A group of Russians I got to know fairly well consisted of teachers. This happened somewhat accidentally. One day my wife and I were having a walk in the suburbs, and as we passed a school the children were coming out. Some of the children, observing by our dress that we were foreigners, asked us questions. When they found out that we were British, a number of them had to try out their English on us. Because of this incident we became very well acquainted with the school and the teachers. I took any English delegations that came to Moscow to the school, and through this the pupils became the proud possessors of footballs, boots, sweaters and other sports equipment. I found the children most friendly and com-paniable, with no sullen shyness, and the teachers were born to their jobs aunties and uncles they were called. The school owned a huge boar, a real Goliath. One day I said to one of the children,

“Big boar.” “Da, bolshoi -bolshoi Curzon!”

(Lord Curzon was the most notorious anti-Russian British statesman of the period, the originator of the attempt to enforce the Curzon line).

Another school I used to visit was a school for musically gifted girls. The teacher was the first flautist of the Bolshoi Orchestra. The children gathered round in the most natural way and sang and played spontaneously, everything from folk drama to grand opera. Watching these girls, I began to realise the inborn musical understanding and appreciation of the Russian people, which has endured for centuries.

I remember the first time in my life I heard community singing. It was at the Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow in 1924 I was wandering around with Jim Larkin, the leader of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, and we saw some people congregating near some seats. We strolled over to see what was happening. Out comes a fellow with a corduroy jacket and a pair of high boots curled up like a concertina. He stepped on to a small platform and started to sing, and away went the audience in wonderful community sing-ing. I couldn’t follow the words but there was no mistaking the real genuine feeling and natural musical ability of the crowd.

For the citizens of Moscow, however, it was not all singing and playing. Moscow was a political city, everyone talked politics. Even in the armed forces, the aim was to have politically understanding soldiers, sailors and airmen. Our party was a patron of some Russian regiments, and so got to know the officers and men. It was this political consciousness on the part of the Soviet soldiers, brought about by intense political discussions of day-to-day events, that created the understanding of the necessity to fight for the independence of the Soviet Union and the determination to crush the Nazi invaders in World War Two.

On the political side, I naturally attended conferences and meetings of the Russian Communist Party, and met with Russians from Stalin downwards. What struck me from the beginning was the business sense of the Russian political workers, very few of whom were business men. In these early days of Soviet rule, blacksmiths, mechanics, textile and other workers were pitchforked into top political jobs and had to adapt themselves to new work, sometimes dealing with old managements in production and, more important, themselves forming new managements in the big new factories. I remember Milnechesneski, who was an ordinary worker, telling me one day he was the biggest textile owner in the world -he had just been put in charge of the cotton textile industry.

In the countryside, many of the peasants were illiterate but, of course, while illiteracy is a great disadvantage, it does not mean lack of intelligence. The Russian peasant, who was intelligent enough to revolt against -and end serfdom, was also intelligent enough to combine with the Russian working class to end capitalism and also to end illiteracy among the peasant masses in the Soviet Union.

It was during my time in Moscow that a great tragedy befell the international working-class movement.

Lenin died in January 1924. I remember this well because I was then a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern which was summoned immediately: firstly, to hear the announcement of Lenin’s death and also to make all the necessary arrangements for the funeral.

Harry Pollitt came over immediately from Britain to represent the British Communist Party at the funeral. It was desperately cold and both Harry and I felt it very much. It was forty degrees below zero. Fires were kindled in the streets and I remember seeing the militiamen’s horses going over and sticking their noses in the fire to melt the icicles. We were as cold as the horses but at least we could pull down our fur caps and peer out occasionally to see where we were going.

I was one of the delegation of the Comintern chosen to go to Gorky, where Lenin had died, to accompany his body back to Moscow. We left by train from Moscow at about 5am and then travelled by peasant sleigh from Gorky Station to Lenin’s house. From the station you could see the house down in the valley, but the road to it so twisted and turned that even by sleigh it took us a long time to reach it. At the house Lenin was laid on a bed wearing an ordinary Red Army man’s uniform with the Order of Lenin pinned to his breast. The house was full of people: leading members of the Russian Communist Party, of the Comintern, delegates from the factories and the professions, and amongst them all wandered a big black cat who had been a very great favourite with Lenin.

Lenin’s body being taken to Gorky station en route to Moscow.

The body was placed in the coffin and carried to the station en route for Moscow. Leading men from the party and the factories took turns to carry the coffin. On the journey, at every station, on the way, thousands of people waited to see the train pass. I do not think I ever saw so many tear-stained faces in my life. It was a very moving demonstration of the love the ordinary people for this great man.

When we got to Moscow I realised for the first time in my life what a mass demonstration really meant. Not a demonstration that was called, but one that came. Every conceivable foot of space was occupied. A great mass of people followed the coffin as it was borne from the station to the Dom Soyus (Hall of the Trade Unions), and from every side street and opening, mass upon mass of people converged with the main stream or waited their turn to do so. At the same time the digging was proceeding on the site of the mausoleum, so there was blasting and picking going on. All these streets were crowded with sad-eyed mourners. Every shop and hotel and all central places were ordered to keep open twenty-four hours a day so that people overcome by the cold could go in and thaw out.

Crowds at Lenin’s funeral. January 1924.

Moscow has witnessed many varied scenes in her many centuries of troubled history; her ancient records must be filled with historic incidents, but never had such scenes been witnessed as during the days of Lenin’s lying in state and funeral. The Dom Soyus, a former palace of nobility, once the setting for the glitter and pomp of the aristocratic Tsarist circles, was the place where Lenin lay. Here his own people, the working masses of Russia, could pay their last tribute to the mighty leader of the Russian working class and the world proletariat. “Our Comrade Lenin” everyone said, as if he were a father or a brother.

For four days and nights, for mile after mile, people queued four abreast to pass the bier on which Lenin lay. Along with Harry Pollitt I took a turn on the guard of honour. I remember I was with Chicherin. The bier was surrounded by wreaths of flowers of every description, sent from all over Russia and indeed from all over the world. The magnificent hall with its white marble walls was a blaze of light, contrasting with the deep varied hues of the flowers, and on the balcony the band of the Red Guards played music befitting such a solemn occasion.

Delegations from all over Russia streamed into Moscow, joined the endless queues, and placed their wreaths as they passed the bier. But there were no kings or queens, no aristocrats and their ladies, no great admirals or field marshals with glittering medals. Only the endless stream of workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors with their wives and families. The queues never seemed to get less. Over a million had passed the bier and still the queues remained. It had been decided that on Saturday the doors must close at 12 noon. But on Saturday afternoon there were still hundreds of thousands of people waiting with banners and wreaths, still train after train arrived, pouring the delegations into Moscow from north, south, east and west. Every minute messages from all over the world came, telling the world-wide grief at the passing of this great working-class leader. Certainly, no king, no emperor, no bloody tsar has been honoured as Lenin, the leader of the world working class.

At 7am on Sunday came the final parting. Around the coffin stood the leaders of the Russian Communist Party and the Communist International, and with them, keeping her last vigil, was Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife and constant companion during thirty years of struggle. Lenin’s body was borne to the Red Square. As the coffin was raised the orchestra wailed the funeral march. After this a moment’s silence, then the International burst out, strongly and boldly sung. I thought then, this is the answer to the enemies of Leninism whose death was rekindling the hopes of new triumphs for imperialism. this is the answer of Lenin’s pupils, the Russian workers and peasants.

As the coffin was carried into the streets, crowds formed behind it. Leaders of the Party and trade unions took turns to shoulder the coffin along the Kremlin walls to the centre of the Red Square where the raised tribune was placed. The people filed past in millions until 4pm. Then silence just before the cannons crashed out the salute with a roar which could be heard in every corner of the world; factory sirens in every Russian city and village took up the salute; men, women and children stood still in silent homage. In every country throughout the world the workers paid their last respects to a great leader, who from small groups of Marxists had led the Russian workers forward to the formation of a mighty Communist Party and a mighty workers’ Republic and had laid the foundation by his leadership for a mighty Communist International.

The coffin was carried into the Mausoleum, Lenin’s final resting place. Queues formed again to pass the bier. It went on all night, all the next day and every day since. the years have passed and still the Russian workers and peasants and the visitors to Moscow from foreign lands pass the bier to pay homage to Lenin, the great working-class leader whose genius guided the people of downtrodden Russia and millions far beyond it, to break their chains and march to the not-so-distant communist society

Breaking the Fetters Chapter 19: A Storm – Workers in Action.

During one of my periodic visits to Dundee in early 1923 I ran into a serious confrontation between the jute employers and the jute workers. To make things more serious this took place while nearly 25 per cent of the workers in the city were unemployed. A running battle was taking place over unemployment pay and parish council assistance to those who had exhausted their unemployment benefit.

In February 1923 there were 10,500 workers claiming benefit on the Dundee unemployment register. This was by no means the total unemployment figure; many women workers were not entitled to benefit when they were unemployed. Under the unemployment acts then in force, by April 4th 7,000 would be completely cut off from unemployment benefit and would then have to apply for parish relief. This bleak prospect was causing a serious crisis in every home in the city. The scales for weekly parish relief were 7s. 6d. for a husband, 7s. 6d. for a wife and 1s. for every child under fourteen years of age. This meant a family consisting of man, wife and four children under fourteen years of age (by no means an uncommon family then) had to live on 19s. a week.

Into this already seething cauldron of discontent another problem boiled up. In Cox’s jute mill, one of the largest in the city, employing thousands of workers, the management introduced new spinning frames and demanded a reduction of women spinners. Where formerly three worked, two now would be employed, thus saving the wage of every third spinner. No offer of extra payment to the spinners left was even contemplated. The impudence of such a demand was highlighted by the fact that only the week before, the Associated Companies of Jute Industries, whose chairman was Mr. J. Ernest Cox, had published their profits for the year showing a record £606,224 and declaring a dividend of 9 per cent, all of which Mr. Cox said was very satisfactory. No wonder Cox’s workers were hopping mad. The spinners refused to work the machines and held up the work for the rest of the mill, so the management then locked out all the workers. The mills in the Federation followed suit and in a few days 30,000 jute workers were on the streets swelling the number of unemployed to more than half the population of the city. The locked-out workers got no unemployment pay and were being denied relief from the parish council. There was no doubt in my mind that behind-the-scenes attempts were being made to smash the jute trade union and to try and bring the workers to heel.

The party had discussions with the workers involved and decided to approach the trades council. At first there was a joint effort to organise collections and pay out a few bob to the unemployed, but it soon became clear that this was not even scratching the surface of the problem. Arrangements were then made for a joint demonstration to demand that the parish council raise the relief rates and pay relief to all unemployed.

The demonstration was the largest, noisiest and possibly the most successful in Dundee’s history. The crowd assembled in the Albert Square. The newspapers at the time estimated that 50,000 filled the Square and the adjoining streets. The chairman, one of the locked-out workers, called on me to put the proposals on what should be done. I suggested that the demonstration should elect a delegation to go to the parish council, which was holding a meeting that evening, to table our demands. Secondly, that the crowd should form fours and march to the parish council offices at West Bell Street, making themselves and their demands heard on the way, and continue back to the Square where the delegation would return to give their report. A deputation of ten was selected including Billie Tom Stewart, Councillor John Ogilvie, the A.E. U. organiser Alf Maloney, myself and others. The ten heading the procession, we set off. When we reached West Bell Street there were hundreds of sweating policemen struggling with thousands of people, trying to keep them on the sidewalks so that the demonstration could pass on the road. All traffic was completely halted. In Dundee most of the jute employees were women and many of the husbands stayed at home to keep house and make the meals, so there was the contradictory spectacle of the majority of the marchers being women and those on the sidewalks men. The call went up from the women marchers: “Get the kettle-boilers in the march!” so there was a rush from the sidewalks into the road. The demonstration then became a seething mass of slow-moving humanity.

As the head of the march came to the parish council offices, the deputation dropped off and were admitted to the parish council meeting. At least we got there. A number of the parish councillors were unable to get in the front door and had to be hoisted in by the rear windows. The chairman, Davie Duncan, a pal of mine from the old Temperance movement days, opened the meeting, but no one heard a word he said; you could see his lips move but there was no sound. His voice was entirely drowned by the deafening noise from the thousands passing outside shouting slogans for unemployment benefit, increased relief rates, snatches of “The Red Flag”; the sound bounced off the walls of the building and filled every room. At last Bobby Allan, the clerk of the council, made signs that the delegation should be heard. Now Bobby Allan was a terror in Dundee. In the old days when the mothers wanted to frighten their children and get them to go to sleep they recited the old ditty:

“Hush ye, hush ye, dinna fret ye,

The Black Douglas’ll ne’er get ye.”

In many homes Bobby Allan had replaced the Black Douglas. He was a real swine who saw working-class people as beasts of burden and treated them as such.

Allan began by objecting to one of the delegation called McGuire and demanded that he be asked to leave. I promptly told him and the council that McGuire was an elected member of the delegation and if he left, all left. That finished that lot! So we had our say. I let Baillie Stewart and Councillor John Ogilvie, “Mr. Facing-both-ways” as we called him, have the first go. They started with tear-jerking humanitarianism, poor people without a crust of bread, children who were the future citizens starving, and so on. With the flint-hearted parish councillors that didn’t get us very far. When it came to my turn to speak, Davie Duncan said, “Please be brief, Bob.” “Why me?” I asked. I told them the workers were entitled to a good life and it was no fault of theirs that they were unemployed. I accused the jute bosses of locking out the workers and said they were deliberately trying to bust the trade union. “The workers won’t have it,” I said, “and what’s more if you don’t give them money to buy food and clothes, they will likely take them without asking your permission.” I cautioned them and said if there was any trouble then it was the fault of the parish council and not the starving workers.

Bobby Allan said there was the question of legality involved. Discussion would have to be held with government authorities on raising the scales of payment and certainly discussions with the unemployment exchange before any payments to the locked-out workers could be made. When Bobby cracked the whip the councillors usually obeyed, but on this occasion a few demurred. However, he had the majority with him. So we went back to the Albert Square to report. What a thunderous howl of rage greeted my simple announcement that the parish council were not prepared to move meantime! An unbiased outsider would have thought the day of revolution had arrived. From all sides came the demand to smash the council offices, to smash into the shops and take the goods “that belonged to the workers”. For a time it looked as if control of the meeting had been lost. The chairman then called on me to make any proposals of what could be done. I suggested that the demonstration refuse to accept the parish council decision as final, that the deputation should return to the council meeting, and that the demonstration form a procession again and march as before, only this time making their demands a bit louder. I knew that the “spies would be out” and that before we reached the council offices they would know what had transpired on the Square.

This time there was no one on the sidewalks; there was just a huge surging mass of humanity. On the way the window of G. L. Wilson the clothier went in, and this was followed by a few more, including the Buttercup Dairy, and a few goods were extracted; but the wonderful thing was that with the police impotent because of the vast surging mass, thousands of these people desperately in need of food and clothes remained disciplined and orderly.

When the deputation was received the second time I charged Bobby Allan with provoking the workers and creating a situation in which thousands of people could be seriously injured. I said if I went back and told these people nothing was to be done to relieve their distress, then it was the parish council who would be responsible for what would happen. Some of the councillors, no doubt already well briefed on what was happening, supported me, and Bobby Allan knew he would have to make concessions, so we started to talk. First it was conceded that the scales of payment should be raised, and then that the locked-out workers would be given relief while discussions proceeded with the unemployment exchange authorities. So it was back to the Square with a success report and victory for working-class solidarity and united action. This decision to a certain extent ended the starvation tactics of the jute employers and gave the workers confidence to fight on. Dundee people say Bobby Allan never forgot that evening and for years after he continued to extract revenge from the individual cases he dealt with in the parish council.

The case of the locked-out jute workers dragged on. The jute employers were hard men and did not give up easily. I am sure one of their aims was to smash the jute union, at least to cripple it. The case was discussed in parliament where Edmund Morel, M.P. for Dundee, demanded that something be done to end the lock-out. The Lord Provost tried to mediate but without success. Finally the Minister of Labour, Sir Montagu Barlow, intervened and set up a court of inquiry under the chairmanship of Sir David Shackleton. Naturally the report of the inquiry came down on the employers’ side but, if I remember correctly, it also said that increased rates should be given to the spinners, thus sweetening the blow. The lock-out lasted eight weeks, two months in which Dundee was a storm centre in every sense of the word. It was a remarkable coincidence, but true, that as the lock-out was ending the British Trades Union Congress was opening its first session in Dundee.

Breaking the Fetters Chapter 17: Red Agent in Glasgow.

As the membership of the Communist Party grew and our organisation developed, better relations with the Labour Party were established in many districts. At the 1922 Labour Party Conference held in Edinburgh in June, the right wing on the National Executive Committee placed a change of rule on the agenda that would prevent such unity and indeed would go a long way towards isolating the Communists from the labour movement. The rule in question concerned the eligibility of delegates to local and national Labour Party conferences and the selection of candidates, and the changes read:

a) Every person nominated to serve as a delegate shall individually accept the constitution and principles of the Labour Party.

b) No person shall be eligible as a delegate who is a member of any organisation having for one of its objects the return to Parliament or any Local Governing Authority of a candidate or candidates other than such as have been endorsed by the Labour Party or have been approved as running in association with the Labour Party.

This change of rule, carried by a two-to-one majority at the conference, was directly aimed at the Communist Party and created a new position in the British labour movement. It was discussed by the Communist Party National Executive, who decided to recommend to their members that where it was necessary, such as in Trades and Labour Councils, Communists should accept the constitution of the Labour Party, and that where Communists were standing for parliamentary or local council elections they should be withdrawn unless there was agreement with the local Labour Party, thus fulfilling the conditions required by the change of rule.

To discuss the executive’s recommendations, I called a special extended meeting of the Scottish District Executive, but fate decreed that we were to have something more on our plate in this discussion. At this time Borodin, a member of the Communist International, was in Britain, and had previously visited a number of districts in England and Wales. He was a lawyer by profession, an erudite and well-informed man. He came to Britain to get an on-the-spot understanding and appreciation of British politics and the way in which the British Communist Party was working.

When I met him in Scotland he told me he wanted to meet people in the labour movement, to get to know them, their background and their attitude to politics. He said I was the only party organiser who had really been able to do this for him. I think that was flattery. He knew all the fine arts of winning people. I had a number of discussions with him and, while I was undoubtedly able to help him in assessing the Scottish political scene, he also greatly assisted me in reaching a deeper appreciation of the way a serious politician must work to win mass support. He patiently explained the value of international work, international trade union contact, international exchange of information in the cultural and educational fields, all of which was very new to me.

At the extended Scottish Executive meeting, Willie Gallacher spoke for the National Executive, emphasising the tactics of the right wing of the Labour Party to drive the Communist members out of the working-class movement, out of the Trades and Labour Councils and finally out of the trade unions. Naturally Mr. Brown, for that was the name Borodin used, asked to speak. He was quite critical of the way a number of Communist members were working. “When I saw the Communist delegates at the Labour Party Conference,” he said, “I thought- if this is how the party is handling the situation then it is manœuvring very poorly.” Borodin was a great story-teller, and went on to say: “It is easy not to get drunk when you pass every saloon bar, but to be good politicians our members must learn to enter these places and not get drunk. To be able to seek affiliation to the Labour Party, the greatest saloon bar I have ever seen, to drink in the bar without getting drunk, that is what is needed. No party can avoid these places.” He talked about the Glasgow Trades and Labour Council. “Here is a basic working-class organisation with 362 affiliations representing 126,116 members. We have fifteen Communists representing their organisations. What do they do? Are we to allow them to be thrown out or do they stay inside and conduct work for the unity of the working class and for working-class policy? Do we fight on ground favourable to the right wing Labour people or on ground favourable to the left wing? Revolutionary tactics demand they stay inside.”

Despite the support of Willie Gallacher, Johnnie Campbell and Mr. Brown for these proposals, there was much criticism in the ensuing discussion of the National Executive’s recommendations, particularly the one seeking to withdraw our candidates where we got no agreement with the Labour Parties. We had already selected candidates for the next general election. J. V. Leckie, Tommy Clark and Ned Douglas, all members of the Scottish Executive, and various other comrades, had a real go. Frankly I could see their point of view and said so in the discussion. At one o’clock in the morning it was voted that we adjourn the meeting on the understanding that we would re-assemble the following week and try and finalise the position.

But the next meeting did not last long. We had just started when the Glasgow Criminal Investigation Department intervened in force. There were dozens of policemen and plainclothes men-they must have been concealed on all the stairs round about. They burst into the meeting and commenced to take all our names and addresses until they came to Brown. “Who is he?” they asked me.”A Yugoslav journalist visiting Scotland, interested in the Scottish Labour Movement,” I answered truthfully. “He’s the man we want,” and they left, taking Borodin with them. This was not an entirely new experience for me, but I admit to being worried during the questioning because I was standing beside a little sideboard we had in the office, hoping they would just leave me there. Fortunately they did. In the sideboard lay Borodin’s briefcase and his private papers. He also left a beautiful big panama hat which would have been a major sensation in Sauchiehall Street any day. I can’t remember who fell heir to that. Once the police had left, we set to work. Goods, chattels and papers were taken away to safe custody.

We arranged for food to be taken to Duke Street Gaol where Borodin lay on remand awaiting trial. This the law allowed. We had a relay of comrades who carried out this duty very willingly and well. The privilege stopped and then he had to exist on the normal prison diet which, in those days, to Borodin, must have been really nauseous, a real punishment indeed only kail and porridge daily.

Our most important task was to find a lawyer to take charge of his defence. Our choice was an ex-bricklayer who had won his way into the legal profession; his name was Alex McGillivray. He worked night and day. In the course of the case Borodin and McGillivray developed a great admiration and a real affection for each other. I never heard a lawyer speak of a client with such profound comradely feeling. Even so, the defence was not a smooth run. Borodin was trained in American law and practice and Alex had great difficulty in persuading him that this would not take a trick in the much more subtle practices of the Scottish Court.

The newspapers made a meal of the incident. “Underground Agent of Communism Caught”; “Red Agent in Glasgow” were two of the headlines. On Wednesday, 3oth August 1922, Borodin appeared in the Glasgow Court. The Procurator Fiscal was J. D. Strathearn and Borodin was charged that, at 156 Vincent Street, Glasgow, he (a) failed to produce a passport to the Registration Officer; (b) failed to produce a registration certificate; (c) refused to answer questions.

The Procurator Fiscal said Mr. Brown, alias Borodin, was a Yugoslav journalist, in Britain without the knowledge or authority of his country. How he came to Britain was not known. The British Intelligence considered him a dangerous person because he was sent to this country to foster revolution and had been found in Glasgow about to deliver an address. The C.I.D. considered his arrest very important. He had previously been in Britain, but on this occasion had only been in Glasgow one day (a big build-up for the efficiency of the Glasgow C.I.D., but a lie). The Procurator Fiscal asked for a prison sentence and deportation. The sentence was six months’ imprisonment with deportation immediately on release.

Note from Special Branch about Borodin’s imprisonment.

Borodin served his time in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. He did not like jail, a sentiment I strongly shared with him. He said Barlinnie was colder than Siberia and having sampled both he would be a good judge of that. We did our best to cheer him up while he was on remand, taking in food and news of the outside world. I remember buying one of those iron plates that hold hot water and keep the food warm, to take into prison. Probably because of the coldness of the prison, he always asked for hot food.

Borodin was unfortunate in prison. He worked in the laundry and was badly scalded on the feet and legs with boiling water. Six months pass slowly in prison but fast enough outside. I got special visits to see him and much of our discussion dealt with his deportation. He was like a bird in a cage and his release and deportation must have been a welcome relief to him.

I had to consult with the Russian Trade Delegation about Borodin’s deportation. They were stubborn and, in my opinion, unreasonable people and I became a real angry man. However, I finally persuaded them I was right and on his release off Borodin sailed.

I met Borodin again on my first visit to Moscow when I went there to work on a British Commission. Borodin was very helpful to me during this long survey. After this I was asked to return to Moscow to work at the Comintern headquarters. I was very reluctant and doubtful about my competence to do this work but Borodin pleaded with me to accept. “Bob,” he said, “you come. I will give you all the help you need.” When I arrived in Moscow some time later, with my wife and daughter, as a delegate from the British Communist Party to the Comintern, Borodin had gone, I think to China. Anyway, he was not there to give the “every help” he had promised.

Naturally the Borodin arrest had a profound effect on the Scottish Party. There was an inquisition amongst ourselves as to how the leak had taken place. I began to treat the work with greater carefulness. Afterwards, when the full story was known, we discovered that the leakage did not come from Scotland but from further South.

Breaking the Fetters Chapter 16: The Caerphilly By-election.

This was the first parliamentary election ever to be contested by the British Communist Party. The decision to contest was taken by the Party Executive on July 16th 1921. The main reasons were, firstly, the severe attack on the party at the time sixty-eight leading Communists had been arrested and many of them, like myself, were doing hard labour. Secondly, the economic position was becoming desperate. In July, the unemployment figures, according to the Labour Gazette, were 2,178,000. Thirdly, it was a mining constituency and the betrayal of the miners by the right-wing Labour leaders had just taken place. Black Friday was only a few months before the by-election. During the miners’ struggle the party had supported them wholeheartedly throughout and in fact was the only political party to give full support, and we were therefore entitled to stand in a mining constituency. No doubt the reason that I was selected as the candidate was because I had been arrested for delivering speeches in favour of the miners’ wage demands and, when the election date was announced, was actually in jail only a few miles from the constituency. For these reasons the party decided that a contest was necessary and completely justified.

The selection of a Labour candidate created some trouble. A whole number of right-wing labourites, including Ramsay McDonald, were angling for what was considered a safe seat. However, the miners were so disgusted with the action of the right-wingers during the struggle of the Triple Alliance (miners, transport workers and railwaymen) and the final sell-out of Black Friday, that they had no hope of support from the miners’ lodges. The eventual choice of candidate for Labour was Morgan Jones. Like myself, he had been a conscientious objector during the war, but only on religious grounds. He was one of the big guns of the Independent Labour Party, a Baptist lay preacher and at the time of the election, Chairman of the Bible Classes in the valley and, as Tommy Jackson said, “this endeared him to the old women of both sexes”. He was a nice chap but not a virile working-class politician. The Coalition (Tory- Liberal) candidate was Ross Edmunds.

Morgan Jones had the full Labour election machine behind him- the Labour Party, the Miners Federation and the Daily Herald. Even the Free Church Council campaigned vigorously on his behalf. The Daily Herald laid it on thick. “A brilliant young man with a promising career before him–a man who was born among you a fine Baptist who can speak Welsh.”

The government candidate, Edmunds, had the traditional Tory and Liberal Party machines and all the capitalist newspapers on his side. To match this, we were a handful of rebels, maybe sixty in all mostly strangers to the district–with no election machinery, no tradition, no money, nothing to give except the “message” of working-class struggle to gain political power. Our main slogan during the election was ” All Power To The Workers”. Yet we conducted such a powerful political campaign that three days before the poll the Labour Party got the wind up, and in the Labour camp, with its big battalions, the word went out to smash the Communists. The Labour Party bullied, cajoled and wheedled and finished with an SOS- “Don’t split the vote and let the Coalition candidate in”, while the chapels worked overtime calling for the protection of Morgan Jones from the ungodly Reds.

We had a wonderful team of speakers- -Bill Gallacher, Helen Crawfurd and John McLean from Scotland, Walton Newbold, Arthur McManus, Bert Joy, Harry Webb, Joe Vaughan, who came within a hair’s breadth of winning Bethnal Green for the Communist Party in the 1924 parliamentary election, Tommy Jackson and myself. Open-air speaking was our strength. We opened our meetings in the Square in Caerphilly at ten o’clock in the morning and closed them at eleven o’clock at night. We swept the Coalition candidate supporters from the streets altogether, they retired from this arena defeated. Early on in the campaign, a Coalition speaker challenged Harry Webb during one of his speeches to a debate, and this was arranged to take place at Abertridwr. The hour arrived for the debate but not the Coalition speaker; he did not turn up. Bill Gallacher had a debate in public with a group headed by Captain Gee, VC. It was a political massacre of Coalition policies. One of my happiest recollections of the election was of a meeting when Edmunds asked me to state where I stood in relation to the industrial strife in British industry, and then I watched his face as I replied. His fixed conception of the inevitability of the master-worker permanent industrial relationship took a very hard knock.

I remember one night Gallacher and I were speaking at a place called Sengenet. The local synod had been having a meeting and when they finished a number of ministers came around the meeting to have some fun. “Ah! The Bolsheviks! Why don’t you read the Bible?” shouted one of them. Now that was a real question! Challenging Bill Gallacher and me to read the Bible! We gave them Bible lessons they had never dreamed of. Then, when they were quietened, and the audience were laughing their heads off, I told them quietly, “That’s what you get for putting people like Gallacher and me in gaol and making the Bible compulsory reading.”

Another time Tommy Jackson was holding forth to an audience in Caerphilly, when on looking up he noticed that the tower of the castle was leaning to one side. “There you are,” he said, “even the castle tower is leaning to the left.” It was just as well he was holding the meeting at that stance because if he had gone to the other side he would have seen it leaning to the right. Still, Tommy was always one to make the best of any situation.

Apart from our splendid team of propagandists we had dozens of hard workers on the knocker, selling our pamphlets, chalking, arguing in the streets and in the pubs. Everywhere there were people, our fellows were there. Many of them were unemployed and had come from all over Scotland, London, the Midlands and from every part of Wales- to help the party. To go into the committee rooms late in the evening and watch this bunch getting their shake-downs ready for the night was like walking into a picture from John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook The World. But they were a real bunch of first-class fighters. Dai Davies had charge of the Election Address and the job was done competently and on time.

In our campaign it was the transport that took the eye. One national newspaper talked of “Bolshevik emissaries rushing through the Caerphilly Division in expensive cars.” Actually, what happened was that Jimmy Shand came down with his big car from Liverpool and it did valuable service. It was certainly a big flash car; it seemed to hold dozens at a time and with great speed transported speakers and workers to the assigned places. Jimmy was possibly one of the best car drivers I ever knew, certainly one of the few I would sit back and trust on a pitch-black night, driving on a Welsh mountain-side.

The night before the poll I was talking to some journalists who were covering the election. They said, “Your speakers are first class, they have made a great impact. They have destroyed any chance the Coalition candidate had of pulling a patriotic vote-catching stunt, but in attacking and exposing the weakness of his policy you have created a real fear that a split vote will let the Coalition candidate in. You have frightened the Labour crowd and made them work as they have never done before. Your campaign has made the voters class-conscious enough to make them vote Labour but not enough to make them whole-hog Communists.” One should never under-estimate the wisdom of press reporters when speaking off the record and not for their papers, because the final result on polling day bore out their estimation:

Morgan Jones (Lab.) – 13, 699

Ross Edmunds (C. & L.)- 8, 957

Bob Stewart (Comm.) – 2, 592

We lost our deposit. We had spent all our money. In a constituency twenty miles broad, to cross which meant climbing three mountains real ones, not home-made mountains, as Ernie Brown called the slag heaps at the pits. We had given all the energy we had in a tremendously exhausting campaign. What did we get in return? In South Wales mining districts in 1921 there was mass unemployment, a psychology of gloom and despair. Labour was chanting “Leave it all to Parliament- direct action is dead”. We roused enthusiasm in many who had lost hope; we won an understanding that action by the rank and file was essential. We put light back in eyes grown leaden with despair, the spring back in the step of many a young miner, we painted a picture of a future of opportunity and prosperity.

For the first-ever Communist parliamentary election contest this was a real achievement. As the crowds waited for the result of the election, Gallacher, in his inimitable way, started a sing-song and soon everyone had joined in. When the result was announced, you would have thought by the shout that greeted the Communist vote that we had won the seat. We did not win the seat but we won many other things including, most of all, the appreciation that the British Communist Party had a right to take its place in parliamentary elections, against the alleged statesmen whose policies spelt ruin to Britain.

Breaking the Fetters Chapter 14: Scottish Party Organiser.

After the formation of the British Communist Party at the Leeds Conference, the main task was to build and strengthen the organisation. I was elected as the Scottish organiser, a very tough assignment.

The main political problem then was the beginning of mass unemployment, the fight for work, and the divisions which this creates in the working-class movement. During the war most big factories had established their “factory committees”. But now many of the factory committee members had become
unemployed, and factory committees had employed and unemployed workers working together. This, however, gradually ceased and there began the unemployed workers’ committees which led to the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement which was to play such an important role in the working-class struggles of the 1920s. This segregation of employed and unemployed workers was not then and never has been a good thing for workers in struggle. One section is always played off against the other by the boss and inevitably the boss wins.

Naturally our fellows, being the most militant, suffered most and were the first victims in the factories. Many joined the ranks of the unemployed, and while this meant they had time for political campaigning it cut them off from the much more decisive political work in the factory organisation.

In this setting we commenced to gather together the socialist fragments and build the Communist Party in Scotland. We inherited the British Socialist Party branches, the Communist Labor Party branches, and Socialist Prohibition Fellowship Party branches. All rather loose in organisation, and as I very soon found out, very inflated in assumed membership. The Communist Labour Party were supposed to bring over 4,000 members but I doubt if there was half that
number. The British Socialist Party claimed to bring over 10,000 members. If they did, there were thousands I never saw and I very much doubt if anyone else ever saw them. Propaganda was our strong point. We had many excellent speakers, and all dead sure of themselves. Tom Bell, for years the editor of The Communist; Willie Gallacher, for fifteen years M.P. for West Fife; Johnnie Campbell, who became editor of the Daily Worker, and Bill Joss, one of the ablest lecturers in the Scottish Labour College. These and many others made up a brilliant team of socialist agitators for the Scottish district of the new party.

Copies of *The Communist-* a forerunner of *The Daily Worker.*

Then there was the selling of our paper, The Communist, an extremely important part of our political work. With self-sacrificing effort of fellows like big Pat Quinlan, Malcolm McFarlane and others the sales rose by thousands. Nothing was a handicap to them. They were out on sales late and early, in snow, sleet and rain, nothing deterred them. At this period I remember one strange incident that came up in the ordinary course of the work. In Glasgow there was a big Irish docker named Jimmy Fearns. He originally came from Newry in Northern Ireland, and I think he was one of the founders of the Irish Citizen Army. Jimmy was out of work and, like most people in his circumstances, living in one of the model lodging houses for which Glasgow was famous-or infamous, depending on which way you look at it. I never knew why the name “model” was given to these dens of human suffering, they were certainly revoltingly original, but never model. One morning Jimmy came to me and said:

“Bob, can’t we do something for the modelers?”

“Have they any grievances?” I asked.

“Sure they got nothing but grievances.”

So we had a meeting with a number of representatives from the models, mostly men living apart from their wives and families and trying to keep two homes going. We got their grievances, published a leaflet and distributed it around the lodging houses. Because of this agitation a number of these places became cleaner and started to provide more up-to-date cooking and washing facilities.

The story was not without sequel. We were amply repaid for our work. For us there was the guarantee that our meetings in Glasgow were conducted in a peaceful atmosphere. The modelers were very handy fellows when the occasion arose. They lived in a society in which “might was right” and if there was any attempt to break up our meetings they soon put an end to that nonsense, saying “they defended those who defended them.”

The Scottish organisation took shape on the basis of our propaganda meetings. We had branches in every big borough from Glasgow to Aberdeen and a lone scout or two in places like Inverness, Dumfries, Perterhead and Fraserburgh. We listed speakers for the meetings, checked that they were advertised- because in those days it was a hit or miss business, sometimes the speaker did not turn up, sometimes the meetings were not advertised and there was no audience. All arrangements had to be checked and re-checked.

This meant money, and sometimes the sums were large, at least large for us. Two members of the Scottish Executive who did a magnificent job on finance for the party were John Inches and George Whitehead. By their work the Scottish Party was entirely self supporting, and with good finances the
political and organisation work of the party received most attention. Thus early I already understood that freedom from financial worry is a boon to a Communist Party organiser.

The most distinguishing feature of the Scottish Party then was its solid industrial base. In fact, the party was so working-class that there was a real antipathy to what was termed “the intellectuals”. It was entirely wrong of course and was combated by the Party. At that time we had a number of students; one of them, Phil Canning, later to be elected as a Communist Councillor in Greenock for many years, became an outstanding representative of the working class. Our students became swallowed up in revolutionary thought and began to absent themselves from their university classes, thinking the revolution was round the corner. I had long conversations with them, and patiently explained that just as in the workshop a Communist had to be a capable worker and win the respect of his mates, so in the college and university the students must do the same. If a Communist could not pull his weight then his “preaching” will fall on deaf ears. A student with a degree was a much more valuable political worker than a student without a degree.

Our solid industrial base came largely from the members who had come to the party from the Clyde Workers’ Movements and the militant workers from the mines and the railways who also had an excellent record of militancy during the war. But they also brought a number of problems. Our relations with the Labour Party were not good. This was partly of our own making, in that many of the groups that had preceded the new Communist Party and helped to form it had a very abusive attitude towards the Labour Party. Many of these members were strong political individualists and spent the greater part of their political life calling the Labour Party names. Not that sometimes the abuse was not called for, but nevertheless it was not the right way to go about trying to cement relationships that certainly would have helped us to gain more working-class unity in action.

We also inherited a problem from the Socialist Labour Party, who had laid down that their members would not accept trade union office lest they be corrupted. We naturally had to fight against that principle; corruption in the trade unions was then and still is an occupational hazard for which membership of the Communist Party is a good antidote. This, however, was one of the reasons why many militant trade union leaders in Scotland did not immediately join our party.

Our principal problem in industry was to get a balanced understanding of the political work of the party, engaging in every struggle in the social field and blending this with our industrial work in the fight for wages and better working conditions. This conception was foreign to British politics and therefore the hardest nut to crack for our party. A break had been made during the war in the rent struggles on the Clydeside, which culminated in the pressure on the authorities being so great that a new Rent Act was passed in Parliament. The Clyde Workers’ Movement had played a decisive part in this fight, organising the workers in the factories and combining with the tenants’ organisations. In fact, it can truly be said it was this successful combination of social and industrial struggle that was the main reason for the success gained.

We also had to try and overcome strong syndicalist traditions which still endured in industry. In this there was good and bad. I well remember when the late Jack Tanner came to the party, at that time a strong syndicalist-in fact, he edited a paper called The Syndicalist from somewhere in Fetter Lane, London. But Handsome Jack, as he was called, developed ambitions to become a trade union leader and the Communist label did not make for an easy passage, so Jack
changed the label.

Another syndicalist, but one who was quickly shedding his syndicalist ideas and who came to the party, was Tom Mann. A great national and international figure and the first Labour candidate to contest Aberdeen; a fine trade unionist, a first-class politician, a great social mixer, known to everyone left, right and centre, respected by all and one of the best speakers the Communist Party ever had; Tom Mann was a great asset to the British trade union movement and an excellent representative of the Communist Party.

In these early days the party attracted all kinds of industrial do-gooders and the sieve of struggle sorted them out. In Scotland we got our quota, but the vast majority of our members were fine men and women, with the success of the working-class struggles and the achievement of socialism as their main aim. We had leading miners from every coalfeld, engineers like Willie Gallacher and Hugh Hinselwood, Tom Bell and Jim Gardner (later to be the general secretary of the Foundry Workers Union) from the foundry workers, from the railways Jimmy Davidson and Jimmy Figgins who many years later was general secretary of the N.U.R., and George Whitehead from the Clerks. They and many others were held in the very highest esteem in the unions and the factories, enhancing the prestige of our party.

At that time we had not reached the stage of factory organisation, but there is no doubt that the work of our industrial members at the formative stage of the party laid a firm base for party industrial work in Scotland which has endured, expanded and strengthened until the present time. One of the big disappointments when the party was formed in Scotland was that John McLean, one of the foremost members of the British Socialist Party, did not join the new
Communist Party.

McLean was undoubtedly one of the greatest British socialists of all time. Lenin spoke of him as a fearless fighter against imperialist war. When the first All Russian Congress of Workers and Soldiers’ Councils met, John McLean and Karl Leibknecht were appointed honorary members of the presidium in recognition of the great international character of their socialist work. Later McLean was appointed as the first consul for Russian affairs in Great Britain. In this job he did a vast amount of work and many Russians then living in Britain thanked him for his assistance.

McLean’s main aim was to have Labour Colleges in every county and city in Scotland and he succeeded in doing so in all the main cities and in many of the counties. These colleges brought many thousands of Scottish workers closer to the understanding of socialist principles. As a school teacher and a mass working-class leader McLean naturally gravitated to this form of mass socialist education. I was an Executive member of the Scottish Labour College, worked with McLean, and came to appreciate his outstanding capabilities in this form of work.

I am many times asked, “Why did McLean not join the Communist Party?’ I have always found some difficulty in answering. John McLean was a Communist. His life and work was that of a dedicated Communist motivated by sincere socialist principles. He was a most energetic man and never at rest, a powerful debater and a skilful propagandist. He could hold a crowd for hours with his oratory. He was a comparatively easy man to work with, but more an individualist worker than a collective one. There can be no doubt that the long spells in His Majesty’s prisons totally undermined his health and that this had an effect on his thinking in his later years, when he became obsessed with the idea that he would be poisoned. He refused to eat in anyone’s house and on occasions refused food even from his wife. I noticed this particularly when he came down to assist me in the Caerphilly by-election in which I stood as the Communist candidate.

He told me he did not like a number of the leading members of the Communist Party, but I think he would not be alone in that, and we had a number of discussions on this question. Yet such things should not detract from the indispensable contribution John McLean made to the advancement of the British working class. He was truly a giant in the British labour
movement and an international socialist of whom the British people can be proud.

His early death in 1923 was a great blow to the Scottish working class.