Tag: Secret Service

Comrades: Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky (Part Two).

The second of two pictures of Anatole Kaminsky in his MI5 file.

Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky married Bob Stewart’s daughter Annie at some point during 1933. This is an overview of what I found in his security file when I visited the National Archives last year and any inaccuracies are my own. This post concerns information the British secret services gathered on him during his brief visits to Britain while the details of his arrest and execution can be found in ‘Comrades: Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky (Part One)’. Ultimately, this is all the information I have found out about Kaminsky but I would love to know more.

Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky first arrived in the United Kingdom on the 10th September 1930. Sailing from the Hook of Holland and docking at Harwich, it’s likely that it was his first visit or, at least, he had never caught the attention of the security services before. His arrival records state that he was 23 years old, a Russian national and that he carried a Soviet passport. His proposed address in the UK was given as “Arcos, London”. Arcos was the All-Russian Co-operative Society – the organisation which oversaw Anglo-Soviet trade. Three years before, its Hampstead headquarters had been raided by the British authorities and evidence of espionage uncovered. The whole affair had been a cause celebre and the relationship between Britain and the Soviet Union, always palpably frosty, had cooled somewhat as a consequence. Kaminsky came in on a six month visa and was employed as a commercial secretary. It’s clear from the outset that the security services were intending to keep an eye on him.

Initial investigations found that Kaminsky was much more than a secretary. In a letter dated 27th March 1930 Captain Guy Liddell, then of Special Branch, wrote to Oswald Allen Harker in MI5 with the following information:

Dear Harker,

 Application was made a short time ago in Moscow for a visa for Anatole Naumovitch KAMINSKI,  born 1907. This man who was then secretary of the Scientific Technical Section of the Society for the Promotion of Cultural Relations with Countries Abroad in Moscow, was coming here as a secretary to Arcos. Preliminary enquiries through SIS show that he is a scientist and is in touch with military scientific men in the “Revoyensoviet”. He has also been working in the Osoaviachim. He is a full member of the VKP (b).

KAMINSKI arrived her on the 10th September and proceeded to 81, Kensington Gardens Square, W.

The involvement with the Osoaviachim was of particular concern as that was the society concerned with the construction of military aircraft and chemical warfare research. There is little else in the file at this point other than establishing links with the director of Arcos Vladimir Belgoff and his wife Sophie. There was a request to intercept all mail at the Belgoff’s address 14 Tenterden Drive in Hendon and it looks like Kaminsky might have been staying with them for a time.

I assume Kaminsky left the UK sometime in March 1931 due to the length of his visa. However, he made a return visit in December of that year as part of The Trade Delegation of the USSR in Great Britain and, this time, he was listed as a “consulting economist”. Shortly after this on the 7th January 1932,  he appeared in a news story in the Daily Mail. Despite the snideness of the journalist remarking on Kaminsky’s “broken English” the economist’s assurances that his activities are strictly business and nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence gathering are spectacularly unconvincing.

Transcript of The Daily Mail article from 1932 Anatole Kaminsky’s MI5 file.

ARCOS IMPUDENCE.

Demands to British Firms.

An impudent letter which British firms have received recently from Arcos is making them wonder what secret object the Soviet trade organisation in this country  is pursuing under the disguise of innocent business relationships.

The letter explains that Arcos is anxious to “tabulate information on industrial and technical lines concerning their production and general characteristics of distinguished British firms, with whom we have commercial relations, to be placed upon record for reference when deciding orders for the forthcoming year.”

It proceeds: “We ask you especially to give technical information in detail such as measurements, size and capacity of machines.” It demands information “in detail” and not “under general headings” and instructs that replies should be sent “in triplicate.”

Then follows a questionnaire, half of which could be filled in from ordinary business books. It includes such questions as dividends paid, if any, from 1926 to 1931 and number of work people employed.

‘Comrade’ A. KAMINSKY, of the economic department of Arcos, is responsible for this piece of effrontery. He had little explanation to offer yesterday when asked by a Daily Mail reporter what was the object of this so-called business inquiry. “Just to assist us in making purchases,” he answered in broken English.

When it was suggested to him that the replies would be useful for the secret archives of Moscow, ‘Comrade’ KAMINSKY gave his favourite answer: “Oh, no, you make big mistake, just business purposes only.”

Kaminsky came to the attention of the security services again in January 1933 when he arrived in the UK on a short term visa only valid for a few months. It stated that he was returning to the same post, however, during this time, it was his personal life rather than the professional which interested MI5. It is likely that this was when he married Bob Stewart’s daughter Annie, my father’s Aunt Nan. There are several enquiries about this and it is confirmed by Superintendent Canning of Special Branch in May of that year.

“In reference to the enquiries which you were recently good enough to have made regarding Annie Walker STEWART (301/MP/2860), it has just been reported from a source which is I think reliable, that this woman is married to a Russian called KAMINSKY.”

Of course the security services were already interested in Bob Stewart for his roles in the covert finance of the CPGB, his time as the British representative to the Comintern and his associations in Ireland. They also clearly considered Annie and her older brothers William and Rab to be persons of interest due to their links to Arcos and it is likely that all three had some involvement, however slight, in Bob’s underground activities.

Although Annie’s marriage to a Soviet official who seemed to be rising  through the ranks would have ensured the security services attention it seems the pair did little to attract it. The next mention of Kaminsky is from March 1934 when the passport office is extending his visa and its confirmed that, “This alien has not come under notice.”

Nevertheless, MI5 still tracked Kaminsky’s  movements and gathered information on him. There’s a record that on March 4th 1934 there was a lecture at the “London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The lecturer was to be A. KAMINSKY, Soviet Economist, of the First Moscow State University, and the subject to be ‘The Second Five Year Plan.’” Also that year MI5 received intelligence that Kaminsky was “the real power behind Arcos” and that he was “either married to or living with Nan STUART, the daughter of the Clydeside Communist.” One hopes the agent who drafted that memo was slightly more knowledgeable about potential threats to the nation than they were about Scottish geography. Bob was a Dundonian – not a Glaswegian.  It’s likely they were confusing Bob with Willie Gallacher.

By October 1935, Anatole and Annie had moved to Moscow although they were in regular contact with the family back in London. Being so far away Annie would have been eager for news from home and, in the files, there is an intercepted letter from Bob dated the 8th October. The security services were mostly interested in the references to Harry Pollitt, the head of the CPGB and his wife Marjorie. However, the letter is largely domestic. Bob’s  wife Margaret is ‘in the tub’ and Bob is taking the opportunity to write to their daughter. There is some news of ‘Bill and family’ –  my grandfather, grandmother  and my dad – baby Robin- who would have been two years old at the time. There’s some gossip about Rab, Bob’s middle child  and his new girlfriend. The anecdote about them singing makes me smile as when I met his daughter Linda for the first time last year she remarked that what her father loved above all else was music. Towards the end there’s some talk of knitting and this is because Annie would have been pregnant at the time with my father’s cousin Greg. Bob and Margaret were eagerly awaiting their second grandchild.

Part of the letter from Bob Stewart to Annie and Anatole. (1935).

Dear N & N again,

Your letter arrived a couple of hours ago and we three enjoyed its contents. So very glad to know that you are both so well. This seems to be washing night. Rab balked and hopped off to bed, mother is now in the tub. While the old man, like the dutiful father he is, sits down to write this letter straight away lest tomorrow he should be too busy in other directions. The new situation is imposing duties that cannot wait as you will readily appreciate. We are well in health. Rab walks fairly comfortably now and is on the hunt for a job. Mother is all right again and of course the old man is the XXXX-XXXX-XXXX or thereby.

We were glad that you remembered our Welsh friends who are really the most excellent comrades. I hope you will be successful in helping them out. Very glad that P____ is going to help you get numbers? Tolia has many things to do and maybe he is modest about his own comfort. We were so glad to get his picture cards from way down South to find that his writing arm was still in good order. I gave Harry your message- he says it’s between you and Marjorie whom I saw a day or two ago. She is looking and feeling very well as is Jean who played merry hell when I couldn’t play with her any longer. We have not seen Bill and family for a fortnight but they are all well and Robin has had more photographs taken. Everyone likes to take his picture and he quite likes it. We have now got a big one of him and all the lady visitors are taking him for a walk -he is so lovely to look at they say.

We have had numbers of visitors recently among them XXXX’s auntie who is much interested in you but more in Rab who needs to help with the printers of whom we have now quite a few. We had Tom Wilson and C____ up for tea and we had a young girlfriend from a distance staying the weekend. She and Rab sang all our favourites till the wee sma’ oors. It was delightful. She reminded mother very much of you although her singing was a vast improvement on yours. She went away home overwhelmed by the kindness of your mother which is not unusual. We also had a visit from one of the numerous Clark family who want me to share with you the joys of the children’s movement at home. I don’t remember his first name he’s got a job in some club or hotel down Leatherhead way – not much of a job but better than idleness. Yes! We read in your XXXX all about the XXXX  expansion of trade and the XXXX values brings to you all. It’s a remarkable achievement and opens the door to new XXXX. It’s a consolidation of brilliance compared to the darkening skies elsewhere. The centre the world’s attention is now on Africa and as you’ll see by the British XXXX there is a lack of confusion and in some cases XXXX XXXX in our movement. It’s an acid test that will reveal much base metal. Probably you will have seen Jane ‘ere you get this. I hope she will benefit from her sojourn in your country. Hope to get some of your orders shipped in the course of the next fortnight if I’m not called away! I notice the knitting needles being used here and no doubt you’ll be pleased with the result – the other fittings may not be so easy to get but will have a good try on the first fine day. I think that’s all I’ve got to say at this time except that the weather is as wet as you have had it. Even as we are all bearing up – always cheered up when your letters come along. All the same I could have sat in on mothers celebration and I think Rab’s teeth were watering when I thought of what he could have done had he been around. I don’t know if I told you that Jimmy B had a XXXX XXXX badly and has been under medical care for three weeks. He seems to have got over the worst but it is a XXXX XXXX blow as he had to cancel all engagements and new ones will not be easy to get. Cheerio- it’s bedtime.

Love from all to you all,

 Dad.

(I’ve used XXXX when I can’t make out the Bob’s handwriting.)

Greg was born in Moscow in early 1936 and, in the summer,  Annie took him to London so that everyone could be introduced to the latest addition to the family. Anatole stayed behind in the Soviet Union but wrote regularly. MI5 intercepted the following letter from him addressed to Annie and their son. The letter has all the hallmarks of the new parent  – concern, pride and love. However, just over a year later Anatole’s brother, Grigory, was arrested and executed in Stalin’s purges, setting in motion his own imprisonment and eventual murder.

Letter from Anatole Kaminsky to Annie Stewart. (1936).

17th June 1936

Dearest Nan and XXXX

Last night I received your long letter and felt very happy that you are managing well. It was nice to hear that calm and sunny weather made your journey bright and not a difficult one.

A few days ago I got your note from the sea and Dad’s ‘epistle’. It makes a pleasant reading to find out that old people and the whole family are taking such a keen interest in our wee sonny. I think he already succeeded to prove that he is a thoroughly good boy and deserves all the love and care bestowed upon him. As to his ??? on the face I think it will go away after some fresh fruit and vegetable diet of his milking cow – (Sorry to use zoo terms!)

Have a complete rest, change over to fruit eats and drinks and don’t take troubles of any kind. I don’t give anymore advice is as you have very good advisers around you with lots of experience gained during a long life. The only remark will be the main thing is to develop regular habits a good regime.

Anatole

According to his file, Anatole made one more visit to the United Kingdom. Beforehand, the Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky wrote to the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to request a visa so Kaminsky could attend trade negotiations.

M. Maisky,  Ambassador of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in Great Britain, presents his compliments to His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and has the honour to request a visa for M. Anatole Kaminsky who is a financial expert, and is coming to this country to take part in the financial negotiations which are going on between the Trade Representative of the USSR in London and the Board of Trade.

As his presence here is urgently required, M. Maisky would be obliged if the instructions granting him a visa could be telegraphed to Moscow at the Embassy’s expense.

 11th of July, 1936.

The Rt. Hon. Anthony Eden, MC, MP,

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky arrived in Britain from Amsterdam by aeroplane on or around the 1st August 1936 and was recorded as an “Economic Advisor to the USSR Trade Delegation.” An unconditional landing was granted. This is the last record I can find of Kaminsky in the MI5 files until 1956 when, after Khruschev’s speech denouncing Stalin,  Annie and her teenage son, Greg found out exactly what had happened to him after his arrest by the NKVD in June 1938.

Alan Stewart.

Comrades: Michael Robin Stewart.

Michael Robin Stewart (1933-2018).

Before it got dropped from the GCSE English Literature syllabus, I used love teaching ‘Before You Were Mine’ by Carol Ann Duffy. In the poem, Duffy describes a photograph of her mother as a teenager, laughing with two friends on a Glasgow street corner in the 1950s. The wind blows her polka dot dress around Marilyn Monroe style. Duffy was recently bereaved when she wrote it and the snapshot presents an altogether different person from the parent she knew. The image prompts her to imagine the intense years of teenage life and early adulthood of her mother a decade before she was born. Growing up, Duffy caught glimpses of the person her mother used to be but, of course, they had become someone else entirely.

The poem offered me a lot of scope in the classroom to do what I do best: show off a lot. Nicking my partner’s high heels so I could act out the infant Duffy walking around in her mother’s shoes and bringing in a stray disco ball we had in the living room and suspending it in front of the Smartboard projector to mimic a dancehall from the mid twentieth century. All of this, I imagined, would highlight to the class the distance between who their parents were now and who they used to be. I’m not sure how much my students learned but I had fun. It’s strikes me now that that a tendency to put on a performance at the drop of a hat and a love of poetry are two of the main things I’ve inherited from my dad. My most perfect memories of him are when he was entertaining crowds of drinkers during Christmas and New Year in the pub he ran and, at other times, being the only person I knew who would sit quietly reading poetry behind the bar on a slow afternoon shift while the cigarette between his fingers became three quarters ash before collapsing all down his front. My parents had children quite late on in life for their generation and perhaps it’s because my father and Duffy’s mother would have been roughly contemporaries that this particular poem resonates with me. When he died I came to realise there was so much about him I didn’t really know.

To my brother and I he was ‘Dad’, to practically everyone else he was ‘Mike’ but to his side of the family, who we rarely met, he was ‘Robin’. I have a mountain of photographs of him in his youth and, if I weren’t a terrible poet, I might attempt something along the lines of ‘Before You Were Mine’. However, by way of consolation, I have much more than old photographs. Thanks to the security services interest in his grandfather Bob, and to a lesser extent his own father Bill, both founder members of the Communist Party of Great Britain, my father occasionally turns up in the intercepted letters, transcripts of bugged conversations and observation logs of MI5, all of which are available at the National Archives. I can’t put into words what it meant to find him there. You’d expect there to be an element of Cold War spy movie glamour in all this but the reality is much more mundane. He was an odd figure to turn up in the files – categorically the least likely threat to the nation’s security who ever lived. That didn’t stop the state secretly documenting his existence by default. What follows are the moments where I’ve found him in the once top secret documents. Of course it doesn’t describe the person I knew – it’s an imperfect and haphazard depiction reliant on stray comments from many different people made years apart. The reader is unlikely to get an idea of of who my dad was from all this and whether it is of interest to anyone else I can’t tell but it matters little. I write all this down purely for my brother Ian, myself and our mother. We loved him and we miss him. It is the fifth anniversary of his death and we wish he was still here.

The first appearance is an extract from a letter written in 1933 by Red Clydeside hero and future Communist MP Willie Gallacher to his wife. He mentions Bob Stewart’s return from one of his many trips abroad and his surprise on his return to find out he had become a grandfather. The baby was our dad who was born a few weeks before.

…I saw Bob Stewart yesterday. Bill’s wife is in hospital. She had a baby a couple of days ago. Bob didn’t know a thing until it arrived. Both are doing well…

Just over two years later dad appears in a letter from Bob Stewart to his daughter Nan and her husband Anatole Kaminsky. The couple had recently moved to Moscow and are eager for news about the family. Even as a toddler dad seems to be demonstrating one of his key characteristics- a love of the limelight and thriving in front of an audience.

…We have not seen Bill and family for a fortnight but they are all well and Robin has had more photographs taken. Everyone likes to take his picture and he quite likes it. We have now got a big one of him and all the lady visitors are taking him for a walk -he is so lovely to look at they say…. (8/10/35)

“…Everyone like to take his picture and he quite likes it…”

The next encounters are via the reports of MI5 agents as they follow my grandfather, eager to find out what exactly his job at the Soviet Embassy entails. It’s all very John Le Carre. Is it weird to know that spies were watching your dad play in the park when he was three years old? Yes.

17th August 1936.

re/ William STEWART, Soho Street, W

For thirteen days, between 30th July and 15th inst. observation was kept on this man but nothing of importance was seen except on 10th inst. when he and GLADING met for half an hour, between 1 and 2 p.m. at a public house in Queens Road, W.

STEWART attends the Soviet Embassy daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and appears to be employed there the whole of that time apart from his hour for lunch which he takes generally alone at a cafe or public house at Notting Hill Gate.

On leaving work he goes direct home and usually remains there although on one or two occasions he has taken his young child to play in Hyde Park…

Reports on Bill Stewart- 1930s.

Surveillance was maintained on William Stewart throughout his employment at the Russian embassy to the extent that the security services are also following our grandmother on the school run at a discreet distance.

7th August 1937.

Re: William STEWART

Between 16th July and 5th August observation for sixteen days has been kept on the above. He is still living at 3, Soho Street, W.1, with his wife and small boy, but during the period of observation has been attending the Soviet Embassy at irregular intervals, and he would appear to have been on leave.

Stewart’s wife who has also been kept under observation takes the child most days to 15, Greek Street, W., a Catholic kindergarten school where he is left all day and collected about 5 pm…

Our grandfather William with our dad sometime around the late 1930s or early 1940s.

There are a few other mentions of Dad around this time- always referred to as ‘the child’. Mainly mundane visits to shops or relatives. However, the surveillance comes to an end as by 1938 our grandad was no longer working at the Soviet Embassy. Moscow had decided their diplomatic service should not employ anyone who wasn’t a Soviet citizen and so his position no longer existed. For a while he was working away as the catering manager at Laycock Engineering Company in Sheffield. It’s looks like this was a position he took on for money rather than anything to do with espionage. However, MI5 weren’t taking any chances and began to intercept his letters home.

My own Darling,

I have just got in from a rather heavy day, Furnell and Bolton another chief (I’m wondering how many chiefs I have on this firm) have been this evening and are coming again tomorrow. Talk about slave driving it isn’t in it. They expect me to do a whole lot more yet and I gave them quite quietly a piece of my mind. Furnell says I am a good chap but I must get still higher percentage and I don’t see how it is humanly possible. If it wasn’t for the fact that jobs are so damn hard to get I would walk out on it. I don’t mind work and I have worked harder than anyone in Laycocks that’s Walker’s own statement. Now I feel that I am being played with and being used in some gigantic swindle. Anyway did “Our lad” get his “chewing gum” and you your “Woodbines”?

Bless you both I wish I had you here to talk to now don’t worry my pet I won’t do anything drastic but it is hellish when you work like a slave and to be told your giving satisfaction one minute and then something else the next. I feel so tired now so I will off to the post and then turn in.

Bless you both and keep you.

Yours ever,

William – your own Bill.

Dad at Tottenham Lido early 1940s. Grandad second from left also at the Lido guarding the home front.

By the time The Second World War began, Bill had taken up the position of catering manager at Tottenham Lido and, apart from ensuring that he wasn’t called up due to his ‘past record’, MI5’s interest in him seems to have waned. Consequently, it’s not until 28th September 1951 that we catch sight of dad again. He would have been eighteen years old and, perhaps for the first and last time, a potential person of interest for the security services. A report from Essex County Constabulary outlines some concerns about William Stewart, licensee of The White Hart Hotel in Manningtree and his son after they had been instructed to make “discreet enquiries”. After noting grandad’s interest in politics, his meeting with far left associates and that he took The Daily Worker attention turns towards dad.

The son Michael has been attending a technical school in London to be trained as a chef and in hotel management.

He only comes home at week-ends, but not every week-end. His London address has not been obtained to date.

It is said that he has appeared on the stage in a Noel Coward production in London, and knows many actors.

He is shortly to be called for National Service (Believed October, 1951).

It is not known whether he attends political meetings. No political meetings are known to be held in this District.

It is known that this person holds Communist views. One customer pointed this out to the licensee who made no comment

Michael usually assists his father in the public house when he comes home.

Further discreet enquiries will be made as the opportunity presents.

The Noel Coward play was actually ‘The Dancing Years’ by Ivor Novello at the Casino which has since reverted back to it’s original name, the Prince Edward’s Theatre. It was his sole engagement, at the age of fourteen, as a professional actor. I remember the delight he took in telling us about the different characters that inhabited the Soho world that he encountered and how much he enjoyed the role of ‘Otto- the bastard son’. The idea of dad holding communist views is also interesting. Certainly not something he clung on too. In a way, it wouldn’t be surprising due to the milieu of his upbringing but as far as I know he was never a member of the CPGB. His parents were unusual in communist circles in that William had ‘married out’ – his mother Jess wasn’t a party member either. And she wielded a very strong influence over him. Growing up, it was Boy’s Brigade for dad rather than the Young Communist League. In later life his politics were broadly left wing but not particularly partisan. I remember him sitting on a beer keg the day after the 1987 Conservative victory smoking and looking folorn. “We’ll get through it somehow,” he said to me. In fact, the last video clip of him I have is from 2017. you can hear me off camera asking him how he was going to vote in the general election. Due to to vascular dementia it’s unlikely he could remember the name of the Labour Party let alone any of its major figures at the time. He looks straight at the camera and says, after some thought, “Socialist.”

As the police noted, Dad was shortly to be called up for National Service which is the subject of his next appearance in the files. There’s a letter from Bill to his father dated 27th November 1952.

…Robin was in slight trouble last week! he was put on charge for being unshaved, up before the Captain under escort hat & belt off – was admonished, the RQSM put a good word in…

While in the army Dad did make it to the rank of Sergeant a fact which will forever astound me because, if there is one single that could define him, it was his lifelong inability to distinguish between his left and his right. How he managed on the parade ground I do not know.

Transcripts of conversations from 1956 picked up by the listening device hidden in Bob Stewart’s office at CPGB HQ .

By 1956 Dad was in his early twenties and he drifts in and out of the files as Bob Stewart struggles with the twin shocks of Khruschev’s revelations about Stalin and the Soviets actions in Hungary. In March there’s a surprise as it appears he was about to be married. This was four years before he met our mother- my brother and I might never have been born. I imagine the photographs on mum’s mantlepiece fading ‘Back to the Future’ style.

BOB STEWART welcomed another comrade whom he later addressed as BILL. BOB asked BILL if he had come in the previous day. BILL replied that he had and had left a message because he had so much running about to do. BILL said that he had been after a job in Whitechapel in a coffee snack bar and he was to start on Tuesday. BOB wanted to know how this would affect ROBIN. BILL replied that ROBIN was getting his own little place fixed up as he was going to get married. ROBIN was up in Hull at the present time; his ship was having a refit. BILL next asked BOB how everybody was and BOB told him that NAN had decided to have a week’s holiday from the 16th. BOB said he did not hear very much from GREG…

In June, however, it’s all over much to the relief of Grandma Jess. No one’s good enough for her son.

BILL STEWART arrived. He told BOB STEWART that he was at Kings Cross for a week. He made some reference to a cafe in Bromley and then said he had also been at Paddington. He was very indistinct but it seems he was filling holiday vacancies at various cafes. He said he was keeping on his digs in Molesey. BOB asked him details about his pay and conditions etc. and then wanted to know how JESS was and if ROBIN was married yet. JESS was all right apparently, in fact rather better than she had been because ROBIN’S affair was ‘all off’. BILL then went on to say that he had been to Derby and to Rutland for four days. BILL had told his father he was going on his last visit to King St. Other members of the family were discussed, including NAN, BILL’S sister, with whom, BOB said, he was having a hell of a time over the Soviet business.

‘The Soviet business’ refers not just to the public reaction to Khruschev’s speech but the devastating news of what had happened to Nan’s husband, Anatole Kaminsky. He’d been arrested by the NKVD in Moscow in the late 1930s. Nan had escaped with baby Greg, my dad’s cousin, but they’d had no news for years. The new openness of 1956 brought with it the news that Greg’s father had been shot in 1941. Relationships within the family were strained and I have a feeling they remained that way from then on. Understandably Nan and Greg went on to reject communism entirely. Maybe the ramifications of this are why we never really knew Dad’s side of the family. Until relatively recently I was unaware of these events and I’m sad that I’ll never know the truth of it now because Dad’s not around to ask.

In addition to this, the Soviet invasion of Hungary ensured my Dad and Greg’s generation viewed the USSR with much more scepticism than their parents and grandparents. There’s a transcript of a tapped telephone call fom grandad to Bob which mentions Dad’s concern over the events in Budapest. Bob and grandad however are rather more defiant.

I/C call to BOB from BILL STEWART (BOB’s son). BILL, asks when BOB got back as he didn’t know he was back. BILL says something about telling MOIRA five weeks ago. He says the last he heard BOB was in the Sanatorium. He says GEOFF and ROBIN (Michael Robin STEWART – BOB’s grandson – son of Bill STEWART have been up in London, and he is now in a job at Liverpool Street where he starts early in the morning. BILL says he is in digs at Ampney Court but is going to try to get digs more centrally placed. BILL says ROBIN and JESS are fine. But ROBIN is worrying about the situation. BOB says there are only two sides in this business “our side, and the other side. Whether it’s mistakes or accidents or anything else of that kind, It’s got nothing to do with it. It’s a show down now, and we’ve either got to fight it through or not?” BILL replies “Yes that’s the line”. BOB says, “We can’t stand on the side lines”. BILL agrees saying “No, no, there’s no flagwaving in this business you either fight or you don’t.” BOB says “Very serious business, there’s no saying where it will end”. BOB says “The honeymoon’s over anyway, and the rest is just to be”. BILL asks about BOB’s trip to Russia etc. BOB says he travelled a lot and will tell BILL about it when he sees him. They will fix up something on the telephone arranging for BILL to come out one evening after his work to see them. BILL sends his love to everyone.

Tapped telephone call 1957. Letter from Grandad to John Gollan 1967.

From 1957, other than a comment from grandad about his brother in law having ‘promised ROBIN a guitar’ dad starts to fade from view in the security files. There appears to be nothing for a decade. After all, grandad’s involvement in the covert world of Communist agitation seems to have dwindled and Bob is blind and bedbound. The last reference is a letter from grandad to John Gollan, the General Secretary of the CPGB dating from 1967.

Dear Comrade Gollan,

On behalf of my wife and I and of my son and his wife I wish to thank the Executive for this invitation to Dad’s birthday celebrations.

I do hope sufficient publicity will give rise to fast sales of the book to the benefit of the Party.

Congratulations to you for your ‘Socialism in the Sixties’.

This would have been Bob Stewart’s 90th birthday at the CPGB HQ at King Street, Covent Garden and the launch of his autobiography ‘Breaking the Fetters’. It’s also, I think, the only time my mother makes an appearance in the security files.

I had my dad for 45 years. He was wonderful and I treasure his memory. I do not know why I have to write all this down – I only know that it helps. Rereading Alison Light’s magisterial book on family history and why we need to know who came before us and what we owe them I came across these words from Joseph Brodsky, “What’s the point of forgetting if it ends in dying?” That might be part of it but, more importantly, and more simply, I wish I could speak to Dad now and learn more about who he was all those years ago before he was mine. But I can’t. So, this will have to do.

Alan Stewart.

Michael Robin Stewart on his 84th birthday about five months before he died. I think this picture gives an indication who he really was. A gloriously silly man. I love you Dad x

Breaking the Fetters Chapter 17: Red Agent in Glasgow.

Mikhail Borodin

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.

Comrades: Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky (Part One).

Anatomy Naumovich Kaminsky (1907-1941)

Where to begin? It’s a troubling, ultimately tragic part of the story and some of it is truly inexplicable. Perhaps the best way to deal with it is to set out the information as simply as I can.

What we knew was this. At some point in the early 1930s Bob Stewart’s daughter, Annie (my dad’s Aunt Nan) married a ‘Russian’ and they went to live in Moscow. We didn’t know his name nor had we ever seen a photograph of him. At some point Nan gave birth to a baby boy – my dad’s cousin Greg. Soon after this Nan’s husband was killed in Stalin’s purges. Nan fled with their infant child back to London. Information about her husband was almost impossible to come by. I have no idea how they managed to escape. In the years that followed, Nan remarried, had two more children and remained a member of the Communist Party until 1956.

For me, all of this was rather abstract. Dad had a lot of family somewhere out there but was rarely in contact with them. Until recently, apart from visits to my grandfather when I was a toddler, the only other person I’d ever met from my father’s side was Greg. That was at my brother’s wedding just over a decade ago. I only spoke to him briefly as I was on best man duties. All I can really remember is how strange it was to be speaking to somebody who bore such a strong resemblance to my dad and yet was someone who was to all intents and purposes a complete stranger. I never made the effort to remain in touch. I wish I had.

After my father died, I started reading through the security files on Bob Stewart that the National Archives had digitised and put online. Trying to find glimpses of who he was before he was our dad. To begin with, I knew very little about the Communist Party or our family. I tended to focus on the later files as during that period MI5 weren’t simply intercepting Bob’s post and tailing his movements but bugging his offices and tapping his phone. Rather than squinting at spidery 1920s handwriting and trying to work out what it all meant I could easily read the transcripts of conversations and, through their voices, almost begin to get to know these people who were long gone.

I started looking at the files collected during 1956. The year that Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech condemning the crimes of Stalin and the first official recognition about what had gone on in the decades before. At this time Nan was living in a large house in North London with her family and also her father who was nearing eighty but still involved in the secret side of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Most of the documents in that file focus on the general disquiet about the revelation in ‘secret speech’ felt by those at the CPGB’s HQ at Covent Garden. However, a more personal impact is outlined in the transcript of a phone call Nan made to her sister in law Margaret on 10th August 1956.

O/G call from NAN CAPLAN to MARGARET STEWART, BOB’S daughter in law. HARRY is back, and DRONA, (the father of NAN’s son GREGORY CAPLAN) was definitely shot in 1941. They are both shattered by it. HARRY came to see BOB and NAN insisted on seeing him. She says there is not one of the five brothers in KRONA’s (sic) family left. She threatened that if HARRY does not give her justice she’ll follow him to every meeting at which he speaks. BOB’s threatening to leave (The house? The party?) She would like her brother RAB STEWART to come and see her. BOB is going away next week so they will arrange it.
(KV2/2790 – Security File on Robert Stewart held at the National Archives.)

‘HARRY’ was Harry Pollitt, the leader of the CPGB, who had gone to Russia in part to find out what had happened to the family members of several of his own colleagues and friends. Of course, this transcript raises so many questions. How had they lived with this trauma for so long? How had they maintained their commitment to the CPGB in all that time in the face of it? What had they already known?

At this stage I still did not know the identity of Nan’s husband. From the battered suitcase that had been up in the loft, every old photograph or letter in Russian that I sifted through proved a dead end. So too did the references to KRONA or DRONA in the transcript- a nickname that didn’t seem to crop up elsewhere. However, later on in the files I did find a reference that linked Greg’s father to Grigory Kaminsky and this was the first real breakthrough in my search.

Grigory Kaminsky

Grigory Kaminsky was the People’s Commissar for Health of the Soviet Union between 1934 and 1937. He set up the Soviet health system, improved the production of medicine and medical training and battled malaria in the USSR. Evidently, he was also Nan’s brother-in-law. However, in 1937 he made speech in which he condemned the wrongful arrests of people and accused Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the NKVD, of counter revolutionary activities. As a result, he was arrested and then executed by firing squad in February 1938. Then, it seems, the NKVD went for the rest of his family.

Now I had a surname I went back to the earlier files from the 1920s and 1930s and managed to find documents that linked Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky and Annie Stewart together which speculated about whether they were married. So, now I knew who he was but still no idea of what he looked like or any real details of what had happened to him. My first port of call would have been to search for him through the Memorial website. Memorial is the Russian human rights organisation set up to investigate the crimes of the Stalin era and beyond. They’d amassed records of all known victims in a ceaseless effort to record every human rights violation. However, last year it was closed down after years of intimidation by the Putin regime. During one court hearing the state prosecutor announced that Memorial was “creating a false image of the Soviet Union as a terrorist state.”

Screenshot of the information I found on Anatole Kaminsky. Apparently the information is from a database of “Victims of political terror in the USSR”; Moscow, execution lists -Kommunarka.

Despite Memorial being closed down I think I’ve still managed to find a record of what exactly had happened to Anatole. It appears that there are several websites that have ‘backed up’ the information held by Memorial and similar agencies and these have not all been shut down yet. Not being a Russian speaker, I can’t fully judge the reliabilty of the website I found but, as key parts of the information held on Anatole Kaminsky match what’s held in the MI5 files, I am reasonably sure that this is what happened.

On June 20th 1938 NKVD officers arrived at Anatole Kaminsky’s Moscow flat on the St. Malaya Dmitrovka. They arrested him on charges of espionage and participation in counter revolutionary organisations. He remained in custody for the next three years and was eventually convicted on 8th July 1941 shortly after the Nazis invaded the USSR. His sentence was noted down as ‘VMN’. This stood for ‘Vysshaya Mera Nakazaniya’ which translates as ‘the supreme measure of punishment’. In other words, the death penalty. On July 28th the sentence was carried out. They took him to the Kommunarka shooting ground on the outskirsts of Moscow where his body lies alongside thousands of other victims to this day. He was 34 years old.

Anatole was rehabilitated by the Khrushchev regime in 1956. Rehabilitation would have had to have been requested and I assume it was Harry Pollitt who put that in motion or it might have been Bob on his visit to Moscow in August that year. That’s as far as justice stretched.

In November this year I finally saw some photographs of Anatole, one of which is reproduced at the top of this article. They were attached to his MI5 security file held at the National Archives. I spent the morning reading all about the six years he spent in Britain before he returned to the Soviet Union and the dreadful fate that awaited him. That afternoon I met, for the very first time, another of my dad’s cousins. It was Rab and Margaret’s daughter Linda. It had been Margaret who Nan had rang up after discovering what had happened to her husband in that summer in 1956. It was an emotional meeting and we covered a lot of ground in the few hours we were together. She could not believe I had found photographs of ‘Natte’ as he’d been known. He’d died long before she was born and she’d never seen a picture of him either. Of course she was familiar the story and knew that her aunt and cousin had got away by “the skin of their teeth.” When I showed her the photographs on my phone she was instantly struck by the resemblance to Greg who she’d known well and who died in 2019. I was glad I was able to show her these images. I wish that I could have shown them to my father. Above all, I wish I could have shown them to Greg.

Alan Stewart.

Thanks to Linda Stewart, Ian Stewart, Ruth Holliday and Maurice Casey for all their help.

Breaking the Fetters Chapter 15: In Gaol Again.

HMP Cardiff.

In 1921 I was attending the Party’s National Executive in London. It was close to May Day and McManus, who was booked to speak at a May Day meeting in South Wales, said he could not go and asked me if I would like to take his place. “Sure,” I said, “I have never been to South Wales and it will be a new experience.” As it turned out it was.

I went down by train to Aberdare but before reaching there the train stopped at a small station and along the platform came a group of fellows shouting, “Bob Stewart, Bob Stewart!” I stuck my head out of the window and said, “That’s me.” “Can you do a meeting for the Party in Mountain Ash tomorrow night?” they asked. “Yes, I’ll be there.” So, after the meeting in Aberdare I travelled to Mountain Ash. The meeting was in a cinema and was crowded out. As usual at the time, the “splits” were in the boxes taking notes of my speech, but this happened at all meetings so I ignored them. The meeting finished and the local fellows said they were very pleased with the attendance and the effect. The repercussions were then still unknown.

I returned to London, and on the following Saturday, 7th May 1921, came the police raid on the party offices at King Street, Covent Garden, when Inkpin the general secretary was arrested. The raid was made without a warrant, under the Emergency Regulations Act. It was carried out by Detective-Inspector Parker, acting under the instructions, so he said, of the Director for Public Prosecutions.

During the raid all personnel in the office were rounded up from their individual rooms and brought to the general office on the ground floor of the building. The rooms were ransacked and, while this was going on, the homes of the office workers, even those of the girl clerks, were being searched. The police authorities certainly put on all the trimmings to build the raid up into a first-class political scare.

When Inkpin came into the general office and he exploded at Parker for the unwarranted intrusion into private property. “I demand to see your warrant to search these premises,” he said. “I don’t need a warrant,” replied Parker. “I am acting under the Emergency Regulations.” Parker then started to question Inkpin about the publication and sale of the Communist Party pamphlet called The Statutes of the Communist International. “Who wrote the book?” asked Parker. “What do you mean who wrote it?” said Inkpin. “These are the Statutes adopted by the 2nd Congress of the Communist International.” “Where did the books come from?” persisted Parker. “They came from Moscow, from the Communist International,” replied Inkpin. During the interrogation Inkpin again protested to Parker about the manner in which the police were acting, forcing their way into all the rooms in the building, sorting out files of correspondence obviously with the intention of taking them away. But Parker brushed this aside and kept on asking questions about the pamphlet The Statutes of the Communist International. Inkpin continued to answer truthfully this was a record of the decisions of the Communist International which was sent by the International not only to Britain but to most countries throughout the world.

Now Detective Inspector Parker might have been a good man at detecting crime, but he did not seem to have the elementary knowledge required to comprehend the simple working of an international body. Maybe, of course, he had had his instructions not to try to understand. Anyway, after fifteen minutes of this sham he stopped asking questions and started giving instructions. To Inkpin he said, “I am going to arrest you under the Emergency Regulations Act No. 19. I am further going to search the premises and take possession of anything I think fit under an order signed by the Chief of Police.” He then turned to another detective and said, “Mr Hole, here is the order,” and to “Inkpin, “Come with me.” “What, without a warrant?” said Inkpin. “None necessary,” was the reply and he turned to leave. It was then he spotted me standing in a corner trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, but obviously not succeeding. “Who is that man?” he barked. “That’s Mr Stewart,” said Inkpin. “Get his name and address, and the name and addresses of all the others.” And with that little lesson of how democracy works in this land of the free he turned, taking Inkpin with him, and disappeared out of the door.

The place was alive with police and plain-clothes men. I ran from room to room trying to salvage what I could, but the police ransacked the place, almost everything went, even to the paper and the stencils. There were a number of spare files of our paper Communist and I knew that McManus had some papers ‘filed’ away for safety. I said to the policemen who were carting all the material away for examination., “Here, take these away; they are only in the damned way here. You’ll be doing something useful then.” “We don’t need these,” was the reply, “we have files of them ourselves.” So that saved something. After the raid, in the evening, I went out to try and contact some of the Executive members.  I went to the Corner House in the Strand and luckily, I bumped into a few of them and learned that there was to be a meeting at Bill Mellor’s house later to discuss what we could do under the circumstances. After the discussion, I had an argument with McManus because I said I thought that Mellor was deciding to leave us-to get out. McManus said I was a fool, but I was eventually proved right; William Mellor, despite all his thunder and aggressive revolutionary phrases, was afraid of being on the wrong side of the police authorities, and a short time after left the party.

After the meeting, I was sent to get a lawyer for Inkpin, to Torrington square, to see WH Thompson, a lawyer who was on the left. I found him in a strange way. I was ascending the stairs to his place when a young fellow came running past me. Suddenly, he stopped and said, “Jesus Christ! Bob Stewart!” “The latter’s right,” I replied. “What brings you here?” This fellow had been a conscientious objector in Wormwood Scrubs when I was there, so we wore the same old school tie. I explained the position. He worked for WH Thompson. He said, “He’s not here but I’ll tell you where to find him.  He has gone to see his girl friend,” and he gave me the address. I found WH, explained the position, where Inkpin was- Snowhill Prison- and he assured me that I could leave everything to him. I returned to my hotel in Villiers Street, near the Strand, a good evening’s work done. As I entered two big fellows ‘took’ me, one on each side. “Your name Stewart, Robert Stewart?” one of them said. “Yes, a good Scottish name.” “Well, we want you, we have a warrant out for your arrest.” Naturally, I thought it was in connection with the raid on the party office, but as soon as I got to Cannon Row Police Station I discovered I was booked at the request of the Welsh police for speeches made in Aberdare and Mountain Ash. So, I was stuck in a cell, arrested for sedition. I was interrogated by an inspector, a very clever fellow, to his own way of thinking. “Ah! I know you,” he said. “I have heard you speaking in Dumbarton.” “Up on the rock?” I asked. “Sure, there was always a big crowd there.” There was never a meeting on Dumbarton Rock in all history, so I continued to kid him but he twigged it and finally closed up.

Next day I was taken to Wales, to the Abercynon Gaol where I rested the night, and the day after I went before the magistrate. He was an old fellow, sitting at his desk. “Your name Robert Stewart?” he asked. “Yes, but what’s going on?” I replied. “You’re in Court.” “What Court? Only you, me and a policeman?” “Yes, and you are remanded to the Assizes.” And that was the strangest court I was ever in, but then the Welsh do many things in strange ways. Back I went to the cell and the policeman said, “I want to take your fingerprints.” “Not mine, I am no criminal, I draw the line at that.” “We’ll see about that,” he said and went off but he did not return for the fingerprints.

In due course I was taken to the Assizes at Pontypridd. A bunch of snuffy magistrates, local publicans and others of that ilk. The prosecutor was a little fellow called Lloyd. The charges were seditious speeches. Little Lloyd had a real go. He built up a terrible case against me, and said I should be ashamed to call myself a British subject, I was an agitator coming into the district in troublesome times stirring up strife and hatred, saying the miners were being treated worse than German prisoners and that Jimmy Thomas was a traitor to the working class- which appeared to be sedition, I don’t know why. In passing I may add that the selfsame Mr Lloyd was some time later pinched for embezzlement , but I suppose that that would not trouble his loyalty to Britain. The witnesses said their piece. The local secretary, who was a canny lad named Foot, was very good. But the other party witness, Billy Picton, undid the good work. Billy was one of the aggressive type; good in an industrial struggle, but not much use in a court of law. Asked about my reference to miners being treated worse than German prisoners, he replied, “Well, it’s bloody true, isn’t it?” – not very helpful in a court in which the scales have already been loaded against you. In the long run the trial came to an end. The magistrate said a lot of wise words, then asked if there was anything known about a past record. Innocent like, of course. Then out came the dossier. Tried, court-martialled; tried, court-martialled, on and on. When he finished reading out the record, I looked at him and said quietly, “A good record.” The magistrate said that this sort of thing must not be allowed to continue, it would not continue, and so on. The sentence would have to be appropriate to the offence. I would be made an example. The sentence was three months’ hard labour. Three months’ hard. You can do that, as the old lags say, on the door knob.

Well, there I was inside again. In Cardiff Gaol. Interesting, because Cardiff being a big seaport the gaol is very cosmopolitan- men from all nationalities are inside and going around the ring at exercise you saw all colours and all kinds of men. For the first three days I sat sewing a pillow case. That was my hard labour, putting in stitches and pulling them out again. Of course, reading the Bible in between. This was the compulsory reading, but a very valuable book for left wing propagandists. One day the artisan warder came to see me. “What the hell are you sewing pillowcases for?” he demanded. “You’re a carpenter, aren’t you?” I told him what I thought about his pillowcases, his prison and his magistrates, but he only laughed. He turned out to be a good sort. He didn’t like clergymen and that was an instant bond between us. The prison chaplain at Cardiff and I could not get on. Charlie Chaplin we called him. This was because of the way he walked, not because of his humour. One day in my cell he said to me, “Mr Stewart, in cases of your kind, it is the wives and children I am sorry for.” I said, “Don’t you try telling my wife you are sorry for her, because if you do you will end up being sorry for yourself.”

The artisan warder stopped the pillowcases lark and took me down to the workshop. There was method in this because part of the prison was being demolished and an old oak floor was being scrapped. “Can you do anything with this, Jock?” he asked me, showing me a bit of the wood. It was a good bit of oak. “You could make some nice things with that,” I said. And I did- bookcases, hallstands, cupboards, small stools and many other pieces of oak furniture found their way into the warder’s home from the floor of the Old Cardiff Gaol. I am quite sure the government got none of it.

One day the warder gave me a shout when I was working. “Come here, Jock, I have a job for you.” So, I picked up my tools. “No, no,” he said, “all you need is an oil can. We’re going round to the execution chamber to oil the joints of the hanging apparatus.” Two men, sentenced to death for murder, were to be hanged the next day. “I’ll not oil your bloody hanging apparatus.” “What! You not in favour of hanging?” “Oh yes I would hand prison warders at a bob a time,” I said; “the trouble is they usually hang the wrong people.” “Well come and see how it works,” he said. So off we went to the execution chamber. He oiled the necessary places then gave me a demonstration of the proper way to operate it by pulling the lever and pointing to the drop. He seemed to take delight in it.

One day towards the end of my term, in came Jock Wilson, the Welsh Party Organiser, to see me; well, really to tell me something- that I had become a parliamentary candidate because Alfred Irons, the MP, had died. A by-election was pending at Caerphilly and the party had decided to contest their first ever parliamentary election as a party and I had been chosen as the candidate. Well, anyway, being in gaol, I couldn’t speak back. There had been quite a barney with the prison authorities. A report in The Communist appeared as follows:

We had expected difficulties to be put in the way of Robert Stewart’s Candidature in the Caerphilly mining constituency. They have already begun, and the Prison Governor has taken a hand. We wished to know when Stewart would be released for the purpose of the election campaign.

The party had sent a letter to the Governor of Cardiff Gaol in the following terms:

Dear Sir,

I should be very much obliged if you would kindly let me know on what date Robert Stewart, the National Organiser of the Communist Party, whom we understand to be present in Cardiff Gaol, will be released.

Yours faithfully

(signed) Fred H. Peat, acting secretary

Back came the reply:

HM Prison,

Cardiff

23rd July, 1921

In reply to your letter of inquiry it is regretted that the information asked for cannot be given.

I am your obedient servant

(signed) HJ Perwin

One night before the end of my time I was pleasantly surprised when the head warder came and asked if I would like to be released a day early. “Fine,” I said. But really the authorities were afraid of a demonstration, because when I had been taken from Pontypridd to Cardiff Gaol to start my sentence there was a bus load of policemen in the front and a bus load of policemen behind all the way. Certainly a good few tons of policemen to hold mine nine stones of communism. No doubt they were also taking no chances when I was leaving.

Out of the gaol, I went to Alf Cook’s house to discuss the political situation, and I had just arrived when a telegram was delivered from Moscow informing us of the death of Bill Hewlett in a monorail accident in Russia. It had been a bad accident and Jim Stewart of Lochgelly was also injured. So, I had the sad task of making arrangements for someone to break the news to Mrs Hewlett.

The Family Firm.

The Stewart Family pictured in the mid 1920s: -R: Bob, Rab, Annie (Nan), William and Margaret.

To the best of my knowledge the last person in my family to still be fully committed to a Marxist-Leninist revolution died in 1978. He was my grandfather William Stewart and he was lovely. However, even though those that remain have spent the intervening forty-four years failing to overthrow the capitalist system, communism has loomed ever present in the background in our lives for all sorts of reasons. It is a bittersweet inheritance. I suppose there is nothing surprising in its presence as, from the inception of the CPGB in 1920, communism essentially became the family business for the next fifty years. Practically everyone was involved.

At the end of 1955 – a few months before Khrushchev would acknowledge the crimes of Stalin for the first time in his ‘secret speech’ MI5 picked up some office gossip about the Stewart family through one of the bugs it had placed in the offices at the Communist Party’s HQ in King Street, Covent Garden. Reuben Falber, who, when Bob Stewart finally retired in 1957, would go on to be responsible for distributing funds from Moscow, was overheard talking to fellow party worker Betty Reid about a recent scandal involving Bob’s nephew Greg – a Cambridge student who had just been unforgivably rude to one of the comrades at Central Books. Here’s part of the transcript in the security files:

‘They’re a family that-well, they’re a law unto themselves because you’ve got a combination of the old fellow’s prestige and money. BETTY asked where the money came from. Regret FALBER’s reply was whispered and could not be followed.

(From the MI5 Security File on Bob Stewart KV2/2790 – The National Archives)

The ‘old fellow’ is, of course, Bob Stewart and quite clearly the whole family had something of a reputation within communist circles. In fact, Betty Reid, in a conversation recorded about eight months later, was of the opinion that the Stewart children – William, Rab and Nan, had been “thoroughly spoiled all their lives.” This kind of attitude is elaborated further in an earlier document I came across in my grandfather’s security file on a recent visit to the National Archives. It’s dated 17th October 1932 and appears to be a memorandum from Special Branch to MI5 concerning the activities of Bob and his three children. I reproduce it here in full partly because I think it’s an interesting account of how the Stewarts and other similar families were viewed within the movement but mainly because I love the description of my grandfather.

The following information has been received.


WILLIAM STEWART, who used to drive the Soviet Ambassador’s car has given up driving altogether and is now employed in the Embassy as a ‘trusted’ man. He recently stated that he was engaged there on work of a secret nature, which included a little clerical labour.

His hours are from 5pm until 1am and his wife also has a job at the Embassy.

He is forbidden to undertake Communist Party of Great Britain work.

He now wears a small moustache, Charlie Chaplin style, which gives him an altered appearance, and carries an ash walking-stick. He often wears a light green shirt, brown jacket and shorts (at other times grey flannel trousers), light brown rabbit-skin hat, and brown shoes. He apes the appearance and mannerisms of a university student.

His father, ‘Bob’, is at present in Belfast where he is assisting the Irish Revolutionary Workers’ Party.

His brother, who lived with Ralph Edwin BOND, and was attached to St. Pancras Local Communist Party of Great Britain, has now secured a situation at Arcos Ltd. as also has his wife. Both have been transferred to Islington Local.

His sister, who was active in the Young Communist League of Great Britain, and who went to Russia on several occasions, has gone to live there permanently. She also was employed at Arcos and married a principal of that concern. As he has been recalled to Russia, she has accompanied him.

The state of affairs here outlined indicates how the movement is ‘exploited as a meal ticket’ (to use the phrase of certain disgusted genuine Communists) by certain fortunate families.

The CAMPBELL family is another case in point. The sum of over £20 weekly is received in John Ross Campbell’s home from Soviet sources.

The WATKINS’ are in the same position, whilst there is a host of others.

There is keen resentment in the ‘movement’ over this condition of things. It is freely expressed that no man and wife should be allowed to hold a situation while other ‘Comrades’ are unemployed. This objection has taken root and considerable trouble on the point seems likely to develop.

SUPERINTENDENT.

(From the MI5 Security File on William Stewart KV2/4494 – The National Archives)

Alan Stewart.

Communist Curriculum Vitae

The document above is taken from the MI5 files now held at the National Archives in Kew. It’s from 1957 and gives a pretty comprehensive overview of Bob Stewart’s career in the Communist Party so far. Bob celebrated his eightieth birthday that year and most of the material the security services picked up from tapped telephones and bugged offices at the CPGB HQ in King Street, Covent Garden relate to him aiming to wind down and retire. There’s a decent summary of his professional life at the end.

“A long and active Party record as both British member and as agent for the Comintern. Knows probably more than any other living Party member of undercover activity and covert finance with which he has been concerned throughout his career.”

He’d spent quite a lot of the early years in Moscow, attended Lenin’s funeral and sat in meetings with Stalin. Then he spent time in Ireland trying to start up a Communist Party with the Irish labour hero Jim Larkin but little came of it. At one time, while the rest of the leading British communists were thrown in jail around the time of the General Strike, he became the CPGB’s Acting General Secretary. The Second World War years are a bit of a mystery but by the mid fifties the old man was very much on the security services radar again, though in this run down of activities they miss out his recent visit to China with Harry Pollitt where he met Mao Zedong.

Most of the surveillance work over the immediate years previously had been spent tailing him as he routinely visited satellite embassies and various address in the south of England. This was largely thought to be Bob moving different sums of Moscow cash around in order to keep King Street and The Daily Worker going. The issue of retiring and who he should hand over his responsibilities to was problematic as Bob wrote very little down, preferring instead to keep the details of all his undercover work in his head. There are several times in the transcripts where he is overheard by MI5 that he has been very lucky so far and didn’t want to go to prison at this time of his life. Indeed, at his advanced age he felt his memory was starting to fail and the past year had been exhausting. Revelations of Stalin’s crimes and how it affected his family personally had taken their toll. Eventually, Reuben Falber took over Bob’s work and if you want to find out what happened to the ‘Moscow gold’ just type his name into Google.

I don’t think Bob fully retired. There’s an album of photos from the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961 showing him mingling energetically with the delegates. He published his memoirs, Breaking the Fetters when he was ninety. Sensibly, but frustratingly it contains nothing of his undercover activities and only covers the early period of his life and the Party so there is little reflection on Stalinism. However, what does come through is his tremendous energy. The Communist Party in Britain formed in 1920. Bob was forty-five years old.  All of this happened in the last half of his life. Before, there’d been thirty odd years of campaigning for the temperance movement, for trade unionism and against the First World War. The drive he had astonishes me.

Alan Stewart.

What Is to Be Done?

I came to this story through grief. In 2018 my father, Michael, suddenly died of a heart attack at the age of 84. His passing brought to an end years of decline through vascular dementia. I had loved him very much and the idea that now there was only myself, my elder brother Ian and our mother was impossible to process. We did what most families do in that first year – come together for solace, then fracture painfully, then slowly heal. We did most of our grieving separately but I imagine it looked pretty similar. Sleep never seemed to arrive and I spent many nights in the spare room as my partner slept on searching through photographs, old letters and hunting down any recording or videos just so I could hear his voice again. He left very little trace on the internet – I picked up a few extra photographs from his days as a parish councillor, the odd story archived from the local paper from his days as the landlord of the village pub but very little else. Although it was in no way a reality, I felt I was losing him just as surely as the dementia had whittled down his ability to tell the stories he loved. God knows why I was looking for proof that he existed but, as is the way with these things, the death of a parent leads you to wanting to know more about where you come from and who your family are. And inevitably, you always leave it too late to ask the questions you need to ask. The gathering at my father’s funeral had been small. That’s not surprising for someone of my father’s age. He’d not been wealthy, he’d been an only child, both his parents had been dead for decades and illness had reduced his world. I’d always been aware that my family was perhaps more compact than my friends’ with all their cousins and uncles and aunts but, on my dad’s side, despite there being family out there somewhere, I can’t remember very much contact while I was growing up. Other than the affection he held for Bill and Jessica, his mother and father, and a few stories about his grandfather Bob I knew very little about his life before he was our Dad.

One insomniac night I was looking for more traces of him, and I finally found something more. I’d searched the National Archives collection and discovered the security service files relating to ‘Robert Stewart: A founder member of the British Communist Party…British representative on the Comintern and a member of its Executive. For many years he oversaw the British Communist Party’s secret apparatus including, it was thought, those of its members who passed military information to the Soviet Union’.  Of course I’d grown up with the knowledge of who Bob Stewart was but here was acres of material – all scanned and, from what was once top secret, easily accessible. Skimming through one file I found this dated August 1933:

“I saw Bob Stewart yesterday. Bill’s wife is in hospital. She had a baby a couple of days ago. Bob didn’t know a thing until it arrived. Both are doing well.”

The extract was from a letter intercepted by MI5 and written by the union agitator and one of the few communist politicians to be elected to Parliament, Willie Gallacher. The baby was my father who was born a few weeks before. The letter is mentioned during some notes about Bob’s arrival from Holland. Not only is his correspondence and that of his friends being intercepted, his movement around the country and abroad are being closely monitored. I continued to search the files for any mention of my father, occasionally rewarded with a tantalising glimpse. By the time the surveillance crept into the 1950s they were bugging telephones and offices. Through the transcripts I had the intimate conversations of the side of the family I had vaguely heard about but never really knew.

So, what is to be done with all of this? And all the letters, photographs and souvenirs left behind that we inherited from Granddad after his death in 1978. The case full of stuff that convinced me that all my family were all Soviet agents when I was five. The answer is to read and remember and to try to understand. There’s a lot in Bob’s life that I admire but, as with any lifelong communist from the 1920s, sooner or later you have to confront the obscenity of Stalinism. At the moment, as I’m researching the ramifications of Khrushchev’s secret speech and the Hungarian uprising in 1956 its clear these events had huge repercussions for my great grandfather, his children and his grandchildren. I’m not sure Bob comes out of it well but that’s for later. For now, all that remains is to say – Dad, all this is for you. I wish you were here to show you what we’ve found out. I wish you were here to talk about it all. We miss you.

Alan Stewart.