‘At a time when news is abuzz
with talk of Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ an American
website published on 3 September a profile of Shapurji Saklatvala by Sant Nihal
Singh. ‘Witty and insightful, Singh not only recreates Shapurji’s remarkably
contradictory persona – being related to and working with the Tatas, while
pursuing the Socialist dream – but also a sense of what it took and meant for an
Indian to ‘make it’ in British politics in the early decades of the 20th
century.’ (1)
Two months later on 12 November Alfie
Hancox wrote about Saklatvala in a critical assessment of the Communist Party of
Britain in relation to current assessed ‘global
politics and problems facing the working class, whether these are theoretical
and practical obstacles facing left parties, the rise of fascism, or
environmental disaster.’ (2)
On 21 December the Ella Baker School of Organising planned to run an on-line training session considering the circumstances and influences to the
election of Saklatvala as MP in 1922, around the question: ‘At a time of
powerful narratives of racism and empire, how and why did the Battersea working
class choose a communist immigrant to represent them in Parliament?’ It had to be cancelled/ (3)
The Black Lives Matters movement has brought into
sharp focus the inter-relationship between the importance of black collective self-organisation
and self-determination and the relationship with white allies. It is
therefore timely that the activist Marc Wadsworth has had his up-dated biography of the left-wing politician Shapurji Saklatvala (Comrade Sak. Shapurji Saklatvala MP. A
Political Biography) published by Peepal
Press. The original book was published in 1998.
Saklatvala
– Anti-Colonialism and Anti-Imperialism
Mumbai-born Saklatvala was a campaigner for Indian and Irish
independence and against colonialism and imperialism at a time when the Black
(African, Caribbean and Asian) used in its political sense) population was small in Britain. He understood
the need to work with white allies and also to critically assess and try and
influence the strategy and tactics of other Black and white activists. His
journey through the Social Democratic/British Socialist Party, and the
Independent Labour Party into the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain
was partly influenced by what he regarded as the failure of the two Parties to
be rigorously anti-colonial and anti-imperialist.
This did not mean that he did not have
disagreements within the Communist Party, which focussed more on Indian
independence, and regarded Africans as organisationally more backward. Like Sak
the Communist Third International was critical of the British Party. Saklatvala passionately believed the class
struggle should unite both Black and white workers, and this was one
of the reasons he was critical of Gandhi, the leader of the Indian Congress
party, who he considered was racist and pro-imperialists when the
Mahatma worked as a lawyer in South Africa.
Saklatvala is best known for being Battersea’s
Labour MP in 1922 and then independent Labour and Communist MP from 1924 to 1929.
Despite the previous biographies by Mike Squires and the Sak’s daughter Sehri,
his importance has been underplayed. John Callaghan’s biography of
the Swedish-Indian Communist theoretician Rajani Palme Dutt has very little
discussion on Saklatvala. (4)
Apart from being a member of the Party’s Executive
Committee (1926-1929) Sak had no major role within the Party despite the important
part he played from 1926 in its adoption of the Class Against Class strategy in
which the Labour Party was seen as part of the enemy. His marginalisation in the CP may
well have been due to the disagreements over him being an MP between those who supported
Lenin’s advocacy of involvement in parliamentary politics and those against.
While loyal to the Party he was also independent with
his own networks of contacts through his activities in organisations such as
the Workers Welfare League for India, the East-West Circle and later the League
Against Imperialism. With his adherence as a Parsi to Zorastianism, his
independence and pragmatism appears to have been less tolerated by the Party than
that allowed to Dutt as a leading theoretician and editor of Labour Monthly from 1921. (5) Further
work on the history of the Communist Party suggests that despite the concept of
democratic centralism, Party discipline was weak with many individuals acting
independently.
There were Black led organisations such as the Union
of African Students in England, the Union of Students of African Descent, the
African Progress Union, African, Arab and Indian student organisations, and the
League of Coloured People’s (from 1931),
As one of founders of the Labour Party Black
Sections Marc suggests that Sak did not ‘have to grapple with the question of
Black self-organisation in the Labour Party, trade unions or any other such
group. We do not know, therefore, what his position on this issue would have
been. What is clear, though, is that Sak was much more open to new ideas than
his more orthodox colleagues on the left in Britain. And … he was most
certainly for self-determination.’ If Sak had lived it would have been likely
that he would have supported the growth in Black (African) organisation in
Britain stimulated by the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. Marc discusses the
problems in the relationship between Black and white activists from the 1940s,
including the Movement for Colonial Freedom and the Anti-Nazi League. Marc’s
view needs to be re-assessed in the light of the newer studies of the period,
particularly the postgraduate thesis work of Daniel Edmonds - see below.
Despite its weaknesses Sak saw the CP as an
integral part of the British labour movement. In 1926 he told the House of
Commons ‘I am the product of the British trade unionism. I am a member of the
Communist Party because rightly or wrongly, it honestly appears to me to be
pointing the way through which the objects of the Labour Party are to be
achieved.’
Saklatvala’s
Life
Born in India in 1874 into a minor branch of the
successful commercial and industrial Tata family, Sak came to England in 1901 as
the firm’s representative. He married Sally Marsh in 1907 and they had five
children.
He joined the SDP in 1907 and the Independent Labour
Party in 1909. Having moved around the country the family settled in Highgate.
He joined the City of London branch of the ILP in 1916, a fellow member being
Arthur Field from Battersea. Norman Angell has a description of Saklatvala
addressing an ILP meeting in the early 1920s: ‘Saklatvala … argued the case for
the class war with tense, fierce passion. “We must fight on the principle that he who is
not for us is against us.”’ Angell went on to say: ‘He would quite cheerfully
have sent eighty or ninety per cent of the British population that were not
“for us” to perish in Arctic Labour Camps if only he had the power.’ (6)
He was a member of Annie Besant’s India Home Rule
League and urged Indians to support the Labour Party. Along with Field he set
up the Workers’ Welfare League for India; another member being Battersea’s socialist
trade unionist Duncan Carmichael. Because Sak supported Indian nationalism he
was spied upon by the Criminal Intelligence Office.
In 1919 he spoke at the London session of the Pan-African
Congress on colonial affairs. He was introduced by the session’s chairman John
Archer, a leading Battersea Labour Party Councillor and President of the
African Progress Union. In 1921 Sak became a member of the newly formed Communist
Party, a merger of the British Socialist Party (formerly SDP) and other groups
including the Battersea Herald League. In 1922 his supporters got him selected
as Battersea Labour’s Parliamentary candidate for North Battersea constituency and
endorsed by the national Labour Party. The Irish Nationalist and socialist and
leader of the Women’s Freedom League Charlotte Despard had stood for North
Battersea and the Irish nationalist Arthur Lynch, who had fought with the
Boers, for South Battersea unsuccessfully against the national Coalition
candidates.
Sak was elected but lost the following year, and was
re-elected in 1924. By then the national Party had been imposing bans against
members who were also members of the Communist Party. The Parliamentary Party refused
to accept Sak as a Labour MP. The Battersea Party, which had won control of the
local Council in 1919, opposed the bans and continued to support Sak as its MP.
As a result it was disaffiliated in February 1926.This did not deter the local
Party from its Borough activities and major role in the General Strike in May. (7)
At the beginning of the Strike Sak was arrested for
sedition and imprisoned. The police found a letter in which he urged the
Communist Party to smash the Labour Party. This letter was made public. It alienated
many of his supporters including Archer, who took a leading role in
establishing new Party organisations affiliated to the national Party. The Battersea
movement was split with both affiliated and disaffiliated parties competing for
local and national electoral support. Sak remained MP backed by the
disaffiliated parties and the local Communists. (8) Archer was election agent
to William Stephen Sanders, a former key figure in Battersea, who won the
election as the official Labour candidate in 1929. (9)
As well as his support for Indian and Irish
nationalism, he supported the Russian Revolution and was one of the founders of
the People’s Russian Information Bureau in 1918. He visited the Soviet Union in
1923, 1927 and 1934. He visited India in 1927 campaigning in support of the
left-wing of the Congress.
He was the target of racist abuse, especially from
his Liberal opponent in the 1924 General Election. He warned his children about
the discrimination they would face.
He did not abandon Battersea after 1929. He failed
to be elected in the 1930 by-election in Glasgow Shettleston. Having completed
his studies at the Lenin School in Moscow, Harry Wicks went from Battersea to
help with the campaign where he stayed with Peter Kerrigan. (10)
Sak was the CP candidate in North Battersea for
the London County Council and the General Election in 1931, and the LCC again
in 1934. He unsuccessfully stood for St Pancras Council in 1934, though the
Indian Labour Party activist Krishna Menon was elected. After his visit to India
he suffered ill-health and while remaining active in the CP he died in January
1936.
The above summary is just part of the complex life
and range of activities of Sak. Marc’s new biography includes a lot more
information from further research and the availability of new archive material.
He has wisely chosen not to present Sak’s life chronologically, but in chapters
about different aspects of his life: India and Tata representative; his role in
Battersea; anti-imperialism activities; his relationship with the Communist
Third International; black politics and empire insurgents; and his final years.
Marc includes appendices of original documents, including speeches in the House
of Commons, and tributes to him in Labour
Monthly after his death in 1936, which are examples of the way people are honoured regardless of previous personal differences. One
of the International Brigade British battalions was named after him. (11)
Problems
Facing Biographers
One of the problems facing all biographers is
ensuring that they know about what is being published. The poor quality of most
books indexes does not help. Saklatvala is not in the index of Hakim Adi’s book
Pan-Africanism and Communism. Marc
therefore does not cite the references to Sak that Hakim makes. He suggests that Sak proposed that the League Against Imperialism conference on negro issues be held in
London. ‘His proposal was based on that fact that there were a ‘large number of
Negroes under the British Empire,’ but also because there was a hope that the
conference would help to expose the new Labour Government which had taken
office in June 1929. Saklatvala subsequently took part in some of the planning
meetings for the London conference, as did British members of LAI Executive…’ Hakim
refers to the ‘British-based Indian Seamen’s Union led by Saklatvala’ in 1931.He
also cites Sak’s critical views of the CP’s treatment of colonial issues in A Few Thoughts on Party Work memorandum
in 1934. (12)
There is also the challenge of keeping up with the
continual additions on the Internet. One example of the latter is the Open
University posting on the British Shipping
(Assistance) Act of 1935. The Act aimed to subsidise the industry including safeguarding
white British seamen’s jobs. ‘(M)any ship-owners sacked all but their white
employees, and numerous Indian lascars found themselves suddenly without
employment.’
The Act was opposed by the Colonial
Seamen’s Association led
by Chris Braithwaite. In May 1935 Sak ‘gave a speech
decrying the Act at the Coloured National Mutual Social Club in South Shields.’
(13)
This speech is not mentioned in Richard I.
Lawless’s study of the Arab community in South Shields. (14)
Another
example relates to Sak being denied permission to visit the United States in
1925. The American socialist leader Eugene Debs protested upholding the right
to urge revolt by citing George Washington. (15)
Further examples come from the British Pathe News
archive showing Sak speaking in Hyde Park at the May Day Rally in 1930 and in
1935 protesting there against the arrest of those accused by the Nazis of
burning the Reichstag.
Saklatvala
and Palme Dutt
Whatever their
personal relationship and differences of view about the achievement of Indian independence, Dutt published
articles in his independently
controlled Labour Monthly by
Saklatvala on India. (16)
Biographers
also face the problem of new information becoming available after submission of
final copy and publication, such as the 2020 article on the early British
Communist leaders 1920-23. They only refer to Sak as
MP in a footnote. He is not included in another footnote listing CPers who
might form the basis of ‘An exhaustive account of the national leadership would
discuss others significant in the party if marginal to its governance’. Perhaps
there most important comment is ‘Dutt’s standing as an arriviste intellectual,
lack of proletarian credentials and impatience with opponents, certainly
militated against his integration into a collective leadership.’ (17)
Has
Saklatvala’s Importance Been Under Played?
As a result of reading Marc’s book and thinking
about this review a number of concerns arose. While Marc shows from a modern
day political perspective why Saklatvala is important, I am left wondering to
what extent he was more influential at the time than Marc is able to show, especially
within the Indian communities and activities in Britain, when a book like
Shompa Lahiri’s Indians in Britain
has nothing to detail to say about Sak. (18)
We need much more information about organisations like
the Workers’ Welfare League for India and the East-West Circle, and about the
role of his friend and sometimes critic Arthur Field. As a historian of
Battersea I have always found Field a shadowy figure in the background. The
most known about him is in the Dictionary
of Labour Biography. (19)
Daniel Edmonds’s 2017 thesis is a valuable
contribution to this discussion, containing as it does chapters on Arthur Field
and Saklatvala. He argues that Sak played a much more important role in the
League Against Imperialism (LAI) transferred its International Secretariat to
Britain in 1933 than it is usually credited.
He examines Field’s ‘attempt to create a
Communist-Islamic anti-imperialist alliance in the 1920s’, and Sak’s work ‘in
forging transnational anti-colonial labour organisations during the interwar
period.’
‘Arthur
Field attempted to draw together Irish Republicans and British-based Muslims
alongside CPGB members and diplomats from majority-Muslim states in a failed
attempt to launch solidarity campaigns with Islamic societies facing imperial
encroachment. Saklatvala made use of contacts from the ILP, Indian trade union
and nationalist movements, and the Battersea radical milieu to advocate for
transnational anti-colonial labour coordination. His campaign gained resources
from the Comintern and transformed the CPGB’s approach to anti-colonialism, but
ultimately fractured due to both the growing disunity between international
Social Democracy and Communism and the decline of his independent power base.’
(20)
Field drew ‘heavily from the political ideology of
the Young Turks and Dusé Mohammed Ali, an early pan Islamic and pan-Africanist
activist whose central political concern was the political independence and
territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire. He would shape Field’s
understanding of imperialism as a political project based on the primacy of the
white race and Christian faith.’ He provided ‘Field with a political praxis
that centred anti-imperialism during a juncture when many of his comrades
eschewed such a focus, would also lead to his political isolation within the
CPGB. Despite moments of engagement with other key activists who were
influential within Comintern networks, Field insisted on the viability of
religious identities as a basis for anti-colonial resistance.
But he was ‘marginalised during a period of
growing ideological homogenisation and international centralisation within the
Communist movement.’ (21)
Edmonds examines ‘the connections that Saklatvala
was able to develop beyond the remits of the CPGB, drawing on personal
relationships with fellow Indian émigrés, students, and barristers to develop a
political network that could coordinate action between groups of activists in
Britain and India. Whilst his efforts to gain support from the CPGB at the
organisational level were largely unsuccessful in the party’s first years of
operation, he used his own personal financial and political resources to root
this network in both British and Indian labour movements. Using a discursive
strategy which, whilst overstating the size of India’s industrial working
class, was able to articulate a commonality of popular interests in both
countries, Saklatvala stimulated greater labour attentiveness to the question
of Indian independence. This allowed him to organise financial support for
Indian strike waves and establish formal connections between British and Indian
labour movements.’ Edmonds argues that Saklatvala only came to meaningfully
engage with the international structures of the Comintern after this connection
had been established and his resources diminished, complicating existing
biographies of this leading Communist figure which portray a straightforward
relationship with the CPGB. This shift from subaltern cosmopolitanism to formal
internationalism only occurred once his independent activities had caused some
of his political rivals to systemise their connections with the colonial world,
and marks Saklatvala as a key figure in transforming the British Communists’
attitudes towards anti-colonialism (22)
‘He developed a model of ‘positive Orientalism’
which would underlie his advocacy, and would become fundamentally incompatible
with a growing image of Islam as the epitome of backwardness within the Soviet
world. Thirdly, the political tactics and alliances that Field attempted to
develop, based on his previous advocacy on behalf of the Ottoman Empire, were
alien to the united front praxis of the wider party membership. Finally, Field
himself was not well-placed to cohere and build an effective network; despite
his extensive range of contacts, his past political associations had tarnished
his reputation, whilst his personality led many to not view him as a credible
potential leader. Field was an unorthodox Communist who ultimately could not
adapt to the shift from the looser Marxist political associations of the
pre-war period to the increasingly centralised organisation and totalising
political philosophy of the interwar CPGB. (23)
‘In 1924 Field and Saklatvala relaunched the
East-West Circle. This organisation appears to have received greater interest
within Communist circles than Field’s previous endeavours, and its foundation
came just after the CPGB had been chided by the ECCI for its lack of
anti-colonial work, boding well for its potential securing of party support.
Kate O’Malley has noted how the group was able to provide a hub for meetings between
Communists, Indian nationalists and Irish republicans, allowing for the sharing
of funds, strategies, and resources. (24)
Edmonds analysis is far more nuanced than the
debate between Marika Sherwood and John Callaghan. (25)
While Edmonds drew on my 2010 article about Archer
(26) he was unable to draw on the more additional information about Archer,
especially on the split with Saklatvala after the General Strike on my 2014 pamphlet. (8) It is to
be hoped that Edmonds will seek to publish this thesis as a book.
A
Fuller Biography of Saklatvala Still Needed
Unless they create a biography of several hundred
pages no biographer can cover every aspect of someone’s life. Such a biography
is not Marc’s intention. The books by Mike Squires and Sehri Saklatvala remain
important sources along with more recently added studies. Harry Wicks autobiography
also contains useful detail. He recalled that Sak ‘had long shared platforms
with Charlotte Despard, as co-fighter for the right of national
self-determination of all colonial people, particularly the Irish and the
Indians.’ He also recalls that Sak visited the Battersea Young Communist League
branch during the 1924 election to thank them for their election work, bringing
his 12/13 year old son with him. (27)
Mike Squires cites Despard’s support for Sak in
1922, for whom she made a special appeal to women and the Irish. ‘I appeal to
you – to Labour which I have always honoured, to women, women workers and
mothers who are the greatest workers of all – I appeal to my Irish fellow countrymen
and women in North Battersea – support the Party and support the man,
Saklatvala.’ She continued to support him after the split in the Battersea
Party. During the General Election of 1929 took place she came over from
Ireland to support him at several of his meetings. (28)
Sak’s involvement
with the local Party is probably greater than biographers have realised, For
example he gave the key address on ‘Current Problems’ at the local Party’s
Second Conference of trade unionists and members of labour organisations at the
Labour Club Hall at 81-83 Falcon Rd, On Sunday 13 September 1925. The
Conference discussed running a local Labour newspaper, workers’ control in
industry, industrial unity, co-operation and Labour, industrial assurance,
Labour and Royal functions, LCC tramway improvements, the difference between
men and boys’s work at a local factory, and the organised unemployed workers
movement. (29)
The relationship between those pro and anti Saklatvala
in Battersea could be venomous. When William Stephen Sanders, the official
Party’s prospective Parliamentary candidate, published his reminiscence Early Socialist Days in 1927 he was
bitterly attacked by T.A. (Tommy) Jackson of the CP. ‘It is not the fact that
he is palpably wrong that makes this book so annoying - it is the insufferably
smug self-righteousness that oozes from its every pore. ….
It can be said plainly and unhesitatingly that either Mr
Sanders knows nothing of Marx (in which case he has lied about his studies) or
he knows Marx and lies about him deliberately to the greater glory of
Ecclestone Square and the enlargement of his chances against Saklatvala…..
He emerges again to earn a few more crumbs of bourgeois
gratitude by a Judas attack upon Saklatvala from behind. He is typical of the smooth-tongued
pharisees who conceal a hatred and contempt for the proletariat under a desire
to "represent" them in Parliament there is to ensure that the
"inevitable" will be very, very "gradual" indeed.’ (30)
Sanders refused to shake
Saklatvala's hand at the nomination on 20 May 1929. "I do not want to
speak to you" he said, and turned his back on him. Saklatvala had not
complied with "certain decencies in the public life of England". He had
called Sanders a "murderer" because he had served in the War.’
As the Communist
Party became more hostile to the Labour Party, left-wingers found it more and
more difficult to work with Saklatvala and the Communist Party. They resigned in June 1928 and the
disaffiliated party, now totally under Communist Party control, put up no
candidates in the local elections in November 1928; in December, Saklatvala
pronounced it dead. (32)
There are likely to be many examples of Sak’s
speeches in Battersea and around the country especially in his final years such
as his participation in a debate proposing “That the Labour Party is Not a help
but a hindrance to the emancipation of the workers’ held at Croydon’s labour
movement Ruskin House on Sunday 13 December. (33)
There is his 1933 speech
at the Battersea meeting of the Relief Committee for the Victims of German
Fascism.
Sak’s widow Sarah
remained welcome in Battersea after his death. She supported the Aid Spain
movement in Battersea opening in 1937 a Bazaar and Fun Fair and in 1938 the
North Battersea Women’s Co-operative Guild concert. Battersea Communists held a
meeting to welcome the leader of the Saklatvala Unit of International Brigade.
As a historian of Black Britain and of Battersea
reviewing Marc’s book has highlighted the serious gaps in my knowledge and
understanding, which will require me to re-examine all the material I have on
the period 1916-1936 as part of the book I am trying to write on Battersea’s
labour movement.
Sak
and Dutt
A study of the relationship between Sak and Dutt
is particularly needed within the context of the CP’s anti-colonial and
anti-imperialism work up to Sak’s death in January 1936. It seems to me that
more analysis is needed on the Class against Class period of the CP’s hostility
to the Labour Party. Mike Squires is a supporter of the political correctness
of the policy, while Marc is not. Any consideration of the policy needs to take
account of the views of A. L. Morton who joined the CP at the end of 1928. In
his review of Noreen Branson’s The History
of the Communist Party, 1927-41 he remembers ‘scratching his head over long
articles in The Communist Review’ in which ‘the struggle within the party
leadership was being fought out in a coded language’. He agrees with Branson’s
view that the new line was ‘a disaster, but says that the members called for it
and welcomed it. (34)
Conclusion
Marc’s book is not just a political biography about a complex individual
with both weaknesses and strengths, it is a political education tool. As an
anti-racist activist and a co-founder of the Black Sections of the Labour
Party, Marc links Sak’s life with the continuing struggle for Black (African,
Asian & Caribbean) rights and social justice and alliances between Black,
Asian and white organisations based on Black and Asian self-organisation and
self-determination. It is therefore essential reading as part of the on-going
Black Lives Matters debate.
As a professional journalist Marc’s book is very
readable for the general public and therefore a welcome
addition to the collection of anyone interested in knowing more about a
fascinating aspect of Britain’s hidden history.
Comrade Sak, Shapurji Saklatvala MP, a
political biography can be purchased using this
link
www.peepaltreepress.com/books/comrade-sak
Footnotes
(3) https://actionnetwork.org/events/the-1922-election-of-shapuri-saklatvala-labours-first-asian-mp
(4) Mike Squires. Saklatvala. A Political Biography.
Lawrence & Wishart.1990; Sehri Saklatvala. The Fifth Commandment. Miranda Press. 1991; and John Callaghan. Rajani Palme Dutt. A Study in British
Stalinism. Lawrence & Wishart.1993.
(5) Another CP concern may have been
that Sak’s involvement with Zoroastrian organisations brought him into contact
with the former Indian MPs Dadabhai Naoroji (Liberal 1892-5) and Sir Mancherjee
M. Bhownaggree (Conservative 1895-1906) John R.Hinnells & Omar Ralph. Bhownaggree. Member of Parliament: 1895-1906.
Hansib. 1995)
(6) Sir Norman Angell. After All. The Autobiography of Norman
Angell. H.Hamilton. 1951. p.231
(7) Sean Creighton. Battersea and the General Strike.
Agenda Services
(8) Esuantsiuwa Jane Goldsmith, the
organiser of the Black Lives Matters rallies on Tooting Common in the summer of
2020 recalls that her white grandfather was a member of the Battersea Communist
Party. He told her about Archer, but she does not mention whether he also told
her about Sak. The Space Between Black
and White. Jacaranda. 2020
(9) Sean Creighton. John Archer. Battersea’s Black Progressive
and Labour Activist 1863-1932. History & Social Action Publications.
2014
(10) Harry
Wicks. Keeping My Head. The Memoirs of a
British Bolshevik. Socialist Platform.1992. pp. 126-7. As a member of the
CP at Sheffield University in the late 1960s I clashed with Kerrigan’s daughter
Jean in her capacity as Yorkshire organiser of the Socialist Labour League the
Workers. Jean later settled in Lambeth becoming a tenants activist and in
recent years has been a leading member of the Brixton Windmill group. I handled
the sales of the Wicks autobiography for Socialist Platform. It had been edited
for publication by Logie Barrow, who I knew through the History Workshop movement.
(11)
‘(H)is 18-year-old daughter Sehri Saklatvala
arranged an event “FOR SPAIN, India Evening” in London in March 1937, which was
organized by the Spain-India Committee. One of the speakers was Indira Nehru,
daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru. Her father urged Indians to support the fight in
Spain. ‘The India League founded the “Indian Committee for Food For Spain.” In
the fall of 1937, the Spain-India Aid Committee donated an ambulance to “the
courageous Spanish democrats.”’ ….On July 17, 1938 at the second anniversary of
the Spanish Civil War, Nehru addressed a crowd of 5,000 in Trafalgar Square in
London at a rally in aid of Republican Spain. One of the British based Indians
who joined the Saklatvala Battalion was Gopal Mukund Huddar alias John Smith. The Volunteer. Founded by the Veterans of
the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. 25 August 2016.
https://albavolunteer.org/2016/08/gopal-mukund-huddar-an-indian-volunteer-in-the-ibs
Joe Monks was an Irish member of the Saklatvala
Brigade and his reminiscence With the Reds in Andalusia was published by the John Cornford
Poetry Group in 1985.
http://irelandscw.com/ibvol-Monks.htm
(12) Hakim
Adi. Pan-Africanism and Communism. The
Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919-1939. Africa World
Press. 2013. pp. 94-5, 131 & 278. There is a useful discussion by Sobhanlal
Datta Gupta on his memorandum and the context in History re-examined: anti-imperialism, the Communist Party of India and
international communism in David Howell, Dianne Kirby & Kevin Morgan
John Saville. Commitment and History.
Themes from the life and work of a socialist historian. Lawrence &
Wishart & the Socialist History Society. 2011. p.123-5. Gupta’s Comintern and the Destiny of Communism in
India 1919-1943. Dialectics of Real and a Possible History (Seribaan. 2006)
would also need to be looked at.
(13) www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/british-shipping-assistance-act-1935.
(14) Richard
I. Lawless. From Ta’izz to Tyneside. An
Arab Community in the North-East of England During the Early Twenthieth Century.
University of Exeter Press. 1995. This is an important book because of the
detail on Arab and Islamic collective self-organisation, but also on the
details of the divisions within the white local labour movement. An earlier short
study of the 1930 riots in South Shields was discussed by David Byrne of the
North Shields Community Development Project in The 1930 Arab ‘Riot’ in South Shields. A race riot that never was. Race
& Class. Vol. XVIII. No. 3. 1977.
file:///C:/Users/Acer%20user/Documents/Saklatvala/Byrne%20Sheilds%201930.pdf
(15) DEBS DEFENDS SAKLATVALA.; Upholds Right to Urge Revolt, Citing George
Washington. The New York Times. 25 September 1925
www.nytimes.com/1925/09/25/archives/debs-defends-saklatvala- upholds-right-to-urge-revolt-citing-george.html
(16) India in the Labour World. November 1921; India and Britain. June 1927; Who
is this Gandhi? July 1930; The Indian
Round Table Conference. December 1930; The
Indian Round-Table Conference A Danger to World Peace and Socialism.
February 1931; India as in Fact It Is. January 1935. Transcribed on www.marxists.org/archive/saklatvala/index.htm
Sak also wrote in The Communist: British Capital and Indian Revolt. 2 December. 1922.
(17) John McIlroy & Alan Campbell. The
early British Communist leaders, 1920–1923: a prosopographical exploration,
Labour History Review. pp. 423-465.
(18) Shompa Lahiri. Indians in Britain. Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880-1930. Routledge. 2000
(19) John
Saville. Arthur Field. The Dictionary of
Labour Biography. Vol XIII. Palgrave Macmillan. The material on the League
in Partha Sarathi Gupta Power. Politics and the People: Studies in
British Imperialism and Indian Nationalism (Anthem Press. 2002) needs
to be looked at.
(20) Daniel
Edmonds. Unpacking Chauvinism. The
Interrelationship between Race, Internationalisms, and Anti-Imperialism among
Marxists, 1899-1933. DPhil Thesis. Manchester Univ. 2017. p. 13.
(21) Ditto.
pp. 28-9. Duse Mohamed Ali only mentions Saklatvala and Field once each in his
autobiography. ‘The late Saklatvala’s election to the Commons was a mere flash
in the pan of Communist propaganda and had little to do with Indian politics,’
(p.45). He writes that in 1913 ‘Arthur Field, the untiring secretary of the
Anglo-Ottoman Society, requested that the names of those interested in the
integrity of the Turkish Empire should be sent in to my office at as early a
date as possible with a view to foundation of the Ottoman Committee.’ (Mustafa
Abdelwahid. Duse Mohammed Ali 1866-1945.
The Autobiography of a Pioneer Pan African and Afro-Asian Activist. The Red
Sea Press. 2011. p. 131). Any assessment of Ali and Field in relation to the
Committee and its successor Anglo-Ottoman Society has to take into account Vol.
2. Of the PhD thesis of the late Ian Duffield on Duse Mohamed Ali and the Development of Pan-Africanism 1966-1945. file:///C:/Users/Acer%20user/Documents/Saklatvala/duse-mohamed-ali-and-the-development-of-pan-africanism-1866-1945_compress.pdf
Particularly
important is Duffield’s statement that ‘the sum of the activities centred on
158 Fleet Street’ (Ali’s office) between 1912 and 1921 made it a virtual if
informal central secretariat of Negro Pan movements, through which they could
fruit- fully interleave with various Islamic and Asian movements.’ (p. 784)
(22) Ditto. p.29
(23) Ditto.
p.127
(24) Ditto. p. 159. Marc does cite Kate O’
Malley’s book Ireland, India and Empire:
Indo-Irish radical connections 1919-64. Manchester University Press. 2008
(25) Marika
Sherwood. The Comintern, the CPGB,
Colonies and Black Britons, 1920–1938. Science & Society. 60:2 (1996).
pp.137-163; and John Callaghan. The
Communists and the Colonies: Anti-imperialism between the Wars, in Opening the Books: Essays on the Social and
Cultural History of the British Communist Party. 1995); and John Callaghan.
Colonies, Racism, the CPGB and the
Comintern in the Inter-War Years’. Science
& Society. 61:4. Winter 1997/1998. pp.513-525. Evan Smith discussed the
differences and particularly the post-1945 aspects in “Class Before Race”: British Communism and the Place of Empire in
Postwar Race Relations. Science &
Society. 72:4. October 2008. pp. 451-488
(26) Sean
Creighton. John Archer and the Politics
of Labour in Battersea (1906-32). In Immigrants
& Minorities. Vol. 28. Issues 2/3.July/November 2010. pp. 183-202
(27) Wicks.
op.cit. pp. 31 & 40
(28) Squires.
op cit. pp. 77 & 103
(29) Battersea
Trades Council and Labour Party. The Second Conference. Leaflet with agenda.
(30) T.A Jackson. A
Fabian With an Honourable Past and an Inglorious Future". Review of Early Socialist Days. The
Sunday Worker. 27 November 1927. Cited in (31)
(31) Sean Creighton. William
Stephen Sanders. Agenda Services. Update edition is being finalised for
publication.’
(32) Terence
Chapman. Caroline Ganley. History
& Social Action Publications. 2018
(33) Croydon
News. Vol. 3. No. 1. December 1931. I found this while researching Croydon
material at the Working Class Movement Library, which was appropriate given the
support Sheri Saklatvala was to give it in her final years living in Salford.
(34) A.
L. Morton. Communist Party History.
1927-41. Our History Journal.
1985. Reproduced in Margot Heinemann & Wille Thompson. History and the Imagination. Selected Writings of A. L. Morton.
Lawrence & Wishart.1990. pp.317-320
A PDF version of this review is available on request from sean.creighton1947@btinternet.com
