Friday 8 January 2021

Is Saklatvala’s Influence Fully Understood? A review of Marc Wadsworth’s Comrade Sak




‘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

 

(1)     https://scroll.in/global/971594/how-a-socialist-member-of-the-tata-family-got-elected-to-the-british-parliament-in-the-1930s

(2)     Alfie Hancox. British communism’s patriotic disease. Ebb Magazine. www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/british-communisms-patriotic-disease

(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.

               www.marxists.org/archive/saklatvala/index.htm

(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



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