23 February 2007: Tom Mann

I've put up below Ken Weller's comments on Tom Mann, the agitator at large who by the 1930s was a prominent member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. This led to a correspondence with Charlie Pottins, who has now been kind enough to send me the text of Mann's famous letter to the paper Red Flag, an early Trotskyist periodical, In September 1933, he writes, the monthly organ of the Communist League, British section of the International Left Opposition, Red Flag, sent an Open letter to Tom Mann, drawing attention to the arrest and imprisonment in China of Chen du Siu, and asking why the International Labour Defence was not making efforts for his release. (The implied answer, of course, was that the ILDU only campaigned on behalf of Communist prisoners, whereas Chen du Siu had recently left the Chinese Communist Party and was now a Trotskyist). The following month, this appeared: "Tom Mann has sent us the following letter, date September 7th, In reply to our 'Open Letter' which appeared last month's Red Flag: 'Dear Comrade, I have read the letter addressed to me which appears in the Red Flag. When In China in 1927 I attended the opening of the Chinese Communist Party Congress at Hankow and 1 considered Comrade Chen Du Siu and his colleagues a capable and courageous body of comrades. When the arrests and imprisonments followed I have on many occasions at public gatherings emphatically protested against the imprisonment and demanded the release of all class war prisoners. If my signature is of any value by way of protest or demand I am ready to append the same, and I count it my duty to continue to develop opinion till it shall be equal to demanding and securing the release of our comrade. (signed) TOM MANN.'

18 November 2006: Ken Weller and the CP historians

Many thanks to Ken Weller, formerly of the libertarian socialist network Solidarity, for sending his thoughts in response to my piece on the Communist Party historians in 1956. 

I should also use this opportunity to recommend to anyone who doesn't know Ken's work his superb short book, Don't be a Soldier, which is easy to track down second-hand. His pamphlet The Lordstown Struggle is on the web. (Also on the web are the details of Revolutionary History's new special issue on 1956, which includes a long article on Brian Pearce, the CP historians and Hungary).  

Anyway, here's our correspondence:

***

Dear Dave,
I read your piece with interest since I was a member and used to go to its meetings at the Marx Memorial Library in the mid 50s, although I had a strong interest in labour history, at that time I was strictly a consumer, I was a young YCLer in my early 20s.

Names I remember were Henry Collins and Chimen Abramsky who both left the party. Collins is long dead he used to describe himself as the extreme right of the extreme left. Abramsky had a vitriotic turn of phrase when the Daily Worker refused to take an ad for The Reasoner or maybe The New Reasoner on the grounds they hadn't seen a copy he replied that he noted that the Daily Worker took advertisements for contraceptives did it mean that they had to try them out first? although he doubted very much whether they were capable.

I knew and admired Edward Thompson, his great book on William Morris was published in 1955 (complete with favourable quote from Uncle Joe on page 760) but as Edward said somewhere he started the book as a conventional Leninist and in the process of writing it he could feel Morris taking him over.

I remained on friendly terms with Edward more or less until his death.

I enjoyed your article.
Ken Weller

> Dear Ken
> Thanks so much for your kind email. I never knew Edward Thompson - he
> died before I got involved in the movement. But I used to know Raph
> Samuel well: we met when I was still studying for my A-levels, and we
> kept in touch for several years. Chimen I met once to interview for a
> book I was writing on anti-fascism in the 1940s [...] Chimen
> was the sharpest source I've ever interviewed: he didn't just remember
> names and personalities, but dates, arguments, the exact words people
> had used. I believe he's still alive, although perhaps quite frail now.
>
> Thanks so much for contacting me,
>
> David

Dear Dave,
Thanks for your reply, Edward Thompson died in 1993 I assumed you had been around rather longer, Chimen must be ancient.

It is often forgotten that a significant number of members/attendees at the meetings of the historians group were not academics, as well as myself the were others, I remember a docker and others.

One last point in another text of yours to refer to Dona Torrs "great" biography this was published c 1954 and I read it very soon thereafter, (I haven't looked at it since) and I remember being distinctly underwhelmed and I was not alone in this opinion, I didn't know any else who thought it was much bottle.

On thinking about it's a bit strange that a titanic and complex figure like Mann lacks a halfway decent biography.

He was in the CP from its foundation until his death, but he wasn't you
average CPer, I used to know a bloke called Victor Rose and he had been a
member of the London group of Guy Aldreds Anti Parliamentarian Communist Federation (I think that's the right name) in the mid 1930s and they had a social in west London and Tom Mann turned up!

Guy Aldred in Glasgow produced a series a papers and pamphlets which were strongly critical of the party from the left , they are quite a valuable source.

There is something a bit strange about Mann's last years, although he was wheeled out to add his voice to various cp campaigns one heard stories that he was being kept virtually incommunicado, I am sure the truth is more complex, but I certainly wonder to what extent he was, given his background, an orthodox CPer. There is no evidence in volume 1 that she would have written more than a iconic hagiography of Tom Mann and he deserves better than this.

Be Good. Ken