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The Quiet Revolutionary
SOON AFTER my arrival in England I contacted Hugo and we used to meet on my free afternoons and on Sundays. Hugo introduced me to Daisy and Reg Groves, with whom he shared a house in Balham, as well as to other comrades who had once been members of the by then defunct Marxist League. He also took me once or twice to meetings of his trade union branch, of which he was chairman and delegate to the Wandsworth or Battersea trades council. Over Christmas I had a few days off and spent them with him. I had my first English Christmas dinner with him, his mother and his sister Roma. In the afternoon he took me for a stroll over Clapham Common – my first introduction to London’s thick peasoup fog.
By that time I had already decided to change my job, in spite of the protests of the family in Stanmore. A German comrade had given me an introduction to Freda Utley, at that time a well-known journalist and writer, who needed somebody to look after the house and her five-year-old son, John. Freda, an ex-Communist, was an interesting person and we three soon became friends. In the 1920s she had met Arkadi, a Soviet Russian who was working in London (probably with the Anglo-Russian Committee). When Arkadi was transferred to China and, at the beginning of the 1930s, back to Russia, Freda went with him. In 1937 he was arrested. Not till years later did she learn that he had died within a year of being deported to a labour camp in the far north to build the White Sea Canal. In Freda’s house I worked twice as hard as in Stanmore, but I did not mind. Occasionally I even typed her manuscripts, which helped me greatly with my English.
Through her I also had the opportunity to meet and to learn something about the left-wing intellectuals and writers of the 1930s: Bertrand Russell, H.N. Brailsford, the poet Stephen Spender, the publisher Warburg and his somewhat eccentrically dressed wife, whom I met at one of Freda’s parties. At the same party I had to give up my bed to Bertrand Russell – I must have slept on the floor in the boy John’s room. So right from the beginning I was drawn into aspects of English life, without, however, entirely losing contact with German refugees.
Shortly after Christmas Hugo suggested that we get married. I hesitated, wondering whether he was just trying to be helpful, as a British passport would free me to take a more congenial job. But Hugo convinced me that he was quite sincere and as I, too, had grown fond of him, we were married at the end of January. But I could not leave Freda in the lurch and join my ‘lovely’ husband – which is how, in my faulty English, I had repeated the word ‘lawful’ in the marriage vow! So Hugo had to be content with visiting his ‘lawfully’ wedded wife and ringing me every day: ‘Has Freda found somebody yet?’ he would ask. Not till April could I join Hugo in his two upstairs rooms.
Hugo came home from work more than once to find me crying because I had no job and because I did not want to be dependent on him. He then used to soothe me by reciting poetry, which he did extremely well – he was the son of actor parents. I remember in particular the threats and incantations of The Congo – A Study of the Negro Race by Vachel Lindsey, an American poet of the beginning of the century: ‘Boomly, boomly, boomly, boom’ and ‘Mumbo-jumbo, will hoo-do-you’. As for Freda, she wrote her autobiography, The Lost Illusions, and later supported every wrong cause: Chiang Kai-shek, Nasser in Egypt, and she even had a good word to say about some aspects of Hitler’s policy after a post-war visit to Germany.
In the summer of 1938 Hugo’s mother moved out of London and we took over her flat facing Clapham Common. Hugo and the other comrades spent most Sunday mornings speaking to the crowds that gathered there. In August they launched the Socialist Anti-War Front, of which Hugo became the organising secretary, using as a base the nearby William Morris House, which belonged to the Independent Labour Party (ILP). They distributed leaflets, issued a pamphlet and a manifesto on the outbreak of the war. But it soon faded out.
Towards the autumn I managed to get a job as a shorthand typist with a company promoting Austrian steel. I did not like it very much, especially as the boss and his two youngish assistants seemed to have fascist leanings. But I stuck it out until the company was liquidated soon after the start of the war. Almost immediately I found work with the British branch of a Czechoslovak firm, also dealing in steel. It was a large business, with more interesting work and pleasant bosses and colleagues. By that time we had moved again, into a more spacious and sunny flat at the far end of Battersea Park, where we lived for the next 33 years. The start of the war saw a succession of refugees from Prague passing through that flat, some trying to establish themselves in London, others in transit to Sweden or the United States. The flat was also used for our political meetings till after the war. A young English friend of ours once said: ‘That was not a flat, that was an institution.’
After a year and a half with the steel company I went to work as a radio monitor for the British branch of the United Press of America, which was then setting up a monitoring station in competition with Reuters, the BBC and other news agencies. They had rented a large two-storey house in High Barnet, a suburb to the north of London. We were a motley crowd of eight or nine women and men, all refugees from Europe, all with different backgrounds, all with a knowledge of languages and a grasp of international relations and the course of the war. We worked eight-hour shifts, but had to be on the premises for 24 hours, eating and sleeping there, followed by 24 hours off. We sat glued to our special radio sets, following the transmission times round the world, in English, German, Russian, French, and even in Rumanian for some of the time, taking the news down on paper, slightly sub-editing it, and then telephoning or teleprinting it to our head office in London.
It was hectic work at the best of times and the competition with other news agencies and the BBC was fierce. We had to be on the alert for special announcements or speeches by Hitler or Stalin. Or for war communiques, usually introduced by a few brief bars of martial music. English announcements from Germany were often made by their star announcer and English renegade, nicknamed in England Lord Haw-Haw. Special news from Russia was read by an actor. Moscow Radio specialised in breaking the news of victories at any hour of the night, so one could never relax. How hectic this work was can be gauged from a letter a colleague and I received from head office congratulating us on an ‘elegant scoop’ – we had beaten Reuters by one second!
It was a well-paid job and the work was not routine, but after almost two and a half years of listening to the news – so many planes shot down, cruisers sunk and crew drowned, battles won or lost, so many men killed, wounded, taken prisoner, I could not take any more. In December 1943 I left. For a short time towards the end of the war I went once a week to replace a friend of mine who worked for another news agency, to give him a break. I remember the heart-breaking appeals for help one night from Prague radio, when the town was being bombarded by the Nazis and the Soviet Army, on the other side of town, was standing idly by, without firing a single shot.
At the beginning of 1943 Hugo was called up, after his application to be a conscientious objector on political grounds was rejected. After some tough initial training, mostly on the sloshy fields in Warwickshire, the new recruits could go on to do further specialised training. Hugo chose a six-month course in shorthand and typing – in London! Afterwards he worked in army offices, mostly in the Home Counties, near enough to be able to take part in the meetings in our flat. More than once he had to cycle back to barracks at the crack of dawn.
These meetings involved a group of old comrades and a few new ones, who were working as a Trotskyist group within the ILP – the Independent Labour Party – trying to stop it from rejoining the Labour Party and bring it nearer to Trotskyism. We continued this work right through the war, with me acting as go-between when Hugo was posted abroad. I used to send him reports of the meetings and he would, whenever possible, give advice or instructions, or send articles for the ILP paper New Leader, or for our own duplicated journal Free Expression, as well as the Scottish Forward.
Hugo’s impressions of the war made him write verses and poems, which were published by New Leader and Forward and later as two booklets. In the army offices he had access to his own file, where he found the remark: ‘Not considered officer material’. It amused him, and he much preferred the company of the other rank and file ‘material’, with whom he got on well, keeping up their spirits with his sense of humour and political discussions. But they could not keep a good man down for ever, and they eventually promoted him to the rank of corporal.
Early in 1945 Hugo was posted to a prisoner of war camp near Brussels where they had to sort out the belongings of the prisoners and dead German soldiers. It was distressing work, reading the letters from wives and sweethearts hoping for the end of the war and a speedy reunion. Equally disturbing was the fact that they were not allowed to socialise with any of the German soldiers, not even those who were cleaning their barracks and offices. That continued for quite a while after the end of the war. Not even a cigarette could be offered to a prisoner of war. All they could do was throw half-smoked cigarettes on the floor or leave them in ashtrays to be picked up.
At that time the army ran its own courses and discussion meetings for the British men, under the auspices of the Army Bureau of Current Affairs. The education officer in charge noticed Hugo’s great skill in initiating discussions, and handed over the courses to him, after an initial two-week training. That suited Hugo very well, especially as he was given time off and a separate room for his preparation work. In his free time he made the acquaintance of some Belgians and made contact with the Trotskyists in Brussels.
In 1946, while he was still in Belgium, Hugo was nominated as the ILP candidate in a by-election held in Battersea. His nomination was accepted by the ILP leaders Fenner Brockway and John McNair, though probably somewhat half-heartedly, and the campaign was run on a Trotskyist programme, with the slogan ‘Demand Socialist Action! Vote Socialist’. I will never forget that sweltering summer, the canvassing up and down the stairs of the tenement houses, knocking on the doors of the crammed terrace houses, the endless tea-making in our flat which served as an election office and a refuge for our exhausted comrades. Hugo received 250 votes – which was not surprising in the wake of the 1945 Labour landslide – and a letter of thanks from the ILP national committee, which had given him precious little support.
Then he was demobbed and had to decide what to do next. After a half-hearted attempt at a second-hand book business, which he thought would give him plenty of time to write, he became a teacher of English as a foreign language for the London County Council. In time he became the instructor in charge at one of its colleges.
In the meantime, before the war ended, I had taken over the job of a friend of mine who was expecting a baby. This was in the office of the Association for Education in Citizenship, an organisation founded by Mrs Eva M. Hubback, who had been a friend of Ellen Wilkinson, Labour’s first woman MP, and a group of likeminded liberals. They had branches in many parts of the country, published a monthly newsletter, pamphlets, and once a year ran a mock-parliament for senior school pupils which met in Westminster Central Hall, London. I was greatly impressed by the ease with which those young people made speeches from the rostrum or participated in discussion from the floor. Mrs Hubback, the honorary secretary, only visited the office to give instructions and answer the correspondence, by dictating letters to me. Once I had got the hang of the establishment I was mostly on my own, except for an occasional voluntary helper and the German bombs – which shook that old building opposite St James’s Park Underground Station and had me hiding in the comer to avoid splinters of flying glass.
I learned a great deal about English institutions and organisations while I worked there, but soon had to think about better-paid work, since Hugo’s army pay was rather small. I found a job as personal secretary and bookkeeper to the owner of a chemical laboratory. I had hardly anything to do with the small crew of research chemists, except write the cheques for their salaries. The atmosphere was pleasant and friendly and much of the running of the office was left entirely to me. But when I received an offer to join the staff of the Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs, known more familiarly as Chatham House, I could not resist, even though it meant a cut in wages.
At that time Chatham House existed mainly on membership fees and contributions for specific research projects from various organisations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation. To some extent it was considered a privilege to work there, rather than just working for the money. I began on a part-time basis (combining it with my work at the laboratory), studying work practices in the Soviet Union. This had been initiated by a group of company directors based in Manchester, who turned to Chatham House for a study of the methods used by the Soviet opposite numbers to make their workers work, while here in England, they said, workers whose fathers and brothers were fighting at the front would still go on strike over a ten-minute tea break. I undertook the work with some amusement at the difficulty those directors were in! It was not easy to get the relevant material at that time, but I was able to produce a 130-page monograph on Industrial Management in the USSR, which was published in duplicated form in 1945.
After that I was offered a full-time job as assistant to Jane Degras, who was compiling and translating a comprehensive selection of foreign documents of the USSR, followed by three volumes of documents of the Communist International. Jane was an ex-Communist and a friend of Freda Utley, who had worked in Moscow for three years at the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute. The arrangement didn’t quite work out, and after a while she continued on her own, while I was moved to information and research, where I read the daily Soviet press and Soviet economic and political periodicals, providing members with such information as they required. Sometimes a trade union official would ring for information for a meeting or conference that night. Or I would have to interpret a Soviet move, such as the annual budget, for the monthly publication The World Today. I produced a study on Foreign Trade with Eastern Europe, 1945–1949 which was published in 1951.
Eventually it was suggested that I do some research on Soviet Labour Policy from 1917 to 1928. I think it must have been requested by Professor E.H. Carr, who had already started on his History of the Bolshevik Revolution. But before I had finished my study, which had already developed into a substantial book with an appendix summarising all the relevant Soviet decrees, the funds from the Rockefeller Foundation ran out and Chatham House could not afford me any more. So I finished the book in my own time and it was eventually published in 1956. (A second edition came out in the United States some years later.)
I then followed Hugo into teaching and applied to take evening classes in German or Russian. But I was persuaded to teach English instead because, it was explained to me, I knew from experience all the difficulties of mastering English and understanding the English way of life. I accepted and, with some initial prompting from Hugo, taught successfully and greatly enjoyed it for twelve years. But for both of us this involved a split working day and mainly work in the evening, which really cut out active political work.
This was during the political downturn of the 1950s and early 1960s, and we were also probably tired of the many splits, fusions, and further splits in the various groups of the Left Opposition. But Hugo did manage to write, in particular a study, in crime-story style, of the persecutions and assassinations by the Soviet Secret Police of their former intelligence agents who had tried to defect. He also wrote an analysis of the Moscow Trials and the trials in Eastern Europe which followed. And a book on the Hungarian Rising of 1956.
Another book, with the title Communism in Great Britain, reached page-proof stage, but the 1959 printers’ strike made his publisher bankrupt and the book never appeared. It was eventually published in a shortened version by Pluto Press in 1976 – some chapters on the British Communist Party’s fellow-travellers and Stalin’s sympathisers among intellectuals and prominent Labour Party members having been cut – and now with the title Communist Politics in Britain. By that time Hugo had taken up writing poetry again, most of which appeared in Socialist Worker and some in Socialist Challenge. A small collection of his poems was eventually published by Bookmarks with the title Arsy-Versy World.
In the meantime we had acquired a rather dilapidated bungalow in the country which, by doing really pioneering work in both house and garden, we converted into a home to retire to. But we kept in touch with old and young friends in London, never quite integrating with the local population in this predominantly conservative area – though lately I have come across some pockets of dissent. Two or three years ago an elderly road sweeper remarked to me, ‘What we need is a revolution!’ I was so surprised that, regrettably, I did not stop long enough to ask what kind of revolution he meant.
In conclusion I should like to quote one of Hugo’s poems:
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If I should grow so old and wise If there is nothing left to know, If I forget the seed that lies For he that his whole youth denies |
Hugo died in 1980, as convinced a Marxist and revolutionary socialist as he had been throughout his adult life – as, I hope, will I. Obviously I am disappointed that it is taking so long for the revolution to materialise. But come it must, if exploitation of man by man is to end and mankind is to survive. It is now up to the younger generation to give a lead.
Lindfield, December 1988
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Last updated: 18 February 2023