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Rose (Rosina) Smith, 1891-1985
This PhD thesis, shortly to be completed, reconstructs and analyses the development and experiences of Rose Smith from her birth in 1891 in Putney, England to her death in 1985 in Beijing, China. Over the span of her lifetime, she was among other things, a communist local strike leader of women, a functionary in the Executive Committee of the CPGB, and a journalist working for the Daily Worker in London and Xinhua in Beijing. The factors that might have influenced her in her choice of activities are discussed. The socio-political environments in which she operated are described.
The approach adopted in the thesis has been proposed by Peter Leonard. Instead of presenting Rose Smith as a separate and atomised entity, she is comprehended as an individual whose social identity was constructed by her gender, her working-class background, and her membership of the CPGB and the communist community with its distinct social and cultural norms.
In chapter one her childhood and adolescence as eldest daughter in a large artisan household in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and her becoming a Marxist by joining the SDF and WEA tutorial classes and summer-schools at Balliol College, Oxford are discussed.
Chapter two examines her activities as a strike leader of miners' wives in Mansfield during the General Strike and lockout in 1926, and during the textile strikes in Lancashire from 1930-34. The forms of 'direct action' as espoused by Rose Smith and the National Minority Movement are assessed.
Chapter three and four deal with Rose Smith's activities as a 'formal' and 'informal' politician. Chapter three analyses her training as a cadre, her work as the CPGB's National Women's Organiser from 1930-33, her involvement with the Hunger Marches of the NWUM, her CP candidatures in the General Election of 1929 and the municipal election of 1933. Her involvement in 'informal' politics via the more women-community based path focuses on her campaigning for birth control for working-class women, housing, cost of living, and against the spread of Fascism at local and national level of British politics.
Chapter five is devoted to Rose Smith's work as a working-class journalist from 1926 to 1955. It analyses her writing on industrial and women's issues as worker correspondent for various socialist papers in the 1920s, as reporter at the Daily Worker in Britain and Spain from 1930s to mid-1950s.
Chapter six focuses on Rose Smith's work and life in the People's Republic of China form 1962 to 1985. Special emphasis is laid on her experiences of the Sino-Soviet split in the British communist community, of 'class' and 'class struggle' in liberated China, and as 'polisher' in the Chinese media.
Sources consulted for this study are Rose Smith's writings, her interviews given to Roland Berger in Beijing in 1978, archival materials of the CPGB, various British and Chinese newspapers, and several interviews with family members, friends and former colleagues of Rose Smith, which I conducted in England and Beijing.
If anyone has any advice or suggestions as to the possible publication of this study, please contact me at: 3420 Papineau Couture, Rock Forest, Québec, Canada, J1N 2X1, Fax: +1 819 566 6343.
