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All the Trees were Bread and Cheese and The Death of Uncle Joe
All the Trees were Bread and Cheese. The Making of a Rebel. The autobiography of Harold Horne, published by Owen Hardisty, 51 Ravenbank Road, Luton, Beds LU2 8EJ; (01582-738268), 1998, £2.95. pp.74.
Alison Macleod, The Death of Uncle Joe, Merlin Press, 1997, ISBN 085036 467 1, pp.269.
The end of the Cold War and the consequent opening of many Communist and state archives has had an enduring impact on historians of Communism. But though the new and important sources — not least the greater numbers of people who are now keen to be interviewed — are important, another aspect of historians' work has been just as profoundly affected. This is our job of explaining the past to the present generations. There is a palpable willingness to re-assess and re-evaluate the whole phenomenon of Communism, and the period of the 1940s and 50s in particular. It is a real challenge to be able to contribute to this process.
The new sources make it possible to subject many of the historical cliches which abound in this contentious area to fresh scrutiny and debate. Moreover, historians' work is being complemented by the thinking, writing and speaking being done by many of the participants on their own behalf. We are fortunate indeed in being able to take advantage of the reflections and recollections coming from people who were at the cutting edge of Communist activities.
The two books under review are examples of the assistance which scholars are receiving from their 'subjects'. Harold Horne's autobiography, was completed shortly before his death in 1978. However, All the Trees were Bread and Cheese was not published until 1998 by his close friend Owen Hardisty. No reason for the twenty years' delay is given, but I think it likely that the situation inside the AEU — riven by conflict between right and left during this period — was not unimportant. Harold Horne played a critical role in building and maintaining the AEU's strong position inside Vauxhall's factories, first and Luton and then Dunstable, between 1940 and his retirement in 1972.
Owen Hardisty, the Harold Horne Memorial Trust and the AEEU (both bodies supported its publication), should be heartily congratulated for ensuring that the autobiography has been finally published. Until now, people interested in union organisation at Vauxhall motors have had to rely on second-hand information in the general literature on union and Communist activities in the 1940s. Unfortunately, Len Holden's Open University PhD thesis which draws extensively on interviews with Harold Horne remains unpublished. The section in the autobiography dealing with Vauxhall's is therefore particularly welcome.
There is no doubt that Communist Party members played a fascinating and creative part in the political, trade union and cultural lives of the new working class communities which prospered in Essex, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire at the height of the Cold War. It was not merely Dagenham, but Harlow, Hemel Hempstead, Luton, Letchworth, Watford which were significantly affected by a comparatively large and active Communist presence.
As Richard Croucher, points out in his introduction, the international dimension of Harold Horne's life is also of great interest. He writes both about his time at the Lenin School (1934-5) and his experiences in the International Brigade. For me, his extended description of his childhood and adolescence in Willesden were riveting. West Middlesex, from Willesden to Southall, was a cradle of engineering trade unionism, unemployed agitation and Communism from World War I. Joe Scott, Claude Berridge, Ernie Athorn, Fred Elms, Les Elliot, and Len Chollerton, (and Reg Birch of course) were either born and raised and/or spent most of their working lives as active trade unionists here.
The publication of Harold Horne's autobiography is a beginning. We now urgently need historians to follow it up with much more research. And hopefully, other participants will follow Harold's example and record their memories. There will also perhaps be a great deal of documentary material held by the Harold Horne Memorial Trust or still in the possession of veteran activists which could be reproduced in some form, and thus made more widely available.
Neither the title of Alison Macleod's book, The Death of Uncle Joe, nor the preface prepares the reader for what is to come in the body of the book. For some obscure reason, the cover photograph, "Stalin with his daughter Svetlana", reminded me faintly of a still from a Mel Brookes movie. The reader does not discover Alison Macleod's main drift until around chapter III. Her first chapter begins with a brief description of the her year-long search for Bill Rust's daughter Rosa in 1991, and is followed by a riveting narrative of Rosa's life in the Soviet Union from 1928 until her return to Britain in the spring of 1944. At the end of the chapter we are told that this was the same time that Alison Macleod was starting to work at the Daily Worker under its editor, Bill Rust.
Chapter II sets sketches the three interwoven strands of Alison Macleod's life in the early 1950s — personal, work and political. She, has married a Communist schoolteacher, Jack Selford and they are jointly raising a growing family; she is working at the Daily Worker as a sub-editor; she also finds time to take some part in her local party branch in Muswell Hill.
In chapter III, the main thrust of the book appears. We are launched into an action-packed narrative of the events which the author lived through from February 1956 when Khruschev delivered his 'secret speech' at the 20th Congress of the CPSU(B) until the special British party Congress in April 1957. Alison Macleod is a veteran journalist and distinguished author of historical novels. This is a rippingly good yarn packed with pithy character sketches, humour and hard-hitting judgements of her political past.
The book can be described as a political memoir. But there is far more than autobiography here. We have not only her life but also her times. Macleod has placed her experiences in two wider contexts. The reader is given a running commentary on the main events in international, Soviet and British politics. At certain points, she moves from a broad brush approach to homing in on small, but not insignificant vignettes, which she finds particularly apt. They are vividly evoked across thirty years. Secondly, there is Alison Macleod's assessment of the significance of herexperiences and the people she came to know. She provides a distillation of both her past and current views.
For the historian, the book is an invaluable source. The people and the routines on the Daily Worker were, for me, the most important insight. The journalists who were taking their own politics and the stories they wrote for the paper in dead earnest. There is little evidence of cynical, hardbitten hacks spinning out stories to King Street's order. The reader observes both the daily ebb and flow of events and the profound influence of Stalin's death on the Communist world. It was fascinating to read about the nuances, gradations and subtleties in different people's positions. I found Alison Macleod on the whole even-handed in her judgement of former comrades. Peter Zinkin was the only person for whom unmitigated scorn and contempt was evident. But then, she and her colleagues had always felt that way about Zinkin. It was not his conduct in 1956 which soured relations.
The book can also be read as an extended meditation on the character of Johnnie Campbell. In the absence of an index, I could only make a rough estimate of the space devoted to particular people. But my reckoning found Campbell having more entries than anyone else (including Alison Macleod). He was assistant editor of the Daily Worker when the author began work there, and after Rust's death in February 1949 succeeded him as editor. Macleod had both occasion and ample time to know him well. She came to have the highest regard for Campbell, and her disappointment in his conduct at the special party Congress was profound. Nevertheless, when she took her leave on 29 April 1957 they shook hands and she told him '"I love you very much. I think you know that." He smiled.' (p.259)
The final vignette in the book is devoted to Campbell. She recounts her meeting George Aitken and his wife in the Hornsey Labour Party. They told her a story about Campbell which offered a reason for his acquiescence in the Communist Party's change of line to opposing the war in October 1939. His stepson Willie had become a Soviet citizen and Campbell was unwilling to do anything to Jeopardise his life. 'If the Aitkens' supposition is true, Campbell's stepson may have affected the course of history. If Campbell had left the Party in 1939, when he was in his forties, he would not have said, as he did in 1957: "But where can I go?" He would have gone into the Labour Party. There, his rise would have been unstoppable. Campbell was the stuff of which cabinet ministers are made.' (pp.267-8)
Such confident counter-factual speculation provides a cordon bleu meal for thought. From my own research, I concluded that Campbell was the most interesting and significant British Communist leader, and that the partnership between Campbell and Pollitt from the late 1920s up to 1945 had been both creative and fruitful. However, my judgement is not typical. However, the scholarly consensus remains behind Palme Dutt being the brains and Pollitt the charisma. Alison Macleod has presents a wealth of material about the Johnnie Campbell of the postwar period, along with vital insights into the cut and thrust of political conflict inside the CPGB leadership about how to respond to the fluid situation inside the Soviet politburo between Stalin's death and Soviet military intervention in Hungary. We are all am much better equipped to begin assessing the balance of forces at King Street and Campbell's role.
Readers may find it helpful to consult Robert Service's A History of Twentieth-Century Russia (Penguin, 1988) in conjunction with The Death of Uncle Joe. As a specialist in Soviet history, Service fills in useful gaps. For example, Macleod is only able to speculate about whether or not the British delegates to the 20th Congress were or were not given copies of the secret speech before their return to Britain. Service devotes four pages to the genesis and reception of the speech, (pp.338-341), during which we learn that 'Khruschev transcripts to foreign communist party leaders as they departed home. As if suspecting that several of the recipients might censor its contents, he also arranged for the KGB to ensure that the CIA should obtain a copy, and the London Observer scooped the world by printing a full version.'
The secret speech and its aftermath were watersheds for Alison Macleod's own life and the British Communist Party. Her conclusion that the British party was morally and mortally affected would probably be accepted by most historians. Macleod left the party after the special Congress had rejected attempts by members (including herself) to break with its Stalinist past and joined the Labour Party. She seized the opportunity of the end of the Cold War to write The Death of Uncle Joe, and settle accounts with the past.
I have read the book twice, and expect to read it again many times over. Like All the Trees were Bread and Cheese, it would probably not have appeared until the Cold War had ended. Its immediacy is remarkable, but so also are its considered judgements. She tells us that she has kept her notes of Daily Worker staff meetings during this period, and no doubt they have acted as a mnemonic for her bringing back many more recollections. She has also done an immense amount of research since 1989, remaking contact with many people who were part of her life during the earlier period.
