Circles and links

I am currently working with the wonderful Mike Wild on a couple of projects with the equally marvelous Rosie Serdiville; looking at his parents. For people who are unaware, his Father Sam Wild was the last Commander of the 16th (British) Battalion  of XV Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Mike’s Mother Bessie was a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party. He is kindly sifting through ‘the family archives’ for us.

On the 1st April 1939 Sam married Bessie Berry, who had worked in the Aid to Spain movement in Manchester, they married just three months after Sam returned from Spain at the head of the British Battalion. We see witnessing the signing of the register, George Fletcher and his wife Johanna. George had been Sam’s Adjutant; he had briefly commanded the Battalion himself for four weeks in October 1937 whilst Fred Copeman was in the UK.

The wedding is unusual as this was a Joint wedding, for George also married that day, as you can see from the invitation kept by Sam’s father, he married Johanna at the same ceremony. The witnesses to the marriage show us how significant this wedding was: Harry Pollitt, originally from Manchester himself, was the General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1929 to 1956, Fred Copeman is known for his leading role in the 1931 Invergordon Mutiny and preceding Sam as Commander of the British Battalion during the Spanish Civil War. Charlotte Haldane is best known as the wife of J.B.S Haldane, the British geneticist, sadly, however, her significant work for the Communist Party and Women’s rights has been overshadowed by this

The reception was held at the Waldorf Hotel Restaurant, on Cooper Street in Manchester. It is not surprising to find that Sam and George were close. Sam was raised in Ardwick in Manchester, whilst George was from Moss Side, these are just over a mile apart. They were both members of the Communist Party and had both served in the armed forces before volunteering; Sam in the Royal Navy and George in the Army, serving in India. Both fought in the British Battalion throughout the campaign in Spain, Sam joining the Battalion in January, and George joining at the end of March, 1937, both rose through the ranks – Sam ended the War as a Major and George as a Captain.

Mike has sent me a number of images of cards associated with the joint wedding. Of primary significance to me is the one that Mike sent to me first,  an image of a card that was sent to the couples.

Dated 27th March, the author apologies for being unable to attend the wedding, uses the military ranks  the two men had at the time of leaving Spain just three months earlier; it is a coincidence that Franco’s Fascists would enter Madrid the day after this card was sent, and the Civil War would end on the same day as their wedding – 1st April 1939.

For me the most striking element of the card is not what is says but from whom it comes from, as we have seen the wedding was attended by the biggest names in the Communist Party, but Tom Mann is a legendary figure in the History of the working-Class movement in Britain, and someone who I have a special interest in.

Tom Mann was born in Coventry in 1856, he left school with little education at the age of nine to work as a ‘trapper’ at a local colliery. When the colliery closed his family moved to Birmingham where the 13-year-old Tom was taken on as an engineering apprentice, it was at this time he began attending meetings chaired by Annie Besant and John Bright.  On the completion of his apprenticeship in 1877 he moved to London, joined a Trades Union, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and took part in the 1881 strike. In 1884, he joined the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and published a pamphlet calling for the working day to be limited to eight hours, he formed the Eight Hour League, which campaigned for this eight-hour day. After reading Marx’s The Communist Manifesto in 1886, he declared himself ‘a Communist’, which has been claimed to be the first published use of the term in Britain. He moved to Newcastle in 1887 to organise the SDF in the north of England. He managed Keir Hardie’s electoral campaign in Lanark before returning to London in 1888, where he worked in support of the Bryant and May match factory strike.

This is the point where I find a personal link to the story.  During the hugely significant London Dock Strike of 1889, Tom Mann, along with John Burns and Ben Tillett, organised and led the striking dockers. There militant tactics were due in part to the advice and influence of Joseph Havelock Wilson, the Seaman’s Union leader.

At Keele University I took Joint Honours in History and Politics, my History thesis was on the Development of the Labour Party in Middlesbrough, which as  Joseph Havelock Wilson was  Middlesbrough’s Lib-Lab MP from 1892 to 1900, and Liberal MP from 1906 to 1910, he features heavily, in fact I wrote about very  little else. Wilson’s journey from Union leader to Liberal MP brought to light the change in Trade Unions, from the early proto-friendly societies to New Unionism. Wilson was at the forefront of New Unionism in the late 1880s and early 1890s, but gradually moved away once elected as Middlesbrough’s MP, in summary he became less radical as he grew older and more established, ending his political time by stopping his Union joining the 1926 General Strike, calling it a Bolshevik plot.

In contrast Tom Mann seems to have become more radical as he grew older; he was a founding member of the Independent Labour Party in 1894, his time in Australia saw him embrace Syndicalism, or what today we would call direct action. He returned from Australia in 1910 to lead the Liverpool Transport Strike, for which he was imprisoned. In 1917 he joined the Marxist British Socialist Party which was the chief grouping in the formation of the Communist Party in August 1920. From 1924 to 1929 Tom Mann was the President of the Minority Movement, the radical Communist alternative to the Trades Unions.  Although increasingly in ill-health Mann continued to be active; lecturing, public speaking and advising right up to his death in 1941; at the end of the 1932 Hunger March,  the police attacked the huge crowd in Hyde Park and the leaders were arrested, the 76 year old Tom Mann was amongst those arrested. This Provides me with another link; George Short led the Stockton contingent on the 1932 Hunger march and his wife Phyllis was one of the 26 women of the Women’s contingent; Phyllis received an injury at Hyde Park when she was attacked by mounted police.

If you click on the image below you’ll find Tom Mann  at  the Communist Party organised “Save Sacco-Vanzetti” demonstration in Trafalgar Square in 1927.

A further link comes when I recalled some of my work on Tom Mann as my interest in the British Battalion who fought in the Spanish Civil War developed. Although the Young’uns inspired my interest with their Ballad of Johnny Longstaff I quickly began to look at other volunteers from the area, and after meeting Marlene Sidaway I developed an interest in David Marshall, one of the first British volunteers for the International Brigades.

David Marshall travelled to Spain, and after a few weeks in Barcelona he was moved to Albacete, the International Brigade base, and, at the end of October 1936, officially attached to the mainly German Thaelmann Battalion as part of the XI International Brigade, fought in the defences of Madrid. We see him in the famous image used by many when referencing the International Brigades; it shows the Tom Mann Centuria in Barcelona in  September 1936, with David Marshall  standing on the far right; the unit David fought with was named after the man I’d studied closely as an undergraduate.

But my link to this does not end there, in October 2020 I was honoured to represent the International Brigades Memorial Trust at the Volunteers for Liberty event. A commemoration organised with the Communist Party to remember the International Brigade veterans. Events took place throughout the country and in Middlesbrough we read the names of the volunteers that appear on the Teesside Memorial Plaque which David assisted in it’s production, he later attended a number of dedication services in Middlesbrough Town Hall where the memorial now resides. I asked Bob Beagrie to read David’s I sing of my Comrades, which was partly inspired when David stood at the same spot as we. Bob read this emotional poem standing before David’s Thaelmann banner, a banner he had made in 1996 to commemorate the volunteers of the Battalion he had fought with fifty years earlier, the Battalion in which the Tom Mann Centuria was a part. In the image below I’m standing next to David’s banner, whilst Bob holds my copy of David’s The Tilting Planet, which contains I sing of my Comrades.

There is also another story that links Tom Mann and George Short. The Teesside Communists organised the boycotting of a ship on Middlesbrough Docks in January 1938. Despite threats of sackings and the Trades Union officials also threatening the men, the dockers refused to load the Japanese ship ‘Haruna Maru’ with scrap iron, as they said it would be used for War Materials in Manchuria. A message was sent to the Communist Party in London, when the unladed ‘Haruna Maru’ left Middlesbrough for London, the message was passed to Tom Mann, he helped to organise the London dockers who also boycotted the ship once it arrived at London.

The links between Sam Wild and Tom Mann did not end with the joint wedding of Sam and Bessie and George and Johanna. Yesterday Mike sent me this:

At the funeral of Tom Mann, Sam Wild represented the International Brigade, with the British Battalion flag leading the coffin through ‘a lane of red flags’. This fascinating document is one of the few in which we get to hear Sam’s voice, although I must admit the flourish at the end of the statement does remind me of Bill Rust’s work. It also tells us something about what Sam was doing during the Second World War, for like many veterans of the War in Spain he was barred from the armed forces.

They wouldn’t even let me in the Home Guards. They said I was “undesirable.” I wrote a protest to the Chief Constable of Manchester who was in charge of all that business and he said, “I will make the decisions I’ve decided that you’re not suitable and that’s that.” I couldn’t even get in the demolition squads, although I was a qualified building worker. Sam Wild in The Road to Spain Corkill and Rawnsley

I think you can see why the names Sam Wild and  Tom Mann mean a lot to me, as I research my current hero, a man whose qualities I admire, it means even more to find  connections to someone I admired as I initially began my journey as an historian. Thirty years ago I was researching the life and work of a Communist who’s actions inspired multitudes. I seem to have travelled in a circle, for today I am researching the life and work of another Communist who also translated his ideals into action, committing himself to leadership in one of the toughest arenas possible – 20th Century warfare. Working with Mike is an experience which is rewarding and enriching, enriched especially by the knowledge that these two men; Tom Mann and Sam Wild are linked.

 

 

2 thoughts on “Circles and links”

  1. Great reminiscence of Sam Wild and nice to know your connections to Mann and other progressives.

    We need more stories linking family history to published history.

  2. Thanks for your hard work Tony it is great to have a knowledgeable historian helping to pull the story of our parents together. They were too busy fighting the good fight to sit down and write their memoirs and we were in the same position! Now I am 81 I think it is time to get things down!
    Salud
    Mike

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *