Rob Hargreaves has published his book.

This is the review found  in the May 2022 issue of  https://www.speedwaystar.net/

Where do you start on Clement Henry Beckett’s life story?

A child who was born on Friday, August 10, 1906, and died
on Suicide Hill, in what has become known as the Battle of Jarama, on Friday, February 12, 1937.

He was 30 but had lived the life of a man perhaps twice that age. A
life full of danger, daring, unconformity, heroism, escapades, bravery
and, ultimately, death. His passing was mourned by hundreds of thousands of speedway fans, as he had been a pioneer racer who went on to fame if not necessarily fortune with his daredevil exploits. Even a month after his death, on April 13, the Daily Mirror carried a story under the headline ‘War Beats a Brave Wife’ recording: “When Daredevil Clem Beckett, famous ex-speedway rider, died fighting with the International Brigade against the rebels storming Madrid, the world crashed in ruins for his young Danish wife.

“She left Manchester yesterday to spend a fortnight with relatives in
Denmark. Since her husband went to Spain last December she had
bravely carried on his garage business in Oldham Road, Manchester,
racked with anxiety for a man who had dared all in his ‘Wall of Death’ exhibitions, determined he would dare death again.
“Then came the news that Beckett, holding rebels at bay at a
machine-gun post on the Valencia Road, had been trapped: killed. His body was never found.”

On Sunday, May 2, a memorial meeting was held at the Coliseum
Theatre, Ardwick Green, Manchester, at which a packed audience heard tributes to Clem (and other Manchester men, members of the
International Brigade, who gave their lives in Spain) from actress, Dame Sybil Thorndike, and half a dozen other speakers, including Clem’s widow Lida. A poster for the event, declared: ‘Salute the Heroes of Spain! They have not died in vain, they have saved World Democracy from Fascist barbarism.’

No ex-speedway rider has been accorded such a posthumous honour but Clem was no ordinary person and in a commemorative booklet published shortly after the Memorial meeting, famous Belle Vue manager Eric Oswald Spence wrote: “He was the most dramatic figure of the tracks. He rode as no one else has ever done.”

Few sportsmen have ever matched Beckett’s lifetime achievements,
he was never a world champion but he was certainly among the very
best of British competitors and a stalwart believer in workers’ rights,
the leading and motivating mover in the setting up of the first riders’
union at a time when, despite the sometimes rich rewards on offer,
competitors were exploited by unscrupulous promoters.
Clem was a fully paid-up and active member of the Communist Party
and used its official organ, the Daily Worker newspaper. Using his
friendship with the paper’s editor, he wrote a series of blockbuster
articles that led to him being banned by the Speedway Control Board.

 

The first of those appeared on January 14, 1931, under the big, black headline ‘Bleeding the Men Who Risk Their Lives on the Dirt Track’ and he tore into promoters on a number of fronts, including rider safety and the paucity of payments to everyone except the privileged band of star names. He cited the case of journeyman rider Donald ‘Risk-it’ Riley who, when being jailed for obtaining money by false pretences, told the court that his annual speedway earnings amounted to no more than £32 in prize money! Clem claimed most riders had finished the 1930 season with barely enough money to buy machines for the following campaign and in a second article five weeks later, he caused even more fury within the Auto-Cycle Union, furious at a headline that claimed ‘Fine Sport Made Rotten with Financial Corruption’. He accused the ACU directors of being ‘old, incompetent, out of date, and entirely out of touch with the men they profess to represent’. Beckett’s licence was suspended and he was forced to earn his living on the Wall of Death where his name ensured more than healthy audiences wherever they went.
Clem’s somewhat unorthodox, outspoken and controversial approach to life in general and speedway in particular, made him a wonderful subject for a book – and that’s exactly what has happened with the recent publication of Clem Beckett: Motor Cycle Legend and War Hero.

Author Rob Hargreaves has written one of the most unusual,
insightful biographies of any speedway rider of any era and he spent an inordinate amount of time – around 15 years – delving into Beckett’s background. It is far, far more than a story of a speedway rider, it is a reflection of a longforgotten age and a social commentary of life for a working man living in the 20s and 30s. Hargreaves is an exjournalist who worked for the Daily Express at their offices in Manchester; initially on the picture desk and then spending three years on the Sports Desk when one of the roles he fulfilled was subbing the speedway results when they came in late in the night. But he admits: “I can’t claim to be a speedway person. Years ago, in the 70s, I think I attended Belle Vue once or twice.”
He eventually left newspapers and, in the 80s, forged a totally new career as a lawyer, ending up specialising in custody, divorce
and so on, in the Manchester area. He added: “One of my hobbies, it still is, is cycling and not far from where I live I came across a local authority point of interest sign saying ‘Clem Beckett, famous speedway star, practised off road riding here’ and it just hit me. I’d always had a big interest from my school days in the Spanish Civil
War.

“These guys went out to Spain on a matter of principle, calling themselves volunteers for liberty. Clem had this political connection with the Communist Party and when the call came [to fight the fascists in Spain], he answered it. “That morning about 15 years ago, I thought, ‘that’s it, there’s got to be a story here’. A story that would interest people, the journey through life that people could identify
with.” In the fly-leaf of the 239-page tomb, Rob writes: “Clem
Beckett was 14 when he first rode a homemade motorcycle
over the cobbled streets of his hometown. It was the start of
a lifelong love affair with speed and machines. “For Beckett, the motorbike was a means of escape from the uncertain future of Oldham’s stricken industries in the aftermath of the First World War. Beckett’s zest for life, his natural exuberance and determination to be a winner, overcame the disadvantages
of a poor home bereft of a father.

“As a pioneering dirt track (speedway) rider, he broke records galore, and as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War he broke down class barriers. Whether as a tearaway teenager, an outspoken sportsman, or a member of the Communist Party, his life was characterized by broadsides of irreverence towards authority. “To Beckett, the appeal of revolutionary politics was youthful rejection of ‘old fogey’ values and the dominating role of tweedy gentility in motorcycle sport. Reviving faded memories and anecdotes of his career as a pioneer speedway rider, the book traces the extraordinary rise from blacksmith’s apprentice to superstar, in a new sport which typified the energy of the Roaring Twenties, and was characterized by risk-taking and serial injury. Ever the showman, banned from the Dirt Track for trying to protect his fellow riders from exploitation, Beckett took to riding the Wall of Death. “Observing the rise of fascism on his travels in Europe, Beckett’s increasing involvement in politics led to marriage to the mysterious Lida Henriksen, and inexorably to volunteer service in the British Battalion of the International Brigades in Spain. A narrative spiced with anecdotes
and new revelations about Beckett shows why from boyhood to the
poignant circumstances of his death in battle, Clem Beckett inspired
love and loyalty.”Hargreaves’ research was unstinting and is anything but a copy-and paste cuttings job. He spent days and weeks poring over documents at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford; the Marx Memorial Library in Clerkenwell, London; the National Fairground and Circus Archive at the University of Sheffield; the Imperial War Museum Sound Archives; the papers of the International Brigade Memorial Trust; and the North West Trade Union International Committee. He visited the battlefields of Spain where Clem met his death and also assiduously investigated his career as a rider and his brief time as a director of the Sheffield promotion. The 76-year-old author lent heavily on a band of speedway historians including Jim Henry, co-founder of Speedway Researcher, adding: “I cannot speak too highly of those guys in the speedway world. They provided me with as much help as possible and they were absolutely delighted to help me. “I did go to Spain on organised trips to look at the battlefield where Clem died and I was able to access the Communist International (Cominterm) Archives in Moscow. “Clem could get on with anybody, apart from the ACU, and people did remember him, all those who remember him gave their accounts affectionately. He married Lida, who was a Communist, and there is a strong suggestion that in the time he spent in Denmark, he could have
been helping the Communist Party to get money and messages from
Moscow.

“There were no children of the marriage and he had a sister who
died in the 1980s or 90s and her daughter, Clem’s niece, I believe, is still alive but after I put something on social media she didn’t respond so I wasn’t able to speak to her.”

CLEM BECKETT: Motorcycle Legend and War Hero is published by
Pen and Sword Military, an imprint of Pen and Sword Books Limited,
47, Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS and is available from all major booksellers or at www.pen-and-sword.co.uk. £25.