Out of the Ghetto by Joe Jacobs

 

This essential autobiography of a working class Jewish communist in the east end of London is now sadly out of print and fetching very high prices online.

However it has now been made available at Libcom.org for free.

Previously on this blog:

An excerpt from the book on the Spanish Civil War.

Joe Jacobs on the Invergordon Mutiny

After Cable Street - Joe Jacobs, 1940-77 - Meeting

Review: Alan Woodward, After Cable Street – Joe Jacobs 1940 to 1977

Red Sayles: Alexei, the teenage maoist

Alexei Sayle, Stalin Ate My Homework. London, Sceptre, 2010. 304pp.

“ I knew Sayle's family CP background – it's been mentioned by him many times. But Maoism? Blimey.”

As suggested by the comment quoted above, this enticingly-titled memoir of a childhood and adolescence in an atmosphere of left-wing political commitment contains a number of surprises. No doubt its author’s fame as an actor, comedian and author will attract readers not normally much concerned with what makes Reds tick. Conversely, those of us with an ingrained resistance to celebrity culture, not to mention suspicion of the Party, may be dubious about its value to radical history. It turns out to be well worth reading from several points of view.

Alexei Sayle describes in detail what having openly active Communist parents meant in practice, at the height of the Cold War, in working class Liverpool. The city itself gets a lot of attention, from the now vanished community environment where he grew up n the 1950s-60s through industrial decline to the urban devastation wrought by the planners. His father Joe was a railwayman, however, active as a shop steward in the NUR, with free rail travel for himself and his family, so that they could and did seek wider horizons. This meant not only regular attendance at the union’s AGM, but a series of holidays in Eastern Europe: Hungary in 1961 and 1963; Czechoslovakia 1959, 1960, 1962; Bulgaria 1966. Despite the family being on most of those occasions (with a few blips) treated as honoured guests in a privileged delegation, the young Alexei eventually became aware of a ‘nascent sense of unease about the Communist experiment’.

At the same time he remained at odds with the conventional values peddled by his schoolteachers and resisted pressures to conform, finding his own career path, as it turned out, in the direction of comedy early on. Politically, the chapter ‘I Was a Teenage Maoist’ is about his brief sojourn in the by-ways of Merseyside Marxist-Leninism, an episode of what he calls ‘split-brain thinking’, when he simultaneously ‘both totally believed it and totally didn’t believe it’. Tales of demonstrations, paper-selling, meetings and attempts to convert the masses will strike a chord with many who did not share his precise affiliation.

Along the way he touches on a number of points of 20th-century, from the Police Strike of 1919 and the 1926 General Strike via Hungary, Suez and the Cuban Missile Crisis to Czechoslovakia 1968. Brought up to take the party line as read with reference to the Spanish Civil War and the Russian Revolution, he was accustomed to hearing George Orwell denounced and found the reading of ‘Animal Farm’ something of a revelation. He nevertheless arrived at his own understanding of Marxist (class-struggle) historical theory, also as a result of reading, in this case Marx himself, which was bad news for his teachers.

Not all about Sayle – his concern for issues affecting ordinary people’s lives is evident – it’s not a-laugh-a-line, and punches are not pulled when, for example, repressive regimes or bureaucratic obtuseness are up for discussion. He doesn’t let himself off too lightly either. All the same, it is quite funny in a lot of places – and is a good read throughout.

SMOKY CRUSADE by R M Fox

Chapter 4

REVOLUTIONARY ORATORS

Link to Chapter3 

IN the days before the War - the romantic period of revolutionary oratory - Socialist speakers wore soft felt hats and red ties. Anderson conformed to this custom. He had, too, a well-shaped head, a good broad forehead crowned with a mass of curly hair and a slight cast in one of his eyes which gave them a fine rolling frenzy on the platform. He had energy, audacity and tireless­ness in attack. He would leap on to the platform and challenge all corners. And he was ready to leap on to his opponent's platform, too. Whether he loved Socialism or his own voice best perhaps he himself could not have told us, but if estab­lished society could have fallen before oratory, I am sure Anderson would have brought it down. He could talk all day - in fact, he did spend most of his Sundays talking - and remain fresh, ener­getic and interesting. On Sunday morning he held his meeting at West Green Corner. In the afternoon, snatching a scrappy meal, he went on to Finsbury Park. Here he occupied a disused bandstand around which the people flocked to listen. After buying cakes and tea at the Park restaurant, he took the tram back to West Green Corner and spellbound an audience until mid­night, or even later, when a small dazed group would stumble away convinced that they had assisted in striking thundering blows at the edifice of Capitalism. During his oratory he refreshed himself with long drinks from a lemonade bottle, its gassy sharpness making him hoarse or thin­ning his voice to a husky whisper, but he would talk on until his throat eased again.
     I could not resist these avalanches of oratory, especially as Anderson gave expression to all those feelings of resentment and bitterness which I could not put into words. My only regret was that I had to be up so

Tottenham 100 years ago; R M Fox's autobiography

Wednesday   13 October   at 8 pm

Meetings venue; The Postmen's Office; at the North London Community House, 22 Moorefield Road, London, N17 (The old Post Office). The venue is just around the corner from Bruce Grove British Rail Station, where Bruce Grove meets the High Road in Tottenham. Wheelchair accessible. Any High Road bus is OK 

Richard Michael Fox - more commonly known as R M Fox - was brought up in Tottenham and went on to become an 'Influential Irish Historian'.  We shall be examining his autobiography 'Smokey Crusade'. R M Fox lived in Bruce Castle Road, attended the Lancastrian primary school on the Roundway, N17, and worked in several local  factories, mainly in the Tottenham Marshes area; and they were 'marshes' in those days. His life can be divided into sections
* Working in Tottenham area factories up to 1912;
* Working around  London and active in the socialist and anti-war movement pre-WW1;
* Anti-war work after 1914, street corner meetings, court martial and prison, released 1919;
* Trade union student at Ruskin College, Oxford, visits to Russia, Germany and Ireland, as a journalist, the  move to Ireland, marriage, and a career as writer and academic.

We are concerned with his first 30 years and can look at three main themes in his book:
1.    Industrial work. He slaved away  for some years in various small plants then some big, organised ones. The original JAP motor cycle engine which eventually moved to Northumberland Park Road, then a sweat-shop on the marshes  and lastly in a  massive plant just over the border into Walthamstow. He worked as a machine operator, often on shifts and subject to the cut backs and the sack. This was the age of Taylorism as described in the mis-titled 'Sabotage', (see Brown below in further reading).  Fox read as he could and later wrote a book on 'Factory Echoes'.  Outside work he was become active socialist and he was a keen union member.  Later, he also lived and worked for a period in Woolwich.