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

Alan Woodward autobiography now online

A post on this blog in January looked at where Alan Woodward's publications about past and present struggles could be found online.

Two more are now available:

Poor Boy's Tale: Alan's autobiography covering 1939-1997 is now online as a PDF at Libcom. It is a 256 page book which covers Alan's political and personal life as well as his progression from Leninism to libertarian socialism.

After Cable Street: Joe Jacobs 1940-1977 examines the period in the life of this Jewish working class militant after his classic "Out of the Ghetto" autobiography. It is now available online at Splits and Fusions archive. 

As Splits and Fusions say, After Cable Street:

"...contains a wealth of information on the far-left, libertarian and councilist milieu.

In this case actual biographical details of Jacobs’ life are few and the pamphlet focuses much more on the politics of Solidarity and its European co-thinkers and related groups.

There is a substantial discussion of the ICO (Informations et correspondances ouvrières) and the Echanges & Mouvement network of which Joe Jacobs was a British correspondent."

BOOK REVIEW - Joe Jacobs biography

Review: Alan Woodward, After Cable Street – Joe Jacobs 1940 to 1977. 84pp. London, Socialist Libertarians, September 2011.
(Available from Housmans bookshop and at meetings).


Alan Woodward has done another service to radical history in producing this well-researched booklet, continuing the narrative of a varied and active political life begun in its subject’s posthumously published autobiography (Joe Jacobs, Out of the Ghetto, 1978). Using Joe’s letters and other papers, backed up with reference to a range of background sources, he places the life in the context of its times, showing how Joe’s political ideas developed after his days as a Communist Party activist in the 1930s. Those ideas were repeatedly applied in support of working-class struggle; and against those who Joe believed would take over or sell out that struggle for their own ends.

The core chapters are: Joe and the war; Shop stewards, workplaces, unions and the occupation; Joe and the international dimension; Strike reporting; Politics and organisations. Key events – confrontation with military authority, industrial strife and organising, political debates and clashes – and Joe’s role in them are recounted along with their effects on his thinking, with frequent quotes from his own writing, some of it still unpublished notes. Relevant theories and their more notable advocates are discussed in detail, displaying Alan’s impressive knowledge of the history of leftist ideas in the 20th century. The helpful lists of dates, sources for each section, and index are further added value.

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

Wednesday 12 October, 8 p.m.
at the Wood Green Social Club, Stuart Crescent, N 22.
(The WGSC is 100 yards up the hill just up from the tube station, cross the gardens and there we are, opposite the Civic Centre)

Joe Jacobs' life was important for two reasons. The first was that he was one of the best examples of a political working class activist who automatically associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain at its peak. Yet within a few years, the CPGB had lost the leadership of many of this group and in Joe's case had expelled him twice, simply over their Stalinist politics and practices. His example could be written tens of thousands of times in the CPGB's long decline into political conventionality and disintegration.

Secondly Joe did not just hide himself away and pack in political activity but joined what was by far the best example of a libertarian marxist group , Solidarity, sometimes called Solidarity-for-workers'-power. Here he participated in full and worked in both an industrial and political context - he was an ace reporter and writer.

Even so, Joe found himself increasingly in conflict with the organisation and through his contact with more libertarian politics eventually was expelled here as well. Joe had made contact with the Echanges et Mouvement group, effectively a council communists off-shoot, that is sitting outside both the marxist and main anarchist movements. His relations with E&M were terminated by his early death in 1977.

Hence Joe's life and times are hugely significant especially for socialist libertarians who identify themselves as being in this broad category. The events of his life, outlined below, should be put into these two contexts.

In 1936, Joe had defied the CPGB and mobilised dissident communists organising against the fascists of Oswald Mosley. His comrades did stop the fascists from marching through the East End, but at great personal risk. In the following years Joe played a less public role but was active right up to his death. His story is at last told here.

He did war service and did a spell in the nick after a clash with an officer. After returning to his work in the clothing trade, Joe was as active as ever in the workplace and led a strike/occupation at a factory in Warren Street. He fell out again with the Communist Party, too much thinking for himself, and moved towards less authoritarian politics. Joe had always been critical of the CPGB policy of concentration on the official trade union structure, favouring building up the working class organisation at the workplace. Eventually he left manufacturing and began work at the Post Office at Mount Pleasant. After brief contact with trotskyists he also turned to a more radical alternative, libertarian marxism.

He joined Solidarity for workers' power and was active in writing reports of industrial events . He was a very diligent writer about the important Post Office workers' strike in 1971, as he had just retired from employment at the PO. Next he was prominent in the dispute with the Big Flame over the 1972 Fisher Bendix strike and that organisation was forced to back down. Joe also wrote for the [at best] monthly journal doing reviews and suchlike.

Available from Housmans bookshop
(84pp)

Joe was increasingly involved in international contacts. He had lost friends as volunteers in the Spanish Revolution [/Civil War] and later took a serious interest in French libertarian groups. He was enthusiastic about the council communist group Echanges et Mouvement. Ultimately this new version of politics took him away from Solidarity and he was expelled after a pointless campaign for change. His politics were now centred in this aspect of ideas and activity. Joe had worked on his autobiography and had practically finished the key passages when he died in 1977. His daughter completed his manuscript and published the book privately, the great classic Out of the Ghetto.

Alan Woodward has written up his life story since 1940 for Gorter Press, and the book will be available at cost price. Currently celebrations are taking place of the 75th anniversary of the great Cable Street Resistance which gave Joe his most important role in organising against the fascists of Oswald Mosley. This curiously has been written out of the official version.


Numerous other events and publications will be involved in the events of the never-ending fight against fascism. We celebrate Joe's life, mourn his early death and continue the struggle of his efforts.

[A.W.]

INVERGORDON MUTINY - Review

Review by J. J. (Joe Jacobs), Solidarity: for Workers’ Power, vol. 7, no. 12, November 1974, pp.19-20, posted here to mark the 80th anniversary this September of the Invergordon Mutiny* – a small-scale, short-lived episode but extensive in its effects, and one with significance for libertarians. A few notes have been added for clarification or updating.

* (More on this story later).

Invergordon Mutineer by Len Wincott (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974).

I got to know Len Wincott soon after the mutiny, and saw him off when he went to the Soviet Union in 1934. I was pleased to be among those who met him again during his recent visit to Britain to promote his book.

From the very beginning of his visit Len made it clear to all concerned that he was not here to talk about his experiences in Russia over the last 40 years. A circular handed out by his publishers stated:

‘During the Second World War he served in the Red Army, but later was arrested as a “British spy” and spent 11 years in a labour camp in the Northern Urals. In 1957 he was released and cleared of all charges when the gates of the labour camps opened after Khrushchev’s denouncement of Stalin’.

Len Wincott, now aged 67, lives in Moscow with his fourth wife Lena whom he married in 1965. He decided to return to the Soviet Union because (as he explained to the assembled newsmen at a press

Spain and the World: Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War (1)

Spain 1936: the view from the East End

Extracted and adapted from: Joe Jacobs, Out of the Ghetto – My Youth in the East End: Communism and Fascism 1913-1939. London, Janet Simon, 1978, 319pp. (Later reprinted by Phoenix Press)

Joe Jacobs, in his well-regarded memoir of early 20th-century left-wing political activism, had quite a lot to say about the Spanish Civil War, showing how important it was in the political life of the time, in London’s east end as elsewhere. He refers extensively to his files of the Daily Worker (DW, the Communist Party newspaper which eventually became the Morning Star), highlighting the inadequacy and inaccuracies of its coverage and using it to show how the official ‘line’ lagged behind events.


Chapter 10 of his autobiography is entitled ‘Three Tailors from Stepney in Spain’ (pp.213-21 in first edition). He tells the story of how Nat Cohen, Sam Masters, and Alec Sheller set off by bike for the Barcelona Olympiad (the alternative to the ‘Nazi’ Olympics in Berlin), due to start on 19th July 1936; Joe and his wife Pearl were expecting to see Nat and Sam in Antwerp in about a fortnight. But by 20th July headlines were appearing, if not yet as front-page news, about the attempted right-wing military coup, already termed ‘Fascist’, and resistance to it: ‘Masses defend the Republic’; ‘General strike begins’...


Within a week reports had started coming from a DW special correspondent, the headlines were big, and the word was out to rally supporters to the cause of the Spanish Republic: ‘All into action now’. Joe noted that no more than two days’ notice was required to fill any hall when events in Spain were being

Radical History Network at the Anarchist Bookfair - 23 October

3pm to 3.50pm - Room EB2

Discovering hidden history - Radical History at the Anarchist Bookfair

Those who have seized ownership and control of the resources of society are also very keen to control what goes on in our heads, so a big part of radical history's agenda  is finding examples of resistance that the authorities have kept hidden. In the meeting we look at two examples (1) Joe Jacobs who lived in the East End of London, a political activist and organiser for 40 years, who had fought Moseley's fascists in 1936. And (2)  Walter Conway, who from humble beginnings, was the main organiser for hospital medical services for ordinary people in Tredegar, South Wales, before the advent of the National Health Service.