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