SPGB Rambles, Socials and Dances (1934)

Party News from the November 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Blogger's Note:

The Bloomsbury Branch notice mentions the Branch Secretary, Miss B. Foster. Betty Foster joined the SPGB in June 1933, via its Southwark Branch.

Obituary: Ernest Guy (1987)

Obituary from the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with regret that we report the death of Comrade Ernest Guy at the age of 81

Ernie was a member of the Party for 54 years, having joined Southwark Branch in 1933. When he moved to Bellingham he transferred to Lewisham Branch then to Central Branch.

He was always an active member of his Branch and in the days of the local outdoor meetings would be found selling literature while his son Ray, also a Party Member, was speaking on the platform.

Included in his activities was membership of the Executive Committee over a long period, only ceasing to accept further nomination when he was 70 years of age.

He worked in the printing industry as a proof reader and the Party benefited from his expertise in this field. He did the proof reading for the Socialist Standard for a number of years and also worked for the Pamphlets Committee.

Although less active in his later years. Ernie maintained a keen interest in Party work especially in the new printing facilities at Head Office.

He was a comrade who did his share, and more, to spread the ideas of socialism.

We extend our sympathy to his wife Ethel, a familiar face at Conferences and meetings, and to his sons.

Grace Wood

SPGB Meetings (1933)

Party News from the January 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings. (1930)

Party News from the December 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings. (1932)

Party News from the October 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1931)

Party News from the October 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Southwark Branch. (1929)

Party News from the December 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

In order to extend the activities of the Party in S.E. London, the Clerkenwell and Camberwell Branches have united to form the above branch.

The new branch meets at 42, Great Dover Street on Friday evenings at 8.30, and all those in the district who agree with our Object and Declaration of Principles are invited to attend and help forward the work for Socialism.

Membership of the branch will also be open to those who are able to attend Head Office and are living in districts where there is no branch of the Party.

Notices of Meetings & Lectures (1934)

Party News from the April 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Notices (1936)

Party News from the April 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1930)

Party News from the March 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Activities at Home and Abroad (1933)

From the March 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Excitement in Stepney
On Friday, January 20th, Stepney Branch held a meeting at Whitechapel Library. The speaker, Comrade Cash, took as his subject, "Why I left the Communist Party." A large audience assembled, some of whom were Communists, who did their best by heckling and shouting to prevent the speaker getting a hearing. When the Chairman asked the leader of the disturbers to leave the meeting he (the Chairman) was threatened with a baton, and, for a while, pandemonium reigned. However, the Socialist Party members present proved themselves more than capable of dealing with the situation, and, in spite of this display of organised hooliganism, the meeting was a success, many people being turned away through lack of accommodation.

It is clear that the Socialist Party of Great Britain is beginning to make its influence felt in Stepney.

*    *    *    *

On Sunday, February 5th, literature-sellers from Southwark Branch attended the T.U.C. Unemployed Demonstration in Hyde Park and managed to sell nearly 100 copies of the SOCIALIST STANDARD.

*    *    *    *

Gateshead
The newly-formed Gateshead Branch is leaving no stone unturned to make Socialism and the Socialist Party of Great Britain better known in that district. The demand for Socialist literature has been met and encouraged in Gateshead and neighbouring towns. Although open-air meetings have had to be suspended owing to inclement weather, good work is being carried on in other fields of propaganda. The Gateshead I.L.P. and the Bensham Grove Settlement have been addressed on "The Principles and Policy of the Socialist Party of Great Britain."

Publicity for the Socialist Party was secured by the publication in The Gateshead Weekly Star of a letter on socialism and religion, which mentioned our pamphlet, "Socialism and Religion," and drew attention to the SOCIALIST STANDARD and its purpose.

*    *    *    *

The S.P. of Canada
The Socialist Party of Canada continues to make good progress. Two economic classes and a history class are held each week at N. Battleford, Sask., and have a regular attendance. Whist Drives and Raffles have been arranged to increase funds.

Half-a-dozen study groups have been formed at small points out West, resulting in a considerable demand for our literature.

*    *    *    *

New Zealand
The Socialist Party of New Zealand has had its difficulties increased by the ban on public meetings, but this has not prevented propaganda activities being carried on in other directions. Two study classes are held, one at Head Office and one at Wellington, both of which report excellent progress.

The Labour Party and Communist Party were challenged to debate, but both declined. The Labour Party claimed a "common objective" (though it would be interesting to learn on what grounds), and the Communist Party refused to give "Socialism a hearing at their own expense," after accusing one of our members of running away from them.

*    *    *    *

Debate with a Conservative at Canning Town
A debate took place on Monday, February 13th, at the Public Hall, Canning Town, between Mrs. Tennant, for the Conservative Party, and the S.P.G.B., represented by Comrade Hardy.

The Hall was full to overcrowding. A group of Communists in the audience kept up a running fire of interruption while Mrs. Tennant was speaking, and, towards the end of the debate, they prevented both speakers from being heard by a continual chorus of shouting.

*    *    *    *

Battersea
As the possibility of sustained outdoor propaganda is always diminished during the winter, the only alternative is indoor meetings, and these present serious financial problems to a party such as ours. The possibility of covering the expenses incurred with, perhaps, over a half of one's audience in serious economic distress, is very remote.

On Sunday, February 12th, the branch held a meeting in the Lower Hall of the Town Hall, at which Comrade Bellingham spoke on "Socialism and Unemployment." The meeting was well attended, some 150 persons being present. The questions asked and the criticism entered took the usual form, that is, in the main, they consisted of an attempted I.L.P. cum C.P. criticism of the Parliamentary method without the advancement of any alternative line of action.

Literature was sold to the value of three shillings and eightpence, and specimen copies of our party organ were given away at the door as the audience left.

All things considered, the local branch are satisfied with this meeting. 

Obituary: Frank Dawe (1958)

Obituary from the October 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrade Frank Dawe died in hospital after a short illness in which time I was only able to visit him once. He was 59 years of age.

Frank joined the Party in February, 1936, although he had "seen the light" four or five years previously. During that time he was with the Party not only in the spirit, but in the flesh. He came to the local branch, attended outdoor meetings, and sold literature. When he at length signed on the dotted line it was but the formality of the fait accompli. During that time he was often economically in the red, yet he was sensitive, over-sensitive perhaps, in the payment of dues. He would have hated to ask them to be waived and so his actual membership hung fire for that reason.

Frank Dawe was a stormy petrel, blazing a path wherever he went. In adolescence he was fiercely anti-war and although liable for call up at the end of the first world war he succeeded in not being roped in.

As a young man he took an active part in an engineers' strike at his father's works. It was to cost him not only his job, but the business. Later, he cracked that he at least escaped the fate of becoming a Capitalist.

Frank Dawe had grim experiences of the two slumps after the first world war. In the 1921 slump he became caught up in the activities of the National Unemployed Workers' Committee Movement. They were days of mass meetings outside the local Labour Exchange and often their dispersal by the Cossacks (mounted police). Of the besieging of the local relief station by hordes of unemployed; of forced entries into it in futile attempts to demand from the then Board of Guardians a little extra on outdoor relief. The arrival of the "flatties" and the ejection of the demonstrators; of derelict buildings taken over to serve as the headquarters of local unemployed organisations and centres of social activity, each ironically proclaiming itself as Poverty Hall; of unemployed marches in efforts to reach Parliament via Westminster Bridge and baton charges and broken heads. All of this Frank could recount mordantly. For the Communists who exploited unemployed organisations for political ends he used his most trenchant invective. For the unfortunate, but misguided, rank and file he never lost his sympathy.

We first met at the local Labour Exchange in 1928. Many future S.P.G.B.ers first met there. For many of us it became a social, political and cultural centre. A university where admittance could be gained by possession of yellow signing-on card, and where Marxism might be learned the hard way.

We began as opponents and ended as friends. Into my youthful hot-air idealism he at least breathed an icy realism. After that we went places together. I joined the N.U.W.M. and became its London organiser. We also joined the Communist Party together and left together. We passed through its amorphous body and appendages like a dose of salts. Just over 18 months saw us out at the right end. For Frank the Communist Party, Russia and all that was never "the God that Failed." Rather it soon became a graven image to be mocked at. He learned to mercilessly satirise the C.P.'s pseudo-revolutionism, their histrionics and crude political melodrama.

Then we tangled with the S.P.G.B., but got so badly mauled in the clinches that we at length decided that it might be better to fight for the Party than against it. I joined the Southwark branch and Frank gave it his moral support. To that branch we brought many converts, all unemployed. From the S.P.G.B. being a political expression in S.E. London we made it a political force to be reckoned with. Only a book could do justice to its political epics and varied personalities among them was Frank Dawe. Shortly after we brought about the formation of the Lewisham branch in which Frank took an active part. It was that branch he subsequently joined.

He also largely initiated the reforming of the Camberwell branch of which he was a consistently active member, playing as he said, the role of the elder statesman.

Frank Dawe cut his Socialist teeth in a whirling vortex of activity; on the streets at the Labour Exchange, public libraries and elsewhere; a formidable and rumbustious protagonist for Socialism. It was the hectic crisis days when, vide the C.P., Capitalism was collapsing and they thought if they did not hurry they would not be in time to take it over. It was into this seething frothy excitement, always turbulent, sometimes violent, that Frank Dawe flung himself, a number nine pamphlet in one pocket and a copy of Engel's "The Revolutionary Act" in another.

It was a time when the reading room of the local library was taken over by us and the CPers as a political forum without, of the course the conventional procedure. And where librarians vainly exhorted us to keep politics out of literature.

It was also a time when the Labour Exchange was jam-packed with signers-on. Somewhere in the seething maelstrom was invariably Frank, close pressed by a small crowd inside a big one. Above the din and tumult could be heard snatches such as—the dictatorship of the proletariat, the class struggle, the Gotha Programme—and counter-revolutionaries. This often resulted in the complete disorganisation of Labour Exchange procedure and incensed officials sending for the police to eject us, that is, if in the confused mass we could be found.

Frank had a wide and sure grasp of the essentials of Marxism coupled with a considerable cultural background. He had a deep appreciation of both classic and modern French literature which he read in the original. He was a mine of information on classical music to which he introduced me. He often suppressed his many sided cultural attainments, believing that it might imply on his part, pretensions and snob values and thus provoke unfavourable reactions among those he came in contact with.

Frank spoke and at times wrote for the party. He was a good outdoor speaker with a facility for illustrating various aspects of the party's case. He could be a veritable cartoonist in words, imaginatively delineating a situation with a few bold strokes.

The comic muse must have presided at his birth. He had a sublime sense of the ridiculous and a rich seam of riotous humour. He not only told a good story—what Frank told an American professor and an English bishop would not pass the censor—but the best ones he told against himself.

Yet under his bluff and at times boisterous exterior lay a shy and sensitive person often apologetic and deprecatory of his work for the Party. He was something of a perfectionist, underestimating what he to give to the Party. It was a pity for he had much to give.

His attachment to the Party was deep and abiding, his class loyalties, passionate and sincere. He will certainly be remembered. For me, his death will not only be a Party loss, but a personal loss as well.

To his wife and family we express our sympathy in their misfortune.

E.W.