Tuesday, December 5, 2023

SPGB Meetings (1936)

Party News from the December 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard


Blogger's Note:
'Raj Hansa' was the pseudonym of Ayana Deva Angadi. More details about 'Raj Hansa' are available at the following link.

1 comment:

Imposs1904 said...

'Raj Hansa' (and the SPGB) are mentioned in Al Richardson and Sam Bornstein's 'Against the Stream
A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain, 1924-38':

"One way was to turn up at official Stalinist meetings. Harry Wicks recalls an extraordinary scene when the C.P. held a public meeting to defend the trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev:

In the first trial the Conway Hall was packed to capacity, with Johnny Campbell as the speaker and John Mahon in the chair. There was an Indian journalist [ Raj Hansa]... as the meeting was about to start, this Indian free-lance journalist jumped up and said ‘Mr. Chairman, would it be in order, before the commencement of the meeting, if we were to ask everybody to rise in honour of the old companion of Lenin, Zinoviev?’ (who had been shot). There was pandemonium — it was a most dramatic question, in a most tense atmosphere when they were waiting for the opening of the meeting, and so they were half rising, and the C.P. yelled. I can’t repeat it, but it was a most dramatic intervention by that chap . . . There was a whole crowd of youngsters from the Labour League of Youth, and there was the S.P.G.B. There was a chap named Cash, an S.P.G.B. taxi driver, and there was another youngster with a
loud voice, a good propagandist from the S.P.G.B. They were able to raise their voice, and as a result of the solidity of their protest, they were able to get me on to the C.P. platform — I was the one allowed onto the platform on that occasion."