Obituary: Jack Thurston (1990)

Obituary from the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to have to report the death of our comrade Jack Thurston on 1 September at the age of 84. He had been a member since 1933 when he joined the old Wembley branch and was subsequently, successively, a member of the Chiswick, Ealing and West London branches.

Jack Thurston was born in that part of England where the borders of Surrey and Hamphsire meet. The area bristles with military camps and his father had been a professional soldier. At an early age, soon after the first world war to end all wars, he too joined the army. He was first sent to Ireland where, as he used to recall, he witnessed the atrocities committed by the Black and Tans, and then to Egypt and the Sudan where he witnessed the atrocities committed by the British colonial authorities as when they ordered the public hanging of scores of locals in reprisal for the killing of a British soldier.

When he left the army he got a job as a painter at the Watney's brewery in Mortlake. This was an anti-union firm and he probably got the job because he was ex-army but, unbeknown to the employers, amongst the workforce was a handful of socialists. Jack met one of them and eventually became a socialist himself. From that moment on he never ceased to argue the case for socialism, amongst both his workmates and his neighbours. For a while a Hounslow Group of the Party, composed largely of his neighbours, met in the large garage at the back of his house in Hounslow.

Jack Thurston will be remembered as a straightforward man who was an indefatigable campaigner for socialism.

Obituary: Jim Spittle (1973)

Obituary from the November 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many members will be saddened to hear that Jim Spittle, who had been enduring a painful illness for some time, died during the first days of October.

He joined the party in 1921, at first the old West Ham Branch and later, when he moved to west London, what was then Wembley Branch. Jim worked for Watney’s and it was there that he met, and persuaded into the Party, Jack Thurston, who was to become his close friend and neighbour for so many years.

My first memories of Jim are of my new, nervous days as a Party member. This was just after the war; the Party was growing and we came in rude and demanding. Jim took it all quietly; we soon became impressed with this man who was always to be relied on to turn up, wherever we were having a meeting, whatever the weather. I never saw him in an overcoat; he cycled everywhere.

After his retirement Jim moved to Suffolk, at first in his own bungalow but then, when his wife died, in with one of his children. He still travelled up to stay with Jack Thurston whenever he could and on these visits it was always a great pleasure to see him at the Branch. Until the last days he kept his physical toughness, cycling each day five miles there and back to get the milk.

Jim was no speaker or writer and he was modest enough about his considerable knowledge to keep it mostly out of sight, to be shown only when he was convinced it needed to be. If there is such a thing as a backbone in the Party, he was part of it. When Socialism is here, it will be peopled by men like Jim Spittle; would that there were more like him today.

Ivan