I think I was aware of divisions in society even as a school kid. I can still remember in the early 1930s having vouchers for public assistance, as it was called in those days, to take to the shop in order to get a cheap pound of jam. What really triggered me thinking in more political terms was at the ripe old age of 15 after my experience of the bombing of Coventry in November 1940. I remember being up all night during the blitz helping to drag people out of bombed out buildings. This made me think, along with many other people, that there was something wrong with a society that could only exist by dropping deathout of the sky on people.
But half of me being a socialist can be put down to my father. He was a lifelongtrade unionist, a member of the Labour Party, who joined the Communist Party in the 1920s during the General Strike. He was a shop steward in a factory in Wolverhampton, but he left the CP some time after the General Strike and went back to the Labour Party. Throughout his life he was a socialist and a militant trade unionist. When I was a kid he was getting up at 6am, going out to work, getting back after I had gone to bed, so it was only for a few hours on Sunday that I saw him. He was a figure I was threatened with rather than actually knew.
But when I started work and he was my shop steward, and a damn good steward, then I began to see what made him tick. I knew him better as a shop steward thanas a father.
After we left Coventry following the blitz and came back to Wolverhampton, I gota job in a local factory and the chairman of the shop stewards' committee was anold member of the Independent Labour Party. He built himself a bookcase which hekept on his bench and he hired out books on socialism, trade unionism, and othergeneral things for a penny a time. I had many discussions with him and in January 1941 I joined the local branch of the ILP. There were only about eight members locally and they all adopted an anti-war position which took a great deal of courage at that time. One of them registered as a conscientious objectorand did a couple of spells in prison. We were not cowards. It took a lot of bravery to be a pacifist during the war.
My anti-war activity involved selling the Socialist Leader, which was the ILP paper, and anti-war pamphlets. It wasn't difficult to sell them. Quite a few people shared our hostility to the boss class, although there were very few who agreed with our attitude to the war. But because of the hostility to the ruling class they would accept what we were saying on other things.
I became a Trotskyist a few months later. I went to an ILP anti-war conference in Birmingham and met some Trotskyists who were selling their paper outside. A few arguments and discussions later and I joined what was then called the Workers' International League in May or June 1941.
I got hold of a few Trotskyist books Harold Isaacs' Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, The Communist International After Stalin, the two books on the Moscow Trials, the evidence given to the Dewey Commission and then the verdict I still have one of them. The problem during the war was getting books to read.
In 1941 the CP in Wolverhampton was stronger than the ILP, and even more active than the Labour Party which went dead during the period of the war. In the earlypart of 1941 I got on quite well with some CP members because it was during their anti-war period. But after June 1941 the invasion of Russia transformed things I then became one of Hitler's agents who had to be denounced. So I was beaten up a few times, threatened with internment by the police, and on another occasion was offered protection by the local Special Branch from the CP (on the condition that I would let them know who else was in the organisation so they could also be protected which of course I didn't do). Even as a 16 year old I was not as dumb as the Special Branch.
At the end of 1948 I started working for the Austin Motor Company. The CP ran the place as far as the union organisation was concerned. Being a Trotskyist at that time was difficult, but this was because we were not making advances it wasmore important to be a good shop steward. You could have what politics you likedand no one would give a damn, but if you were a good shop steward that was what counted. Winning piecemeal victories was quite easy at this time. The workers knew that on the shop floor they could stop all production, and after an hour the bosses would be willing to talk. I went 20 years at Longbridge without seeing the involvement of full time officials.
I spent quite a deal of time in the late 1950s and early 1960s looking at the Trotskyist groupings. I was a sucker for any papers that were being sold outsidethe factory gates. Around 1969 and 1970 the International Socialists [forerunners of the SWP] were selling Socialist Worker outside Longbridge and after reading a few copies I decided it was worth exploring the group a bit closer. In one issue of Socialist Worker Tony Cliff's book, The Employers' Offensive, was advertised and I sent off a slip and the money. I thought this was a fair test for them if they just send me the book they cannot be serious, but if they are serious comrades will come round and argue the toss with me.
This is what happened. We had a few hours argument and soon after I joined. They introduced me at the local meeting as a veteran socialist it was the first time I realised I was not a young socialist!
When I first became a Trotskyist as a teenager I was filled with a certain amount of idealism I was convinced the war would end in revolution. This was an idea that was shared not only by revolutionaries but by forward looking members of the ruling class. But looking back 50-odd years or more I think the position looks better now than it has done in all that time. When I joined the Workers' International League I was member number 57. Now in the SWP we are talking in terms of 10,000 members, and we have learnt the lessons of the last 50 years. The CP as an attraction has gone. One current is coming out strong and clear andthat is Trotskyism and the SWP the future's bright. I'm looking forward to it.