COLD WAR
It is believed by many that the "cold war" was started by Winston Churchill with his speech at Fulton Missouri on 5th March 1946 when he spoke of "an iron curtain" descending across the continent. In fact he had used this phrase on a number of occasions prior to his Fulton speech. The original use of the phrase was by that well-known lover of freedom and democracy, Dr Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda Minister. In an article in Das Reich Goebbels said, "If the German people lay down their arms, the whole of eastern and south-eastern Europe, together with the Reich, would be under Russian occupation. Behind the iron curtain, mass butcheries of people would begin, and all that would remain would be a crude automation, a daily fermenting mass of thousands of proletarians and despairing slave animals knowing nothing of the outside world." This from a leading member of the Nazi regime responsible for the mass murder of millions of Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals and any others seen as opponents of the Third Reich.
In fact, before the war in Europe ended, orders were issued to the Allied forces not to destroy captured German weapons as "they may be needed in the future."
The "Mutual Security Act" signed by President Truman in 1951, (mentioned earlier) had been preceded by the British Government in 1947 when it was decided to take action against the left-wing forces by distributing anti-communist propaganda.
To further the aim of distancing ourselves from our former ally, a secret Foreign Office department was set up during 1947, known as the Information Research Department, (IRD), "to distribute anti-communist propaganda in Britain and abroad."
The operation of this department was kept secret until 1978 when reporters on the Observer and the Guardian enquired into it. It was eventually exposed by Lyn Smith in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 1980.
The concept was put to Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin in a confidential paper (17th October 1947), by Christopher Mayhew, then a Junior Minister in the Foreign Office. It was proposed that a secret propaganda offensive be mounted against the Russians and that a department be formed with that specific purpose in mind.
Prime Minister Attlee , who had a copy of the paper, invited Mayhew to Chequers, (the Prime Minister's country house), for a discussion. Also there were the Permanent Under-Secretary of State, Sir Orme Sargent, Ivone Kirkpatrick, Assistant Under-Secretary in charge of Foreign Office Information, and Christopher Warner an Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office.
Mayhew emphasised that the weaknesses of communism rather than its strengths should be stressed. Russia should be portrayed as backward and poor.
This at a time when a Labour government was in power, having been elected on a manifesto, "Let Us Face the Future" which had as one of its main aims, peace and friendship with the Soviet Union.
Ivone Kirkpatrick was given the job of organising the new department and of ensuring that the "right" people were recruited. According to Lyn Smith, these were mainly emigrants from the countries "behind the iron curtain".
The department got its information from a variety of sources, diplomats, secret service agents and other such "reliable" people, many coming from the Socialist Countries of Eastern Europe. After going through a program to fit it to the purposes of the department, the information would be passed to those seen as individuals who could influence public opinion, such as MPs, Ministers, the press and, of course, the BBC and trade union leaders, who would be able to introduce this garbage into trade union resolutions at the TUC and the Labour Party.
Mayhew has been reported as saying in an interview with Lyn Smith, "If some anti-Stalinist MP wanted information or briefing on some subject, then we were only too happy to send him the facts."
It was of course natural that an outfit like the IRD would be useful to the right-wing organisations. One such group was "Freedom First" which had links to the trade union movement through a number of members of the Trades Union Congress. The material published by IRD in its newsletter was sent out to hundreds of trade union organisers.
The "Freedom First" group folded when there were accusations made about financial dishonesty.
Eventually IRD decided to focus on the international scene and was responsible for the story in October 1948 about "Stalinist tyranny and labour camps." This sort of "information" was sent out to journalists and others in OHMS envelopes with a cover note saying that as the documents did not reflect official policy they should be destroyed after scrutiny.
The connection with the BBC became known when Sir Hugh Greene, head of the Eastern European Services 1949/50 said that IRD was known as "an anti-communist department for propaganda." An office of the department was opened in Singapore in 1949 and in a letter to the British Embassy there the head of IRD in London said, "The Commissioner General attaches considerable importance to the project, which has become even more necessary now that the communists look like becoming masters of at least most of China."
This operation was kept secret as knowledge of it would have caused objections to be raised within the Labour Party and Trade Union movement. The material dished out to those in a position to influence public opinion was deliberately designed to hoodwink the public. Lyn Smith makes the point that, "In the process of selection, negative features of communism only were reported, resulting in a distorted picture of eastern Europe." Christopher Mayhew told Lyn Smith that it was necessary to keep the work of the IRD secret because, "There was a large Labour Party majority in the House of Commons and quite a number of "fellow travellers" and people with Stalinist illusions within the Labour Party. I think that had they known about IRD they would have attacked it as being contrary to Labour Party policies. So in a sense we had to keep it confidential; for political reasons. It would not be politically dangerous now (in the 1970s) but in those days so many people made excuses for Stalin that what we were doing would have looked to them (had they known) to be contrary to the interests of peace and friendship with the Soviet Union. That was the political reason for secrecy. But it is difficult to make out that there was anything sinister about it. We were ahead of our time in fighting Stalinism; we were certainly taking great political risks, and quite right too. It was not underhand, unless it is underhand to brief up anti-Stalinist writers, broadcasters and trade unionists. I don't consider that underhand: it was confidential, but it wasn't underhand."
The IRD was closed down in May 1977 by Dr David Owen. It was no longer needed as the changes that were then taking place in the Soviet Union were showing a gradual turn towards the West.
So the anti-Soviet and anti-communist propaganda that was fed to the people through the mass media had its affect on the unity of the Jewish anti-fascist movement to such an extent that at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Manchester and Salford Communal Council, the body that supposedly represented the Jewish population of the twin cities, September 1950, a member was able to say that "in view of the prevailing climate of anti-communist feeling" it would be politic to reduce the connection with the Union of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women. Yet only three years earlier, June 1947, a resolution was passed unanimously calling for racist propaganda to be made illegal. That with members of the Communist Party sitting as members of the Executive Committee representing the Union of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women, both the proposer and seconder of that resolution were leading members of the Communist Party, namely Capt. L. Reuben and Martin Bobker. I strongly believe that UJEX allowed the Defence Committee of the Communal Council to interfere far too much in its affairs. This interference led to a situation where a leading member of the Management Committee of UJEX, Captain L. Rueben MC was publicly criticised at an emergency meeting of the Communal Council for having the audacity to write a letter to the Manchester Guardian without first having it vetted by the Council. The Council would not allow UJEX to take independent action without first getting the approval of the Council. This led in the end to the situation as reported in the Jewish Telegraph 20th February 1953 on its front page,
U.J.E.X. GOES RIGHT
"One of the most immediate effects of recent events in Soviet and other Communist countries was reflected at the annual meeting of the Manchester Union of Jewish Ex-Servicemen with the reinstatement of a right-wing executive and the defeat of the left-wing."
As mentioned earlier, one of the most important aspects of membership of the Communist Party and the Young Communist League, if not the most important, was the political education of the members. Classes were held regularly to equip the members with the necessary knowledge of the Marxist classics.
One such class will never be forgotten as long as Clare and I live. A series of classes on Political Economy had been arranged to be held in our house in Russell Street and on the appointed night the members assembled in the front room. Soon after the meeting got under way, Clare left the room and I thought she was just going to the bathroom. Being engrossed in the discussion none of us noticed that she had not returned and it was not until everyone had left that I realised that Clare was still upstairs. I went up to see if she was all right and found her in bed and obviously in pain. She said that she thought she had appendicitis and I should call the doctor. Fortunately the surgery was only round the corner and the doctor lived there. On telling him what Clare had said about believing she had appendicitis he said, something like, how does she know what it is? But on examining her he realised that she was right and an ambulance was called and by midnight Clare was admitted to the Jewish Hospital in Hightown and was operated on.
I was still working for Issy Wise in the shop at the bottom of Waterloo Road. It was a busy shop as close by there were many small clothing factories and Bury New Road had shops of all kinds selling anything from "a pin to an elephant". The customers were mainly Jewish, both workers and employers so we got a wide cross-section of the community. Rationing of food and other items was still in force and the area around the shop was a hive of activity with "black-marketeers" buying and selling anything that was in short supply. This was 1947 so the people had endured eight years of shortages and so the "wide boys" or "spivs" as they were known, took every opportunity to exploit the situation in order to make money. Many a deal was struck in the shop where I worked with money changing hands for goods in short supply.
Before very long I found another job in a shop at the other end of Bury New Road in New Bridge Street. My employer this time was Freddie Gore who, at the time of writing (November 1995) has just tragically died in hospital at the age of 83. Fred was a jolly little man and I enjoyed my time with him but I always had the ambition to open my own barber's shop and when the opportunity came for me to take over a shop in Pendlebury I took it.
The shop was on Bolton Road, Pendlebury, in an area where the main industry was coal mining. The nearest pit to the shop was Sand-Hole, named I should think because of the sandy nature of the area. That part of what became the County of Greater Manchester had large coal deposits and the pits extended quite a long way from Pendlebury to Agecroft where the largest pit in the district was situated with a power station built next to it to use the coal produced. Agecroft Pit, along with all the other deep coal mines in Lancashire, have been closed by the present Tory government in a deliberate attack on the miners and in particular on their Trade Union, the National Union of Mineworkers.
My attempt at being my own boss was not successful and before long I was looking for a buyer for the shop.
We were still living in Russell Street in Prestwich and I remember one memorable night during the winter of 1950. This was at a time when the idea of clean air was still an idea. Chimneys belched smoke into the atmosphere from every house and factory so that when a natural fog came down it was laden with the filth produced by those thousands of domestic and industrial chimneys. This particular night the fog was so thick that traffic came to a standstill. The shop on Bolton Road, Pendlebury was about 6 miles from the house in Russell street as the crow flies. I closed the shop as soon as it became obvious that there would be no more business that night. Having no transport and the buses having stopped running, the only thing to do was walk home. So off I went. I suppose it must have taken me a couple of hours to cover the distance and I arrived home exhausted, covered in the black filth from the fog. This brings back a memory of my father who suffered badly with asthma and bronchitis. If ever he ventured out during those awful foggy days that were so prevalent at the time, he wore a mask to allow him to breathe. It was painful to see him fight for breath and eventually it was to be the cause of his death. Mum and Dad were still living in the little Sunshine house in Newington Avenue near Heaton Park and Clare and I had moved to a house in Cheetham. I had managed to sell the barber's shop in Pendlebury and went back to work at Lewis's in Market Street Manchester.
Dad was no longer working as his health had got much worse and he was more or less housebound and towards the end relied on cylinders of oxygen to help him to breathe. So in order to help with the cost of living they took in a lodger. Con was at University, Leon was married and living in Cedric Road and Clare, Linda and I were living in Lytton Avenue in Cheetham.
Linda was attending the local school (Temple School) in Temple Square off Cheetham Hill Road and just a few minutes from our house in Lytton avenue.
It was there that Linda had her first brush with authority in the shape of the Headmaster. This was 1953, a time when the "Cold War" was getting hot and in the United States of America the campaign against the Soviet Union and anything connected with Socialist ideas was being mounted by every two-bit politician, journalistic hack and anyone who jumped on the band-wagon of anti-communism for their own personal ambition. The name that immediately comes to mind in this context is that of Senator Joe McCarthy of ill-repute.
The attack on the left in the United States of America was stepped up dramatically in July 1948 when 12 leading members of the Communist Party of the USA were indicted for violating the Smith Act. This Act, passed in 1940 made it a crime to "advocate, or belong to a group that advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S Government." They were charged with "conspiracy to teach and advocate the duty and necessity to overthrow the U.S. Government by force and violence."
The thinking of some of the leading members of the American establishment is revealed by a document submitted to the Attorney General Tom Clark in February 1948, six months before the above indictments. Titled "Brief to establish the Illegal Status of the Communist Party of the United States of America," and marked Strictly Confidential. Made up of ten books containing 1,795 pages supposedly covering the history and ideology of the Communist Party of the United States of America, there was not one case of advocacy or use of violence by the Party or any of its members. The very length and detail of this document shows that it must have taken years to produce so the attack on the Party must have been years in preparation.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation's director of domestic intelligence D.M. Ladd, urged the prosecution of "Important officials and functionaries of the Communist Party" because it would "result in a judicial precedent being set that the Communist Party as an organisation is illegal." This would then mean that "...individual members and close adherents and sympathisers can be readily dealt with as substantive violators."
Ladd went on to say that "setting this precedent has an important bearing on the Bureau's position should there be no legislative or administrative authority at the time of the outbreak of hostilities which would permit the immediate apprehension of both aliens and citizens of the dangerous category". Thus we see how the net was being cast as wide as possible to ensnare anyone seen as a "danger" to the establishment.
These steps were not severe enough for some as proved by a secret memo dated 23rd July 1948, three days after the 12 Communist Party leaders had been indicted, which called for all 55 members of the Communist Party of the United States of America National Committee to be indicted.
This was 1948, McCarthy was still an unknown, the term "McCarthyism" still not coined yet 146 CP members were indicted, thousands persecuted, not only Communist Party members but any progressive, liberal-minded people were harassed and victimised. Dissent and protest within the labour movement and liberal community was stifled.
So the stage was being set for an all-out attack on the freedoms and liberties of the American people. The USA still had a monopoly of possession of the Atomic Bomb and calls were being made for it to be used in a "preventive" war against the Soviet Union. Then, in September 1949 the US monopoly of Atomic weapons was smashed when the Soviet Union tested its own Atomic Bomb.
Immediately hysterical demands were made for heads to roll and the search for scapegoats to be blamed for the fact that the Soviet Union had produced an answer to the US monopoly. The belief that the only way the Soviet scientists could have discovered how to tame the power of the atom was by using spies within the American Atomic programme was spread far and wide. The press, radio and television was used to give publicity to the idea that the "backward" Soviet system could not possibly solve the complex problems of atomic energy on its own. Therefore a climate was produced that would accept the charge of espionage against a suitable victim.
In the summer of 1950, a young Jewish couple, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were arrested and charged with passing information to the Soviet Union about the American Atomic Bomb programme and in particular data that gave the Soviet scientists the necessary information on how to proceed with their own Atomic Bomb project.
After a lengthy legal process the Rosenbergs were found guilty and sentenced to death, despite the fact that it was patently obvious to all that they were innocent and being used as scapegoats. They were offered a reprieve if they admitted being guilty and named any other people alleged to have helped them. However, they refused to perjure themselves and maintained their innocence knowing this meant death leaving their two young sons without parents.
It was this case of the threat to the Rosenbergs that led Linda to her brush with authority at the ripe old age of eight years. Without any prompting from me or Clare, Linda drew up a petition calling for the Rosenbergs to be allowed to live. She took her piece of paper to school and asked her school-friends to sign it. Before long her teacher became aware of what Linda was doing and confiscated the offending sheet of paper. The Headmaster was informed and he promptly tore up the petition. On arriving home that day in tears she told us what had happened and the next day I marched into the Headmaster's office. In the ensuing argument he was given a lesson in the rights of the individual, even if that person was only eight years old. That was Linda's first experience of fighting injustice and she hasn't stopped.
Once back at work in Lewis's I naturally got involved in the trade union and was again elected shop steward for the barber's shop, the whole of the first floor which at that time was taken up with men's ware, haberdashery, the bank and the dry cleaners, and I was also responsible for the ladies' hairdressing department on the third floor. So I became very active in the Union of Shop Distributive and Allied Workers and was for a period elected to the Manchester and Salford Trades Council.
It was during that period that I first became interested in writing. The Trade Union Branch members had agreed, after some discussion, to try and produce a Newsletter for the members and I, along with another colleague were given the task of producing some form of report to the members once a month that would be distributed to the membership by the shop stewards.
In an attempt to link the trade union activity in the store to the wider movement in the country, it was decided to call the newsletter The Shopworker, in the hope that it would become known in the store as The Worker and therefore establish a link, all be it, a tenuous one, to the Daily Worker.
In one issue of the Shopworker I wrote a piece about the state of the locker-rooms where we had to change into our white uniform which consisted of a long white coat buttoned up the side to the neck, white trousers and white canvas shoes. I described the lack of proper changing facilities and also the fact that dead mice had been found in our shoes.
That issue came out as I was on holiday and on arriving back at work I was told that I had to report to the Staff Manager. With some apprehension I went up to the office to be confronted by the Staff Manager who made his feelings absolutely clear that if I did not withdraw the statement I had made about the mice he would have no alternative but to sack me. I gave him to understand that I had no intention of taking back what I had said until he did something about the conditions in the locker-rooms. He was obviously worried that the news of the infestation of mice in the store would have a damaging effect on the business as there was a large food department in the store and also the matter would come to the attention of the Health Authority, which meant the possibility of prosecution. In the end he backed down and agreed to do something about having the place cleaned up.
It was whilst I was working at Lewis's that my Father died, after suffering for many years from asthma and bronchitis, the very act of breathing was so stressful that in the end his heart could no longer take the strain and he died.
Our second child, Judith was born soon after Dad died and in accordance with tradition she was named after my Father, being given the names Judith Wendy. It is traditional that where a girl is named after a male member of the family she is given names with the same initial in English but a Hebrew name is given at the Saturday morning service in the Synagogue. As a confirmed Atheist, I would have no truck with religion, but Clare has always maintained her belief in Judaism. So arrangements were made for some other member of the family to go to the synagogue in order to ensure that Judith was named in the traditional manner.
Mother stayed on in the small house in Newington Avenue for ten years until it was agreed that she should sell the house and move into a block of flats built by the Jewish Housing Association and opened May 19th 1963. This was amongst the first of the housing projects built by the Jewish Housing Association for elderly people in the Jewish Community who had been left alone and needed smaller accommodation. As an early attempt to provide suitable living space, Shalom House (House of Peace), as it was called, left a lot to be desired. It consisted of a number of bed-sitting rooms with bathrooms and toilets shared by a number of tenants.
It was what is now called "sheltered housing" in that there was a caretaker who lived on the premises and was responsible for the welfare of the tenants.
Mother was reasonably happy in Shalom House, she made friends with her neighbours and got on well with the caretaker and of course family members called to see her as often as possible. Unlike some of the newer housing projects, there was no space that could be used as a common room where the tenants could socialise. So for most of the residents it was a lonely existence.
I was continually striving to improve our standard of living and when I was offered a job as Manager of a hairdressing business owned by a man named Charlie Darken, I jumped at the chance and left Lewis's once again to take up the position of Manager over two salons, one in a basement in Spring Gardens in Manchester city centre, and the other in a shop in Withy Grove, opposite a building then occupied by the Daily Mirror.
I soon found that I had been duped, the terms that had been spelt out to me were not honoured and when I tackled my employer and asked him to stick to what he had promised we had a blazing row and I walked out.
Having no job to go to I then made a mistake that I shall always regret.
During my short period of time as manager of the Spring Gardens Salon I was approached by two customers who rented an office near-by from where they ran a Direct Sales business selling a German product called Vac Master. It was an electric vacuum cleaner that could be adapted to do various other jobs around the house, made of a new plastic material, and it was a very attractive product. The machine was only available through door-to-door selling and the sales staff were paid on a commission only basis, no sale no pay.
The two guys who ran the business could sell fridges to the Eskimos. They convinced me along with many others that we could earn a good living selling this machine. I must have been very naive as this was the second time I had been duped by smooth tongued operators.
Having no job I agreed to join this outfit and after one day of training in how to sell the machine I was given a demonstration machine and told to go home and practise with it. The next day I was told that I would be working with three others in a "team" with one being the "team leader" who was given a car. When we asked where we were to work we were told to decide where we thought we could sell the machine. There was no instruction on the legal position of door-to-door selling, and as we were not employed directly by the suppliers but worked purely on a commission only basis we were virtually self-employed. The car supplied to the "team leader" was rented, the rent being paid by him.
It soon became evident that the most deceitful methods were being used to make a sale. In order to gain entry to the prospective customer's house the method used was to deny that you wanted sell anything. Instead you said that you were on a survey in the area to find out about electrical goods used by the housewife. It was never suggested that the machine you had was a vacuum cleaner as the reply was bound to be, "Oh! I've got one". Once in the house you were expected to stay as long as it took to make a sale. It was known for some of the sales force to be so desperate to make a sale that they were prepared to stay all night. There were many cases of physical violence being threatened by irate husbands in order to get rid of these so-called "demonstrators."
So before long I was home and looking for a job in the trade I knew best, hairdressing.
I then got work in a salon in Thomas Street owned by a man named Harry Khol. Harry was an active member of the National Hairdressers' Federation and he and I got on quite well. But I was still not happy working for somebody, I still had the urge to have my own shop.