Life in the Party

left
typical column in Daily Worker by Zelda Curtis, appealing for money for the communist daily paper
Right - Zelda and young Zelda Brown in Barcelona - the connections with the Brown family went back to Zelda's earliest days in the communist party


This covers a long period from 1945 to 1982 and she does not describe things necessarily chronologically, (most likely not accurately either!) but it gives an overall impression

It was no accident that I joined the Communist Party, nor as it a sudden conversion on the road to Damascus. Being born a Jew had much to do with it My hatred of the home-spun fascists of the 30s and the German nazis goose-stepping across Europe, incarcerating Jew in concentration camps, were the spurs to action. The books that my dad urged me to read gave me a good grounding and Frank Coles put the jigsaw pieces ito place for me. But it was meeting like-mined people at Unity Theatre that gave me the final impetus to join. I was a fuse ready to be lit but it was no done lightly. I was committed. It gave purpose to my life. But what was so important to me was that I was accepted. I was no longer an outsider. belonged.
When I came out of the WAAF and returned home to Finchley, I met Ruth. Her address had been given to me by the communist party as she was the local branch secretary. She welcomed me with a cup of tea and a home-baked cake, the first of many we were to share over the years as our friendship grew. Ruth was slight of figure and just 5 feet tall, but her reputation as a convenor in the GPO factory was formidable. She was the scourge of the management.
Our husbands, Bob and Jerry, were still in the forces at that time but early in 1946 they were both demobbed. They, too, became good friends. In fact, they were so alike that Ruth dubbed them the two headed troll. Out party life spilled over into our social life. We'd all go out together to sell the Daily Worker on the council estates nearby, or sometimes in the pubs, competing with the Salvation Army and their "War Cry". We'd end up in the Five Bells discussing books we'd read, gossiping about people we knew and worrying about world affairs, whilst downing a few gin and tonics and beers. At that time we were concentrating our efforts on Homes for the homeless, pressurising the council to build more flats.

It was Bob who saw to our political education in the branch. He guided us through the works of Lenin, particularly "What is to be done?" and I remember the heated arguments we had around the work of Ludwig Feuerbach.

In later years I sold the Daily Worker outside the gates of Simms Factory at 7.15am dragging my chidren with me, only to be greeted with cries of "Why don't you go and cook your old man's breakfast?" What they didn't know was that my old man was already at work in the factory.

I was active in my union and in the Peace Movement, firstly working in the united nations association an then in CND locally. Most of the committee members of CND in Finchley were either Quakers or from Pax and the others were all Labour party members. We all got on very well - not just tolerating each other, but liking each other. When I stood as a communist candidate in the local election they were all rooting for me even they they wouldn't vote for me. I suffered the humiliation of a derisory vote of 34 the first time I stood, but gradually I built it up to a reasonable figure.
We lived in Margaret Thatcher's constituency and many's the time I bearded her in the surgery of the constituency Conservative Party headquarters. But it wasn't all hard grind in the communist party. There was a flourishing social life. The Sunday night Scottish Dancing club saw Bob and Ruth and Jerry and I reeling with the best of them, and the musical evenings were a showcase for comrades' talents. Tony played the soons, Gladys the mouth organ and Angela the concertina and there was Norman on the accordion and Louis on the violin. Jerry's claim to fame was his spirited rendering of "Albert in the Lion's Den" and "The very fat man who waters the workers' beer!" Singing and socialism remain almost synonymous in my mind. Rambling is another activity I always associate with the Party. We'd tramp across the Chiltern Hills singing "Joe Hill" and end up playing a makeshift game of cricket. What a motley crew we were. The Party embraced such a variety of people from such different backgrounds: working class and aristocrats;comrades from Guyana and Cyprus, South Africa and Mauritius, but we all shared a vision of a socialist future. Each of us came to the Party for very different reasons and we had different levels of commitment, but we did enjoy a comradeship hard to find elsewhere. As branch Secretary I kept open house for the comrades and a constant stream of them tramped to my kitchen, talking, talking, talking, as I scrubbed the floor. Our house was close by a London transport bus garage and when a 10 week bus strike took place we offered our front room to the pickets. They used is as a rest room and for committee meetings. We supplied the tea and sandwiches.
Jerry was very innvolved in Union work and whilst a shop steward in Handley Page's aircraft factory he took part in a number of small strikes. It was the attitudes of the Borough Committee of the Communist Party to one of those strikes that led Jerry to leave the party - a case of Party members on the outside of a factory trying to impose a line on the comrades within the factory. "What do those bloody intellectuals know about factory conditions?" was Jerry's complaint. It aways amazed me how quickly within the Party, when anything went wrong, the ones they blamed were the intellectuals.
Though he left the party, Jerry remaied very friendly with many of the comrades and our house remained a focal point for party activities. So when did things start to go wrong for me? When the 20th Congress of the Soviet communist party took place and its revelations about the Stalin era came to light I was deeply shocked but it did not make me feel i had to leave the Party as so many others did, including Bob. I had not joined the party out of admiration for the Soviet union. It was capitalism in Britain I wanted to fight against. I as convinced that the British Communist Party was different. We could not make such dreadful errors as they had in the Soviet Union. Our circumstances were so different and I believed at that time that we were more democratic. I thought differently later.
Then came the next shock, when the Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to put down the 1956 Hungarian uprising. I heard about comades being strung up on lamp-posts. I read that CIA agents and dissidents were streaming into Hungary from Vienna and comrades convinced me that the Soviet tanks were necessary to defend socialism. Although I opened my mind to the truth later I still did tend to believe the CIA was under every bed. That was when Ruth left the Party, but our friendship remained a firm as ever.
The Soviet action in Czechoslovakia really shook me, and I talked it over with my daughter Sue, herself now in the party, and later to become a national executive committee member, as well as talking through it with friends. Although it was 14 years before I finally left the communist party, the long, painful journey out of it began in this period. I began to realise that our own comrades were not infallible; that our British party was undemocratic; that so called democratic centralism created the possibility of dictatorship; that many of its policies were wrong for the times and its so-called leading role in the working class movement -(actually gross interference in the trades unions) - was taking them up blind alleys.
I was one of the people arguing for changes in the Party structures in the 1970s, and against things such as the undemocratic "recommended list" for elections to the executive committee. I argued that new strategies were needed both to attract the youth of the 70s and also to effect the changes in society that we wished to see.
The manipulation of the party's national congress debates always worried me. it was not that they were censored - dissidents were allowed to speak and put over their policies and views both in party literature before congress and on the platform at congress itself - but ranks would close and the big guns would be brought out to shoot them down.
Over the years I suffered doubts about the policies of the socialist countries, but after vainly trying to raise them and get issues debated, I kept my feelings bottled up. When the Soviet Union developed the atomic bomb, we in the British Party were calling for nuclear disarmament. On visits to the Soviet Union and other socialist countries I noted the perks that were due to Party members, and I also noted they paid only lip service to the emancipation of women, and that the attitude of the British party that "all will be well for women once socialism is achieved" was wholly wrong. The doubts loomed larger and larger and the burgeoning womens movement of that time made me question myself and many of my actions. it changed my whole attitude to political parties, lifestyles and work patterns. This was all leading me to leaving the party.
I could no longer stay in, but what a wrench it was to leave. What an inner turmoil I suffered. The party had shaped my whole life for so long and I could not envisage a future without it.
Hugh McDiarmid, the Scottish poet, once wrote that "a man in a red shirt can neither hide nor retreat". I had never tried to hide, I had been proud of my red shirt, and as for retreat, I did not think of it like that. I thought of it more as a step back to take a long hard look at myself and the world But whatever criticisms I may have had, I do know that most of the Party work I undertook was of value, and after i resigned from the party I was gratified still to be asked to write about my new views and work for party journals and to take part in workshops at conferences. One in particular stands out in my memory. I was asked to speak on "The Left and the erotic" at the "Moving Left Show" which took place on a Sunday morning in October 1982. I was one of a pane of speakers including Elizabeth Wilson and Ian McEwan and i was very nervous. My hope was that few would turn up at that early hour. In fact there were about 400 filling the large hall of Queen Mary College and the event was hugely successful. I started by saying I didn't know why I was there talking about sex at 10am in the morning when I could be in bed having it. I pointed out the Puritan ethic within the left and their double standards. The interest shown in that aspect of personal politics decided Lawrence and Wishart to ask me to contribute a chapter to a book on the issue.

[Throughout much of this period Zelda worked at the Daily Worker, Labour Monthly and then again heading up the Fund-raising department at the Daily Worker/Morning Star. Much more detail about that in the next couple of sections.]

Best friends - Bob, Ruth,Zelda and Gerry

Strangely there are no photos of Bob and Ruth, but I include this bit of writing because it is so moving and revealing and because I remember "Aunty" Ruth so fondly too.

Returning to civvy street gave me no problems. I uickly picked up the threads, caught up with old friends and contacted the East Finchley Communist Party branch. That's when I met Ruth Brown. Not only did we share a surname, as my maiden name had been Brown, but we discovered that we had both been at Hornsey high School. To cap that, I discovered that her husband Bob shared the same birthday as my husband Jerry, as well as his punning sense of humour. then when her second daughter was born on my birthday and Ruth named her Zelda Brown after me, i was quite certain ours was a friendship made in heaven. We were destined to be best friends I thought and so we were until death did us part.
When we first met in September 1945, Ruth already had one daughter, Naomi. Our husbands were still in the forces: Bob in the army in Holland and Jerry in the navy on the China Seas, but by February 1946 both were demobbed. Bob had worked in the accounts department of the BBC before the war and his job awaited him on his return to Britain. Until she had Naomi Ruth had worked for the GPO and been very active in the trades union. Slight of figure and only 5 feet 1 tall, it seemed odd to think of her frightening the life out of the bosses, but her reputation as a shop steward and negtiator was formidable. Bob was 5 feet 11, thin and bespectacled, and had read everything lenin had ever written. Orphaned as a young child, he had been brought up by a working class couple and had an unhappy and deprived childhood. That had made him determined to improve himself. He was what the Party called a worker-intellectual.
Jerry admired him greatly and they both enjoyed each other's company. We marvelled at how alike they were and Ruth called them the "two-headed troll". Neither Bob nor Jerry could express affection easily, but they loved strongly.
Ruth and i becae pregnant around the same time, although my Sue was born in November 1947 and young Zelda waited until my birthday on December 26th to arrive. There is often a strong bond between women who have their babies at the same time, and ours was particularly strong. We went to the clinic together and helped each other through the worrying baby illnesses. We understood each other's feelings of imprisonment in four walls when the children were small, so together we pushed our prams to Cherry Tree Woods most afternoons, where we discussed the books we had read, gossiped about the people we knew and worried about world affairs. And gradually we opened up to each other about our past and how we felt about our present lives. Husbands, naturally, figured large in our conversations.
We performed our Party duties together, too. The Daily Worker had to be sold, the Party literature distributed and leaflets pushed through letterboxes. Sometimes all four of us would go out together or Bob and Jerry might arrange to meet us at a pub when we had finished our Daily Worker sales rounds. At that time we were concentrating our efforts on homes for the homeless, pressurising our council to build more flats for the workers. We carried out a survey of the whole of Finchley, showing on a crudely drawn map every bomb site and empty plot of land on which they could build and then we presented it to councillors.
Our party meetings were interesting and enjoyable, sometims discussing current ppolitical issues and sometimes critically evaluating marxist literature. Arthur and ken, the two RAF lads i had met at Woolwich Poly, were back home in Finchley and had joined our branch, and they brought along their friend henry, who had been in Malta throughout the war. He became like a member of the family for both Ruth and myself, and he remained my friend until his death.
At Christmas 1947 I started what became a tradition. I opened my home to all comers on the Saturday before Christmas for a party. Jerry got a barrel of beer from our local and we had lots of spirits and we made a bowl of punch to warm us up. We played games like Murder and Charades, and there was always someone to start the singing. The other tradition that started at that time was spending Boxing Day at the Browns for a joint celebration of mine and young Zelda's birthdays.
Like all comrades Ruth and I worked hard to amke a success of the local Daily Worker bazaar to raise money for the newspaper. The Finchley labour movement turned out en masse for these events. The Labour party worthies came and locals poured in. Jerry dressed up as Father Christmas and was a wow with the kids.

We moved out of Finchley when Sue was 18 months old. Not long after that Bob and Ruth moved to Enfield Lock, to a little council house that backed on to a brook. Beyond that were fields across which one could walk to Epping in one direction and to Waltham Abbey in the other. The River Lea and the canal criss-crossed the fields and anglers fished from their banks.
We would go over there on a Sunday afternoon and have a long walk with them and their dog Rex. They were very proud of the dog and boasted that even though he had only one testicle he was definitely cock of the walk around Enfield. Ruth and I would walk in front chatting away, with the kids trailig behind. She would show the children the different wild flowers and other delights on which Ruth was such an expert. behind us would follow Bob and Jerry, earnestly talking about their jobs and such like manly pursuits, and the dog would bound to and fro between us, now and again giving his attention to the odd horse or cow that stood in the fields. Before it got dark we would return to Ruth's for high tea. It was aways the same: ham, cheese and salad with lots of bread and butter, pickles an home made sponge cakes.
In front of Ruth's house was an industrial estate on which there was a GPO factory. When her third daughter Ursula was old enough to go to school Ruth went there to work and once agai became a shop steward and later a convenor. She stayed there until her retirement and loved every minute of it. bob stayed at the BBC too, becoming head of his department. When he retired he took up archaeology and spent a lot of tie on digs. He enjoyed the painstaking work and the convivial company. It was whilst scrambling around on a dig that he collappsed and died - and we couldn't think of a better way for him to go!
After Bob's death Ruth was always invited to come with Jerry and me on holiday each year. He was fond of her as I was and we had some good laughs on our travels together. After jerry died Ruth and I continued to explore the continent together and on one trip to Spain young Zelda joined us. After that holiday Zelda and I became very good friends.
The next Christmas Zelda phoned me to say that Ruth had been feeling poorly all week and wouldn't be able to coe to my party. When I phoned the next week t see how she was i realised something was very much amiss Zelda, who was a nurse, had moved in with Ruth in order to look after her because she feared it was liver cancer. i had to face the fact that i was going to lose Ruth after 42 years of deep and loving friendship.
When I first visited her after the news, I found her looking drawn and thinner, but cheerful She was very positive, telling me how she traced the pain with her fingers travelling around her stomach, willing the pain to vanish. She laughed about getting to know her body so intimately after all these years and how she instructed it to be rid of that turbulent intruder. She told me about her neighbour's troubles and compalined with annoyance that the Enfield Preservation Society to which she belonged was losing its battle with a loval pub that wanted to build an extension on the open common land around it. And she read aloud to me the assages she had enjoyed in the book I had given her for Christmas. There was no talk of death, only of continuing hopes and of holdays we might share in the future.
The next time i saw her she was visibly failing and was sick several times, but she remained cheerful She told me she had dreamt of me the night before. We had always told each others our dreams and nightmares. "All the family were gathered together" she said, "and then you came and said you wanted to show me something. You took my hand and led me to the door. When you opened it I saw a beautiful scene. There were grassy hills, a blue sky, a clear river and a purple hero flying acorss the sky". I was speechless, choked with emotion, because she was telling me she knew she was dying and I had been the one she had dreamt about. I was the one she told she was dying.
The next Saturday that I visited her she started talking of the past, of her grandmother who had looked after her when her mother died. We talked of our two headed troll and what we had put up with from those two men. Then just before I left she confessed she wanted a good send off with plenty of flowers. She remembered how the whole neighbourhood had lined the streets for the funeral of the local good hearted prostitute. Grateful clients and neighbours she had helped sent flowers an it was a right royal send off, she said.
After that visit the decline was fast. The following Saturday Sue came with me and Ruth was obviously pleased to see her. They chatted for a short while but Ruth was obviously very tired.
Then I discovered that Ruth had given her favourite painting of flowers to a friend, so I phoned Joan and asked her to paint some more for Ruth. Poor Joan, she found it hard, because she kept remembering how the card she had ainted for her own grandmother had arrived just the next post after she died. The feelings of sorrow from that time made it difficult for her to start the painting, but she did it - a lovely composition o spring flowers, primulas and freesias.
I have to admit that all the way to Ruth I kept wondering whether she woudl be gone before I could give it to her. But when I arrived she lay, tiny and frail in a pretty flower-covered nightie, hardly able to speak, her eyes closing every now and again as she floated off into sleep.
I gave her the painting. "Oh, it's lovely" she muttered. "Tell Joan I love it" and she went off to sleep with a smile on her lips. Every now and then she would wake and say something. "You're having some nice dreams," I said. "Will you tell me about them?" She opened her eyes wide and replied quietly "Remember the house with the little animals? They were such tiny animals. You shouldn't eat them, should you? No, you shouldn't eat little animals".
Those were the last words I heard her say.

birth stories and bringing up children

During the war maternity wings of London hospitals were evacuated to country areas. For Sue's birth in 1947 I had registered with the City of Lodon hospital, but even though the war had been over for two years I was sent out to Hertfordshire to Brocket hall. Lord Brocket had been exiled to Isle of Man because of his pro-German leanings and his home had housed many leading Nazis and had been commandeered for the hospital.
Worried that they might not get us to the delivery room on time all the way from London, the authoritied put us up in a hostel for the week before the baby was due. It was a small village close to Brocket Hall. All the women hated it there and we were desparately trying to bring our labour on early. Nearby the hostel there was a very steep hill leading up to a wood, and we decided on the Saturday night to sneak out of the hostel and run up the hill in an effort to speed up our babies' entry into the world.
What a sight - six hugely pregnant women in the dead of night running up a steep hill. But an even stranger sight was us all flying down again screaming and coverin our heads with our arms because we had heard bats squeaking.
On the Sunday afternoon I went into the early stages of labour and was transferred to Brocket hall. The house was still a fine buuilding and had all the original wallpaper in the main room, our ward. The wallpaper had huge malignant looking peacocks strutting across lawns, and each of them fixed you with an evil eye. I had horribly lurid dreams. Whether it was the bad dream or the bats squeakig I do not know, but Sue was born with lots of dark hair stood straight up on end.
When Joan was born we lived in a bungalow near the Welsh Harp, Wembley. To us it seemed sacious after the cramped conditios we previously lived in. So I decided to have the baby at home. The midwife had long talks with jerry about the preparations for the event and he appeared to be calm and quite certain he could cope with the boiling water bit.On the Friday I had prepared, as always, our weekly chicken soup and barley in my one large cooking pot and the rest of the meal was almost ready when I went into labour. I had hardly got the words out of my mouth when, to my horror, Jerry rushed into the kitchen, picked up the steaming pot of soup, rushed into the garden and threw the whole lot over the forsythia bush so that he could fill the pot with boiling water. I nearly cried as I saw our supper scattered over the garden, but ended up laughing hysterically as Jerry started scrubbing everything in sight. He had forgotten to phone the midwife.
When she came and examined me the verdict was "That won't arrive until morning. I'll see you then." Poor Jerry was horrified but tried hard to hide his fears. He put Sue to bed and then came and lay down besdie me to comfort me. It was not the calmest night of our lives but we lasted out until 8am when the midwife arrived. By 9.20 am Joan was born, the very same time of the morning that Sue had been born.
Jerry brought Sue in to see her little sister. She took one look and rushed out of the room screaming. Soon after I heard a tap on my bedroom window. It was my mother. She had a cold and wouldn't come in for fear of infecting us. I lifted Joan up for her to see and off she went to the shop. I looked out of the window and there on my front lawn were a group of crocuses, blue and white oes, the first of the year. A lovely greeting for my new baby.
When Sue was born current thinking on child care was Bowlby oriented. The media and everyone around me insisted that a child needed its mother's total attention for the first five years of its life. There was no substitute for a mother's love in bringing up a baby. That was the line of the Communist Party too at that time.
The hospital where Sue was born trained mothers into firstly 3 hourly and then 4 hourly breast-feeding. One didn't feed the baby in between even if she was screaming with hunger.
Nor did you give her comforting cuddles. Everything as done by the book. There was a prescribed time for everything, especially potty-training, and you were a failure if your child's developpment didn't conform to the Bowlby standards. What a worry it all was. But luckily Sue did develop just as the book predicted. My mother had famously informed me that I was lucky to have a mother who had had children! Bt despite this, I had no real guidance or help and certainly no real knowledge of how to raise a child. Woman's Hour and the women's magazines were my instructors. They made it quite clear that you shouldn't worry your bread-winning husband with your child problems, or you would lose him to another woman. I always had the children tucked up in bed before Jerry came home from work, and his supper was always ready for him. I was such a good wife - no magazine could fault me.
Sue was a Mabel lucy Atwell baby, pretty, chubby and with curly hair. She was a laughing girl. Complete strangers would come over to me to comment on how sweet she was. From the start she liked books and would sit happily in her cot pretending to read them.
By the time Joan was born Dr Spock's books on baby care were fashionable. What a relief! He gave mothers permission to respond to the child's needs and not to be a slave to prescribed times for this and that. He gave you norms but set no absolutes for children's develoopment. So one didn't ever need to feel a failure. He helped us to relax and enjoy our babies more.
Joan was a very active baby. She seemed in a hurry to grow up. Not only was he walking when she was only 11 months old, but she also climbed up the rails outside our local post office, which sent me rushing to her rescue. From an early age she was drawing and painting bright pictures. I have no idea why, but trains were her favourite subject and there were always people waving. One summer evening Joan went missing and just as i was getting frantic, she turned up pushing her doll's pram, wearing a pair of my high heeled shoes, with a policeman in tow. He had found her purposefully pushing her pram about a mile away from our hoe. Her repy when he asked her where she was going was that she was following the moon. Sue was more practical in her adventures. One day when she was playing shops I joined in saying "I'd like a pound of steak please". The next time I looked up from my chores I rrealised she was nowhere in the house. he had taken my ration book and purse from my bag and walked to our local butcher across a couple of roads. On her insistence that mummy wanted a pound of steak the butcher had given it to her and taken the money and ration stamps proffered - putting the rest on the slate. I had to rush it back to him and explain, as I couldn't afford steak!
The girls were always good friends. With three and a half years between them, Joan looked up to Sue and followed her into mischief. They were very different in character,, which meant that i was able to love each of them equally for their differences as well as their similarities. No favourites.
As they grew up it always worried me that I had saddled them with a dreadful burden. Not only did they have to contend wth being Jewish, but they had a factory worker for a father and a communist party member for a mother. Not the best of backgrounds for young grammar school girls. They came on every political march and every demo with me. They helped me canvass during elections and they were active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. We all nursed our blisters together after the Aldermaston marches.
Sue played guitar and sang all the peace songs at socials and our house was always filled with youngsters Then came the teenage parties. One time we came home to find that there had been a fight. Blood was smeared on the walls and trailed down the stair carpet. The phone was pulled from the wall and the front garden was full of broken bottles. One boy had been knifed and Sue had managed to get him to hospital. The police arrived soon after we got home and began asking pertinent questios. Apparently a gang of rough youths had tried to gatecrash the party and when refused entry they started the fight. We discovered that some of our belongings had been stolen, including Jerry's open razors. That event started a long-running row between jerry and i about how much freedom the girls should have. He couldn't cope with his feelings when Sue and joan started to be sexually active and have lots of boyfriends. Those late teenage years were very problematic and played havoc with our already strained marriage.
He became very angry towards Sue and I could never understand why. I knew he loved her, yet he would say the most hurtful things and swear at her in language I had never heard him use before. How she coped with it I will never know. I could not stand it and for a while I left him. But that was even worse because not a day went by without him threatening either to kill himself or to kill me. He would phone me first thing in the morning before I went to work and cry. He put pressure on my mother to make me go back to him and she took his side; and he put pressure on Joan, which was the last straw, so I returned after a lot of discussions as to how we could best live together

Gerry Kutchinsky and marriage

Hebrew marriage certificate of Gerald kutchinsky and Zelda Brown




Left -Gerry, Zelda and me as a baby, 1948
Right - Gerry and Zelda





When I was 19 the familly became anxious that I might marry a non-Jewish man. They went on the offensive, desperately trying to find me a nice Jewish boy. I managed to thwart most of their plans, but I succumbed to their pressure one Sunday afternoon when I had nothing else special to do. My Aunty Ann took me with her to have tea with soe new friends of hers, who she assured me were very rich and had a young brother who was an admiral in the navy or something like that.
Bored with their coversation at the tea table, I volunteered to do the washing up. I as in the kitchen when I heard the front door open and in walked a handsome, bright blue-eyed young sailor - a steward not an admiral!
He started to chat me up and I realised that he thought I was the daily help. Imagine hs embarrassment when I went into the lounge to join the others and they introduced me to him. The year was 1942 and he told me he was stationed at Gosport, but was able to get up to London most weekends. He told me with ride that he had joined up right at the start of the war. His tales of dangerous missions, of Atlantic crossings when his ship had been bombed, of minesweeping around the coast and of havin to swim ashore when his ship sank, kept me wide-eyed with wonder, but remained sceptical.
He had been in the merchant navy before the war, serving on the P & O line doing the South Africa run and sometimes to the Caribbean. But what really boosted his image in my eyes was that he had been gun-running to Bilbao, helping the anti-fascists dring the Spanish civil war.
The merchant navy, he told me, had been his escappe from an unhappy period at home. He had rebelled against family expectation that he would go into their workshop to work on the buttonhole stitching machines. He felt exploited by his mother, who treated him like an idiot.
He went out and got himself an apprenticeship in a local engineering firm, but his mother taunted him when he came home with dirty hands saying "What sort of job is that for a jewish boy?" Nothing he did ever pleased her. He felt very unloved.
When younger, he attended Jewish Free School which had a very good reputation. Some of the East End's finest sons were taught there. It certainly gave him a good grounding, and he was particularly proud o one episode in his years there. After the Kristalnacht in Germany the whole class demonstrated their hatred of the nazis by refusing to learn German any more. One of the teachers he had at the Free School was the father of Roger Woddis of Unity Theatre - strange how our lives intertwined over the years. [Roger was a poet who contributed regularly to New Statesman and was Zelda's lover for many years, both before and after her marriage]
Jerry could reel off pages and pages of Shakespeare's plays and could recite nearly every poem in the Golden Treasury of Verse. He was good at maths and loved music, but it was practical tasks that he excelled in. He was very inventive and given a problem he would always find some way of solving it, even if he had to design and make a tool for the job himself. He was what people would call a rough diamond He had not finesse, no social graces, and was honest to the point of rudeness. But what most people remember about jerry was his humour, his puns and quick repartee. Both our daughters, Sue and Joan, take after him in that. The tradition continues. His forte was telling Jewish stories. He could keep an audience laughing all evening with his reminiscences of characters from his East End childhood.
Jerry was not ambitious but he did want to iimprove himself, or perhaps I should say prove himself. He attended evening classes and gained the higher National Diploma in engineering. hat was no easy task after a hard day plus overtime in the factory. Once he had passed his exam he came off the factory floor and found a job as a draughtsman with Standard Telephones in Southgate. Eventually he cliibed the ladder and became a trainer at their factory in Woolwich. Whatever his position he remained an active trade unionist throughout his working life, being a shop steward at one time and a convenor at another, as well as being branch secretary of his local AEU branch for many years.
However, recognising tht he had never fulfilled his own potential, Sue, Joan and I encouraged him when he said he would like to go to University as a very mature student. He joined a Fresh Horizons course at the City Lit and right from the start you could see the pleasure it gave him. With that tucked under his belt and his Higher national Diploma to back it up he applied for and gained a place at the University of East Anglia at the age of 56.
The next 3 years were probably the happiest of his life. He was a great favourite with the young women students who treated him as a surrogate father to turn to and they rewarded him by making him an honorary member of the Feminist group.
His last years were spent in a Tottenham school teaching woodwork and metalwork to youngsters who had been ill-served by the education system. They had little knowledge, few skills and no prospects for the future. Jerry was saddened and frustrated. he wanted to open up their minds to the beauty in the world rather than the dirt and squalour of their immediate environment. He wanted to show them what pleasure could be had through working with their hands and making objects of use as well as beauty. He wanted to help them develop skills that could give then some hope for the future. But he was banging his head against a wall.
The strain of it all culminated in a heart attack at the age of only 64, from which he did not recover.

But I was not cut out for marriage - or perhaps I was just too young and immature, being married at just 20 years old. Certainly my independent streak was a problem. I felt trapped. I could not bear anyone having control over my life. I wanted to make my own decisions and the more Jerry tried to look after me, the more I fought him off. I'd had enough of my mother controlling my life to allow him to take over when she stopped.
I couldn't understand why loving each other should mean always lviing in each other's pockets and doing everything together. I felt hemmed in, taken over. His love was suffocating. He was always there, needing me, needing my attention, needing my presence. He offered devotion and wanted it from me. I wanted passion and excitement, not everyday routine. I wanted to be out there doing things in the world, not staying home to do housework. I suffered that "nameless aching dissatisfaction" that Betty Friedan described in her "Feminine Mystique" In one way or another I was always trying to escape but never quite making it.
Our life was beset by many financial problems, too. When Jerry came out of the navy he went to work for his brother Louis. That was a disaster. It ended with Lou giving jerry the sack just as i became pregnant with my second daughter joan. Jerry toured the local area looking for work and eventually found a job in a factory on the Edgware Road. He had to work in a terrible atmosphere of chemical fumes on day and night shifts, fortnight on fortnight off. It wasn't easy trying to keep the two children quiet whilst he slept during the day. I walked the streets with them for most of the day. With factory wages so low, we soon had to give up our bungalow near the Welsh Harp, as we were unable to keep up the mortgage payments. We moved to East Finchley into a very cramped first floor flat in an old house.
Our early married life was circumscribed by what we saw as our duty to our respective families. Eash Saturday we visited Jerry's mum and on Sunday we went to my mum. Those years when the children were small and I was not able to work outside the home, were difficult times for us. We had little money and little time together, as Jerry worked overtime in an effort to get us out of our financial problems. For a small sum I used to look after my fellow communist party comrades' children while they went to work. I also did home work like pressing skirt hems for a manufacturer, doing mail-outs for offices, a bit of typing or anything else I could get. But none of them paid well. Sometimes Mum and Aunty Ann needed help in the shop on Saturday and they paid me 30 shillings for the day to act as a sales lady. I quite enjoyed it and I was fairly good at it too. While I was there Jerry would take the children to the cinema. They were brought up on the Disney greats and the musicals of their times. They loved them all, from Snow White and Bambi through to Brigadoon, Oklahoma and Carousel.

in the WAAF

left -Ada Brown, Norma (Zelda's sister), Gerry and Zelda in 1944

right - zelda, third from left, back row, in the WAAF



It was the end of August 1945 when i left the WAAF, soon after VJ Day, the official end f the war. Thanking me for my service to the country, the officer handed me my demob papers and added "we're so glad you could be with us right to the last". What a laugh that was, considering my service record.
When I joined the WAAF in November 1943, I had been a member of the Communist Party for one year. I was sent to Wilmslow Camp for the usual three weeks of square bashing (training they liked to call it)., but before the first week was over, I was called up before the commanding officer, who sat at his large desk and without even looking up, informed me "We know who you are, we know what you are, watch it"!
I quite enjoyed the drill, though it was terribly cold standing around on that huge square. It was even colder in the nissen huts in which we slept, 20 to a dormitory backed by an ablutions hut with a row of washbasins, showers and toilets. There was one central stove that we had to keep stoked up, cleaned out and blackleaded, but it rarely rewarded us with sufficient warmth.
Each night at lights out we woul start singing softly to keep our spirits up. Scottish songs like Annie Laurie and Bonnie Prince Charlie were favourites, with old music hall numbers of Marie Lloyd a close second. But whatever we sang, and however loudly, one could always hear the sad sound of sobbing from some of the women. They were so homesick and scared.
As we approached the third and last week of training, I was called up before the CO again. "i hear you have some experience of the stage" he announced, again not looking me in the eye. "You'd btter organise the camp concert as a farewell". That was no suggestion, that was an order. I was terribly nervous, worrying that I wouldn't be up to the job. But everyone rallied round and we put on such a good show that I was highly commended by the CO.
It did not save me from the dreadful posting they had planned for us. We were sent to a bleak camp at Henlow, Bedfordshire, where we were employed in soldering hundreds of colour-coded wires to their proper place in the radio circuit. Boring, boring! The cookhouse and dining hall were a ten minute run from the workshop and with only an hour alowed for our lunch break i do mean run. My first introduction to what they laughingly called a meal there was picking up a plate from the pile and seeing huge cockroaches running across the plate beneath. Even worse, when it was my turn to peel the potatoes i found mice nesting in the sacks. And it was not until after we had eate it was discovered that the beef was actually horsemeat.
We stayed there only until january and then, having undergone an intelligence test, eight of us were chosen to go to Edinburgh for a course at the university. At that time with radar in its early days they needed more people able to build and repair the equipment, so we were sent to Herriot Watt college for an electrical engineering course. Normally it would have taken 3 years to attain a BSc, but we had to do a condensed intensive course in just one and a half years. it was so intense and there was so much to learn on top of carrying out other duties required of us, that some of the women dropped out, defeated by the task. Two of them had mental breakdowns and another suffered a phantom pregnancy.
I enjoyed Edinburgh, if not the course. We made friends with some of the civilian students even though it was forbidden for us to fraternise. We were supposed to be inn bed with lights out by 10.30pm but we used to bunk out about 9 to go dancing, laving one or two behind to cover for us in case there was an unexpected visit fro an officer. Around 1 am we would climb back in through the side windows. if discovered, and this happened on two occasions only, we were given extra duties and loss of leave as punishment. The extra duties were usually cleanig out the lavatories.
There was but one other jewish woman in our group and we were easy targets for the anti=semitism rife among officers. not a day went by without Celia or i suffering some abuse and not only from our own women officers. There was a male sargeant who took us for square bashing every Saturday morning in the main square of the city. He was always picking on me and humiliating me in front of the people of Edinburgh who turned out to watch us being drilled. in the April of 1944, when I married Jerry, my name changed overnight from Brown to Kutchinsky. [It was changed to Curtis by deed poll by the whole Kutchinsky family after the war]. What a field day the sergeant had with that name at the next drill session! I comforted myself by going AWOL to hop off to the Lyceum theatre where Bill Owen (previously Bill Rowbotham of Unity Theatre) was in a play with Alastair Sims. We had a few drinks together after the show but I paid for the pleasure when I returned to college the next day. They put me on ablutions duty cleaning out the lavatories.
In June 1944 my father died and the fact that my mother was then alone in London in the midst of bombing raids, gave me good reason to approach the authorities for a compassionate posting to London. In actual fact i was sent to Woolwich to continue my electrical engineering course at the poly and was billeted at Eltham. There i met Arthur and Ken, two RAF lads. They were both in the Communist Party and together we turned the common room at the Poly into a hotbed of political argument. Once the theory exams were over at the Poly they posted us to Cranwell for a six month practical course. I hated it. None of the women I knew were there. However, I got involved with a group of Jewish pilots for whom I felt great sympathy. They faced danger with courage, but they felt the need for religious support. it was decided to turn an unused hut into a synagogue for them and i worked with them to clean it up, paint it and furnish it. Then we invited the Chief Services Rabbi to consecrate it and set the Ark in its place. How strange that I , an atheist and a woman, should have Rabbi Brodie thank me personally and allow me to play a part in the celebration of the opening of the synagogue.
Hating both the course and Cranwell as much as I did I tried to get out of them. I aplied to become an officer, but a woman officer told me that my application would be turned down. "After the Air Force has put all this money into training you to do such a specialist job, do you think they're going to let you become an officer when you would not have to do the work?" So i played the compassionate posting card again and mum backed me up. they posted me to a camp in Bushey Park near Kingston. From there, whenever i could, I used to rsh up to London to work at Unity Theatre. I can remember times when on that journey from Kingston to Waterloo the train would be stopped two or three times because of bombs ahead, and I was on the last train to get through Lewisham before the terrible bombing of its Woolworths when scores of people died - one of the worst raids of the war.

Unity Theatre

Zelda and friends at Unity Theatre, London 1942




left-my father, second from right, in a play at Unity theatre, London

right - a young Bill Rowbotham, later Bill Owen of Last of the Summer wine fame, on stage at Unity Theatre


An anti-fascist sketch at Unity Theatre


I was unhappy and frustrated when I returned to London leaving all my friends in Taunton. Dad sensed it and came up with a solution to my problems. He pointed out an advert in the New Statesman publicising an audition for actors for Unity Theatre.
Unity was a left-wing theatre, supported by trade unions, the Co-operative movement and many communists. One of its aims was "to strive for socialism" and the hope was through drama to inspire people to work for the betterment of society, and specifically, at that particular time, to move them to demand the opening of a second front to take pressure off the Russian front.
Much has been written about Unity Theatre, and perhaps the definitive work is the one written by Colin Chambers. But nothing I have read has ever quite caught the atmosphere of the theatre or the spirit of the people working in it.
Let me try to describe how it was for me. To be able to combine the activities I enjoyed most, acting and discussing ideas, with political action, made my time at Unity Theatre a most exciting and satisfying experience. I greeted each day as an adventure and I was eager to grasp everything the theatre offered.
It gave me the opportunity to gain a working knowledge of every aspect of theatre: acting, directing, stage management, lighting, scene painting, props and make-up. Sometimes I worked behind the bar, sometimes I sold programmes, and took turns at the Box office.
Unity was my whole life. It gave me a political education and a means of expressing my ideas. It gave me friends and lovers and a whole new way of life. How extraordinarily lucky I was. It broadened my outlook and expanded my mind. But it was also a humbling experience. I soon realised the futility of my dreams of becoming an actress.
My first introduction to the theatre was the audition at the rehearsal rooms in Newport Street. I had no idea what to expect and I was rather fearful. I was greeted by Bernard Sarron and Ruby Bendas. Theatricality oozed from their every pore. Bernard was short, pale-faced and wore thick-lensed glasses. His rather large head seemed t sit awkwardly on his body and he had a strange gait. I found out later that it was due to his having had some toes amputated because of diabetes. He was homosexual, very "camp" and delightfully, sarcastically witty. Bernard, who was an art director at Pathe Pictures, had won much acclaim for his performance as the Dame in "Babes in the Wood", a political pantomime that had been popular with Unity audiences. Ruby was a tall, impreious looking woman, dressed elegantly and expensively. Her most impressive feature was her large hooked nose, which I felt gave her character, and I was really upset in later years to see that she had undergone surgery to straighten and shorten it. She did not look half so handsome. She worked for J. Arthur Rank and her office was in the odeon, Leicester Square, where she entertained me with cups of coffee during our friendship.
They handed me the script of a short sketch and I had to read the part of an old woman of the Edith Evans type. To my amazement I was one of four chosen from the largeish group of hopefuls. I was to be in the Outside show group, an adjunct of Unity theatre, and we would perform in factory canteens for the workers, at camps for the Forces, or in local halls around London for the various communities. We performed anything, anywhere we were wanted: sometimes cabaret, sometimes one act plays or musicals that we devised, or often we just performed individually. Alfie Bass and Bill Rowbotham (later Owen), had mime acts. Alfie mimed a boxing match and Bill did a woman undressing to get in her bath. But the all-time favourite with audiences was Bill doing his song "You too can have a body like mine" as he drew attention to his skinny frame, accentuated by an oversize vest and a baggy pair of pants. Benny Norris used to play the piano and i would sing songs from the American Garmentworkers' show "Pins and Needles".
When we weren't performing or rehearsing, we attended Unity's political discussions or the education classes the Communist Party organised regularly. Before long I had been recruited into the Young Communit League and Ted Willis took me in hand. [Ted Willis wrote The Blue lamp, which later was the basis for Dixon of Dock Green]. Soon after I joined the Party. After the shows we would go over to the pub to discuss the Party's line on art. "Art for art's sake" was abandoned for "art in the service of the people". Revolutionary art and realism was encouraged, and art as propaganda was our practice. I was reminded of those days recently when I saw Woody Allen's film Bullets over Broadway.
We had acting workshops where we discussed the Stanislavsky method and tried to put it ito practice in our performances. We studied our character in relation to real life, beyond the confines of the play. We looked at the social and historical background and had to think ourselves ito the psychology of the character and know how she would react to any circumstances. I learned a lot about people from these workshops but I cannot say that it made me any better an actress. Life was so hectic. Work by day, theatre each evening and parties all night, often at my friend Pam's flat in Coram Street, or at Ted Willis's in Belsize Park. He was a very unhappy man at the time. He would keep me up all night reading poetry to me - his own poems!
It was at a party that Ted took me to that I first met Roger Woddis, then in the army. He had been in Unity Theatre since 1938, both acting and writing sketches and songs for the shows. The party had gone on into the early hours of the morning and just as I was thinking of leaving, the door opened and a soldier in uniform came in. He looked around and came over to me. He asked me who I was and introduced himself and for the rest of the night he talked about his army experiences. Up and away early the next morning, I did not see Roger again until the end of the war as he was sent off to Italy into the thick of the action. When he returned our lives intertwined again and again over the years.
It was whilst I was at Unity that I decided that my war effort should take the form of working in an engineering factory. The Party gave me a little push in that direction too, but it was not a good experience. Up at 6am each morning for the 40 minute journey to clock on at the factory at 7.30 and then endure a day of general sexual harassment. As if that weren't enough, the vicious machines took bites out of my most vulnerable body parts whenever my attention wandered even for a second. I accepted it all because I wanted to be able to do my bit for the country as well as continue to perform at Unity Theatre. I would leave the factory at 4.30 in the afternoon to go straight to Unity for the evening erformance. The last straw was when they put me on night shift and the sexual harassment got really heavy. I then gave up the unequal struggle, left the factory and volunteered for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF).
When I wrote to my friend john to tell him of my decision, his reply was "Don't indulge in your usual flights of fancy and begin romanticising about life under the flag. I think what you have done is neither good nor bad, but acceptance of one of the wartime jobs open to you. You are an intelligent girls with a natural cunning and a commission is the first rung to military fame...."

dear comrade

Although there are many more letters I am just adding one more, so that I can carry on with more of the memoir. This is another letter from Zelda to her father.
Comrade!
I have started in this way to show you that I am already marching fearlessly down that rough and crooked road of communism. Well, let me not say Communism, for I would describe myself as merely pink, not red. At any rate, I hope I am not of the common herd, for Heaven help me if I am. But, why it is inevitable that I tread this road, I cannot see.
On Thursday at the WEA Mr Humphries spoke on the Panama Canal and South America. Did you know that when travelling through the Panama Canal you are actually travelling in an easterly direction and not westerly as one would imagine. Mrs. Coles, wife of the history master at Cooper's school, asked Mr. Humphries how Argentina was governed, and in answering Mr. Humphries said that the President was anti-fascist yet governed in a fascist way. At that, Mr. Coles said "Would you say then, he was a Communist?" Mr. Coles himself is a true communist, and looks it too, for he wears his hair long, wears London tan coloured plus-fours with brown linen shirt and canary yellow tie, and smokes one of those old-fashioned pipes. For all that, he is very nice, and is Mr. Barnard's best friend, though Mr. Barnard is only just pink not red too.
Mr. Barnard took me home from the meeting, and we began to talk about teaching. I told him that I wanted to be a teacher, and he told me that I had picked uon the wrong vocation for myself. He said that I am of a rebellious spirit, and that if I keep up that spirit, which he says I should strive to do, I should not become a teacher. He said he'd been reading Neill's Problem Teachers, and that there it says that an enquiry was made in a school to see what the children wanted to be when they grew up, and only one child said "a teacher", and later it was found that this one child was mentally deficient. But, I still want to be a teacher. So he said that he hopes I get some "rebellious spirits" to teach, and then I'll know what it is to teach.
I must remember though that I have to answe your numbers of questions. First, it is your tit-bits of intellectual peculiarities that really do interest me. It wouldn't seem like a letter from you, if there were no such tit=bits in it. Perhaps because of my inflated mental impression, as you call it, but I certainly don't think that they are above me, those tit=bits.
You also asked me if the vicar had allowed "Judgement Day". Well, if you knew the Cooper's School, you wouldn't ask that question, for you would know that Cooper's School takes no notice of such people as vicars etc. They have a marvellous set of masters at Cooper's school for even the Headmaster is socialist, and the sixth formers are real revolutionaries, even worse than communists.
Unfortunately, not only are they revolutionary, but they think themselves 2nd Don Juans and they flirt like the dickens with some of our girls. So, now Miss Bartlett has given us a lecture, telling us that we are not to make ourselves "cheap" with the Cooper's boys. She, an English mistress, actually used the word "cheap"!
Well, I'll say adieu now mon pere
Ton fille affectioneuse
Zelda

OK - oone more!
Dearest Daddy
I hope this awful weather is not affecting your health. Isn't it dreadful, it hasn't stopped raining for a whole week. This was commented on by our geography teacher who told us that the reason for Frome's extraordinarily bad weather is that the Bristol Channel area is an area from which cyclones come over England, and being near the channel Frome gets the whole brunt of the cyclone, and gets bad weather in spells for weeks on end.
In history we have just finished doing the repeal of the corn laws, the main cause being the famine in Ireland in 1845 owing to diseased potato crop. To impress the dreadfulness of the famine in our minds, our history master read us an excerpt from a book called "Famine" by liam O'Flaherty. it is a very vivid book and certainly showed us the horrors of the Irish famine. Our history master is fond of readiing excerpts from books to impress facts in our minds. We'v been doing the Factory Acts, and to show us the struggle between the Industrialists and the workers, he read us excerpts from various books, incuding Charlotte Bronte's "Shirley". He also impressed us by reading various old authentic documents, showing us how awful life in the factories was, for children and for woen. When learning about the Poor Law amendments Act he read us Dickens' Oliver Twist, showing us how terrible the workhouses were. This master has been all over America, studying her government and her people, and he has lately been giving some remarkable speeches at the WEA meetings about America's government. Everyone in Frome thinks he's a remarkable man.
In English lessons we've been reading some poems by young moderns as our mistress calls them, and we have been criticising their styles. Their poems are full of realism, such as describing the countryside, not as the poets usually do, but planting gasometers in the fields, and things like that. They are all very realistic and also they don't care about the uniformity of rhythm, they chop and change it about. This led her to talk about jazz and modern unrealistic art and we have had extremely interesting debates upon modern art.
One modern poem interested me very much. The poet tried to combine sight and sound, in trying to describe scenes to us. I can remember pieces of the poem, which I will tell you. In one part the poet says "The morning light creaks down again" The poem is about a kitchen maid, of bucolic stupidity, getting up in the morning, and that's a modern enough subject for you. The poet, to show you how low her mind has sunk, says that when she looks on the garden as she gets up, she immediately thinks of the carrots and turnips for dinner, and from that her weak mind turns to milk out on the step etc. That's modern poetry!
Since I wrote last I have read several books, Lady Windermere's Fan by oscar Wilde, Wisdom of Father Brown, by Chesterton, Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey. These books I got fro the public library, where there is an awfully nice old librarian. He always talks to you about the books you take out, and delights in good books. He told me the other day that I was the best-read girl he had met for my age and always helps me choose my books.
In this school they don't learn trigonometry but the maths teacher thought it was a shame for me to drop it after starting it, and so he goes on teaching me it. You see I'm better than the others at maths and so I finish my work ages before them, and it is in those moments that he teaches me trigonometry.
Wouldn't you think that in the country the boys and girls would be less grown-up than town children, who are supposed to have seen life? Well, they are not! Definitely! The girls and boys here are very grown-up in their outlook and their ways, and we're all very sensible in class, having lots of debates and arguments in various subjects. None of them are frightfully brainy, like Shizuko or Alice were, but they've all got a good deal of common sense and a little knowledge of everything rather than a wide knowledge in special things. We all have fun together and we're carefree, but there's only one thing that I hate about Frome, and that is the gossip. You see, everybody knows everybody else in Frome and its such a small place that if anybody has done anything in the least ill-mannered or naughty, it is all over Frome in no time. Do you know, if I go to the pictures with mr. and Mrs. Lapham they sometimes say to me "Look, see that person in the 2nd row from the back, well he's not a Frome boy". that shows you that peope know everybody in Frome, and when I first came to Frome, within a week, everybody knew there was a stranger in Frome and by the time I went to school they all knew me as that London girl who's staying with the Laphams.
Well, there's no more news, so I'll bid you adieu, mon cher pere
Your adoring daughter,
Zelda