holidays in the eastern bloc

Bulgaria
"Drop everything" we were told. "You're off to Bulgaria on Saturday". The Black Sea resorts were then just opening up to western tourists and they were not yet attracting the numbers needed to fill the planes. That was why Jerry and I found ourselves, along with a few other full-time Communist Party workers, being whisked off to Sunny Beach. The only duty we had to fulfill was to meet with the local Communist Party officials on Thursday before we left for home. We had to tell them of any criticisms we had, in order to help them cater better for future holiday makers.
Each of us had specific criticisms but there was one that we all shared - the small pile of 2 inch square, rough, grey toilet paper that was sparingly placed in the cubicle beside a warning not to flush them down the lavatory but to put them in an already overflowing small bin. There was used toilet paper scattered all over the floor. As you can imagine, it was not a pretty sight and nor were the toilets the most fragrant of places.
When I said I was going to comment on this, my companions said it wouldn't go down well and that I should remember the generous hospitality they had offered us. Thursday came and I braced myself for the moment of truth. When the Bulgarian comrades asked for our comments mine was the oly voice heard. i sweetened the pill by firstly telling them of all the things that Jerry and I had really enjoyed, but then told them that they must clean up their act on the toilet front and that the 2 inch squares of toilet paper were too small for western bums.
There was a long silence and my heart pounded. Then the Bulgarian chairman rose from his chair, fixed me with his eyes, and stabbing the air with his index finger, slowy said, "Ah, yes, comrade, but you must admit that there are no sharks in our waters".
What a conversation stopper! For ever after jerry and I used it to stop bores in full flood. It's most effective.

A Day on Bear Mountain
It was thought that after five years of full-time work for the Communist Party you would need your revolutionary batteries recharged. So the Soviet Union and the other so-called "Eastern democracies" offered such comrades throughout the world a month's hospitality. For two weeks we had to go to a sanitorium for health checks and treatments and after that we were given a choice of cities to tour.
Jerry and I, with eight other British comrades were sent to a sanitorium in Yalta where we joined others from America, Finland, France, Germany and Italy. Each day we had early morning exercises before breakfast and then various courses of treatment were booked for you according to what ailed you. There were: hydrotherapy, physiotherapy, massage, salt baths, mud baths, saunas and steam baths and for those of us who were fit there were tennis and badminton courts, rowing, climbing and aerobics to choose from.
One day jerry and I decided to volunteer to clamber up Bear Mountain with the German comrades. We soon wished we hadn't. The Germans were all there wearing their lederhosen and all the gear, whereas we didn't even have proper boots, only plimsolls. We had such a job keeping up with them. They literally leat up steep, thickly wooded slopes like mountain goats. As we staggered the last few yards to the top, the leader of the group blew her whistle and ordered the men to the right and the women to the left. I didn't realise why at first, until I saw the women crouching down behind trees with their skirts up. We joined in the mass toileting and then all of us raced down the other side until we reached the sea. How wonderful it was to plunge straight in after that long, hot climb.
From Yalta we went overnight by train to St Petersburg - (Leningrad in those days). In each sleeping compartment there were four bunks and at the end of the corridor sat a woman in charge of a steaming samovar of tea. I had ust one problem. I had been allocated a bunk in a compartment with three Soviet generals, each resplendent with sword and gun, but all very polite. I kept my clothes on and they just took off their swords.
On arriving early next morning we were met by a band playing and people waving flowers. How very nice, I thought, only to discover the welcome was not for us but for a young newly-wed couple on the train.
St. Petersburg is one of the most beautiful cities I have seen, ith its well-proportioned buildings coloured apple-blossom green, yellow ochre and a pink that glowed in the sunlight. Canals criss-cross the city and every bridge is a work of art in itself. The splendid St. Isaacs Cathedral, towering over the city with its large dome, its enormous malachite pillars and superb marbles, stood across the street from our hotel. In Tarist days the hotel had been used by visiting royalty and it had a chaise longue in the bathroom.
After our organised trip to the Hermitage and Peter's Palace with its trick fountains, Jerry and I left the others and visited the "anti-religion" museum. It showed big bibles with guns inserted into the ages; bullets from many different countries but each inscribed with "For God, King and Country"; relics of Rasputin and other monks who influenced the Tsars. We loved walking along the banks of the Neva at night, where the young lovers met, and as tradition dictated, the man would present a single rose to his loved one..
The street scenes were endlessly entertaining: the group of people stood reading the wall newspapers and discussing the news animatedly, then tut-tuttig as they turned to read the poster warning of the dangers of drinking vodka, while drunkards lay in a stupour in the gutter behind them; and the crows that gathered to remonstrate with a husband beating his wife in the street, while a policeman stood nonchalantly by on the corner, not interfering.
I also carry a vivid memory of the cook at the Party Hotel coming out of the kitchen to talk to me because I ate so little. She thought it was because I did not like her cooking and was close to tears. Jerry put her mind at rest by saying that her cooking was just like his mother's. Thank goodness, she took that as a compliment.

East German Mountain Retreat
We were in a chalet high up on a wooded mountainside and our companions were comrades from many different countries, but this story is of three who came from Argentina. One was a famous poet, Don Juan; another a full-time Party worker, Albert; and the other a peasant, Luis, who had never ever been out of his own small village before.
In the chalet our bedrooms were sited around a small hall, in which there was a small billiard table. Each evening before dinner all the men were to be found playing very seriously - except for Luis who had never played and was carefully watching each move they made. They asked him to play and tried hard to encourage him, but Luis would always shake his head. However, there came a day when I was woken by a click, click, click sound outside my bedroom door at about 4 o'clock in the morning. I tried to ignore it, to get back to sleep but the continual click, click was very annoying. Eventually I got out of bed and opened the door just an inch. Luis was there practising the game of billiards. That evening before dinner he proudly joined the other men in their game.
Another day the three Argentinians joined Jerry and I for a long walk down the far side of the mountain to a famous hostelry in a small village. Jerry had a map and a pocket compass, as none of us had ever been there before. We were all chattering away, occasionally stopping to examine an interesting plant. We even caught a glimpse of a wild boar. Then, as we stopped to study a particularly interesting fungus, I suddenly realised that Luis was not with us. I called out his name - no response. I went back a little way to see if we'd left him behind - no sign of him I became anxious. I knew he could speak neither German nor English and he had no map with him. The others laughed at my concern. "Luis is a peasant" they said. He could find his way without a map or compass - he could work out the direction by the heightand position of the sun. he would find a path and and know by how well trod it was that it led to the village. "You'll see" they said, "He'll be there long before us".
And they were right. As we turned into the village, there was Luis grinning at us over the top of a steine of beer on a table outside the hostelry.

Star Turn

Daily Worker, which at the end of the 1960s became the more blandly named Morning Star, where Zelda had two stints, both working in the People's Press Fighting Fund.


When I first joined the staff of the Daily Worker, Johnny Campbell was the editor. It was just after the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and many journalists had left the paper. But not only was the paper depleted of staff, it also lost much of its support. I was in the Fund department and we had our work cut out to raise the money needed to sustain the paper. Too many of the wealthiest and most generous supporters had stopped their donations. Without advertising that supported other newspapers, it was vitally necessary to win the financial support of the labour movement and the readers, and we literally rought for every penny. As far as I was aware there was no Soviet gold at that time, though rumours were rife. But being a member of staff did not mean you were privy to any special knowledge.
We were a happy band in the Fund department, unlike the newsroom, where the atmosphere was heavy with anger, criticism, reproach. Elsie Gollan [wife of John Gollan who succeeded harry Pollitt as general secretary of the Communist Party] and Monica Millner worked with me and we enjoyed each other's company and were often to be heard singing our favourite songs while working. I was well known for my rendering of "I'm only a bird in a gilded cage".
Barbara Niven was then head of the department and had a small office of her own decorated with her own paintings. She was a "Grande dame", a statuesque figure, a talented artist and writer, admired and respected by all. Johnny Campbell never found his way into our office. There was a divide between the journalists and administrative staff. The canteen was the only place in which we mixed with each other. At lunchtime a select group of us gathered round David Ainley to do the Times Crossword. He was the champion. We merely contributed a word or two. David was the secretary of the People's Press Printing Society, the co-operative that owned the paper. Johnny Campbell stomped into the canteen for his lunch too. His awkward gait was due to the frostbite he suffered during the first world war. A sad-looking figure, he usually sat alone with the Times spread out before him, not inviting anyone to speak to him. I don't think I ever said more than Good morning to him, but I was told he had a sense of humour.
By the time I returned to work in the fund department after nearly six year at the labour Monthly, the editor was George Matthews. George, the "gentleman farmer" of the party and lover of opera, was a very different editor from Johnny. He was far more relaxed and friendly than his predecessor. But the paper was in crisis again Its name was being changed to the Morning Star and it was to have a different format. Many of the readers did not take kindly to either change and it was at such a time that I took over from the much -loved Barbara. I was sure the readers would consider me a young upstart. Despite the boost of sales figures of the Morning Star by a large order of copies from the Soviet Union, it still had to rely heavily on the support of its home readers. Their letters to me, often personal and revealing, were a constant inspiration. I felt that each writer of the hundreds of letters I received nearly every day was a personal friend. Indeed, some of them did become so, and my office was like a Mecca to readers and visitors from abroad, and I had to be a good listener. For the good of the paper I had to show no partiality - or so I thought at the time. With so many different strands of thought surfacing in the Party, my task was seen as keeping the Morning Star readers united around the paper.
Every factio and each individual variation of the Party line was represented in the letters that fell on my desk, and each writer presumed I hald the same view as they did. I was the public face of the paper, not a real person with my own views. In fact I was deeply concerned at the lack of democracy within the Party and the paper and along with many another member of staff was trying to get my voice heard. But that was in the confines of staff meetings.
Part of my job was travelling round Britaiin to meet the readers and whip up further support from other orgaisations. I also had to storm the male bastions of the trade union movement to get funds. i remember one lunchtime appointment I had with an East Midlands miners' leader in a local Working Men's Club where they were meeting. When I arrived that Sunday morning i was a little early and their meeting was still in full swing. I could see through the window the serried ranks of men listening to their leader's words of wisdom as I waited outside the door. Then, the meeting over, they all rushed past m to the bar to get the drinks. I sat down in a corner talking about the need for money for the paper to the accompaniment of the Club's lunchtime entertainment - a stripper! She was difficult to compete with for their attention.
Through a reorganisation of the staff that had to be made, I was given an extra task, the formidable task of organising the Festivall Hall Rally. It was a family event that used t attract around 2,500 people and they were entertained by touring artists from the Communist countries. The performers would stay on for a couple of days before continuing with their tour and we organised culltural outings for them - only to find they had skived off to go shopping in Marks & Spencers and Mothercare at marble Arch.
The first time I made the suggestion to the Festival Committee that we shoud have entertainment more in keeing with the timmes and the new readership we had won, I was laughed out of court. But gradually the committee was won round for a compromise. I was given my head each alternate year, so long as I had visiting East European artists in between. I booked Roger McGough and "The Scaffold". They recited poetry and sang Lily the Pink, their hit song which was well received by the audience. Another time I booked 7:84 Theatre company and they shocked our readers with their swearing. I felt I had struck a blow for freedom of thought. It was after this that the Party began to change the nature of their events too, and organised the Ally Pally rallies, thanks to Dave Cook. They were very popular.
Another venture I was rather proud of was my encouragement of new artists by giving our readers the opportunity both to see and to buy their work. I organised an exhibition of the Naive Painters of the East End at the National Theatre, and I also persuaded some of the artists to sell signed limited editios of their prints and posters through my office, publicised in the paper. We took a small commission on each sale for the Fund. Dan Jones' print of "Blair Peach" [killed by police in London at an anti-racist demonstration] was particularly popular.
As the financial situation of the paper worsened, we were forced to examine the possibilities of moving out of London. Bobby Campbell and I were allies on the committee charged with the responsibility of safeguarding the paper's future. However, before we could fulfill our task, Party Headquarters sent in Reuben Falber to wield the big stick. His word was law. We did not know then that he was accepting "Moscow Gold" despite the continual denials in our columns.
When we set up a Women's group at the paper, it created a furore. But with women like Flo Keyworth, Mikki Doyle and Bea Campbell all behind the idea, our women's group survived all criticism and disfavour.
Later, when Tony Chater became editor the staff meetings began to liven up as the "gloves came off". The discussions on democracy flared into fighting words. There were also Union battles to be fought and I was Mother of the NUJ chapel [National Union of Journalists equivalent to trace union shop steward], so I had many a brush with him I found him to be anti-feminist, not democratic in his working practices and arrogant to boot.
The controversies within the confines of the Star building spilled over into the public arena when the election of the Management Committee took place. When I was first at the paper and attended such meetings, there would be only around 20 or so of the Fund faithfuls there. By the time I resigned the numbers had risen to 150-200 and there had to be an overflow meeting outside the hall. The "hard-liners" would whip up their supporters and, getting wind of that, those advocating change also whipped up what support they could muster. They never mustered quite enough to wi the day As a public face of the paper, I was expected to exhort the readers to support the paper - a job i found increasingly difficult to do as my ideas changed and I found myself at odds with the policies of the paper. I had been uncomfortable in my job for too long and i could no longer live such a lie. i knew I had to leave.
I left and joined a collective of journalists on the newly formed East End News. [Here she worked with Mike Jempson, George Aligayah and other well known journalists]. Whilst at the East End News, one of the Star's journalists, John Flowers, came and asked me to join him, Bea Campbell and Simon Partridge to campaign to open up the Management Committee of the paper to more non-Party members. I agreed and the four of us stood for election to the Committee on the one ticket. That was anathema to the "hard-liners" because they wanted to keep strict control of the paper - no factions, thank you and no "undisciplined" non-Party members. So, from being a celebrity that every reader wanted to know, I suddenly became a pariah that everyone shunned. Many who had professed to be my bosom pals would not even look at me, let alone say hello. To them I was a traitor.

Raji Palme Dutt and Salme

Greetings card to Rajani Palme Dutt from all the staff at labour Monthly, including Zelda Curtis


Whilst Raji Palme Dutt was hated by Harry Pollitt, then general secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and an arch political rival, he was greatly revered by many rank and file comrades. During the war comrades serving in India set up groups to discuss his Notes of the Month and these Labour Monthly Readers' Groups influenced great numbers of soldiers who later swelled the ranks of the Communist Party on their return to Britain. They speak, even today, of labour monthly having been their lifeline to sanity in a mad, mad world.
Even his political adversaries recognised in Raji not only a giant intellect but a man committed devotedly to a cause; a man whose influence affected events throughout the world. Nehru, Kenyatta, Nkrumah, all sought discussion of their problems with him and history will record the roles these men played and the part Dutt had in the events they shaped.
Dutt's father, an Indian, had been a country doctor here, doing his rounds in a pony and trap. He often took the young Raji along with him and it was witnessing the poverty of his father's patients that turned Raji into a socialist, he told me. Seeing the squalor of their lives, the dreadful housing and cramped conditions in which they lived, and the tuberculosis that ravaged their lives, he pledged himself to fight for a better society. The irony was that he also suffered from TB.
Raji often spoke to me about Salme, his wife, and it was to me he entrusted the task of publishing her poems after her death. A beautiful woman, a poet and a political activist all her life, Salme was fluent in French, German, Russian, Swedish, Estonian and Finnish. She had been a brilliant scholar. Born in Estonia in 1888, she took part in the Russian Revolution of 1907. During her University years she was banished to Siberia for her underground activities, and it was that ordeal that caused her health to suffer. She was never really fit throughout the rest of her life.
In 1919 she asked Lenin to assign her a task in whichever country the battle was toughest. "Lenin looked at me with his usual quizzical smile" she told her friends" and replied that in that case I should go to England as that was the toughest place for communism. So I did."
She came to England in 1920 and while working here with Willie Gallacher she was introduced to the young Raji. He was much younger than she was, but within two years they were married. In a poem she wrote in 1936 she said her longing was "to swim where the waves are wildest, And moor a red flag on the whirl."
When I met her in 1965 her health was failing fast and she was in bed most of the time, looked after lovingly by Raji. The day she died I was phoned early in the morning by Raji's secretary at the Party Headquarters. I rushed round to his flat to be with him As he opened the door I saw his sadness. i held his hand for a moment and kissed his cheek. Then my eyes fell on the breakfast tray on the small hall table. A silver teapot and cream jug stood beside a delicate bone china cup and saucer resting on a plate. Two slices of toast stood in a rack alongside a small ot o honey and a tall, slender deep red rose stood in a silver, single-stem vase. Propped up against it was a birthday card. "It was her birthday" he sighed as tears welled up in his eyes.
This was the man the press called "Arch villain", the "intellectual doyen of the international communist movement". Here he was, lover of Salme, crying at his loss, clinging to me in his grief.

Daily Worker and labour Monthly

Angela
The phone rang. It was Angela Tuckett, acting editor of "Labour Monthly", asking if she could meet up with me for a chat. Her reputation was awesome. i could not imagine what she wanted from me - I was intrigued.
"Eccentric" was the usual description of Angela. She was renowned for her playig of the concertina. She and her squeeze box were present on every CND march, on every peace demonstration and at every trades union conference. Stories were told of her amorous dalliances and of her wild youth, but all agreed that her political record was more than admirable. In the thirties she had organised welcoming committees to provide foor and accommodation for the unemployed workers on their march up to London. She had also helped to buld up Unity Theatre in Bristol with her sister Joan. But perhaps Angela was most famous for playing hockey - or not playing it I should say. She had been chosen to play in England's Olympic hockey team but refused to compete at the nazi Olympics in Berlin 1936, leading her team in walking off the field. When we met and she informed me that it was being suggested I should work on Labour Monthly as her editorial assistant, I was too excited by the thought to ask all the questions that later flooded into my mind. Nor did I concern myself immediately with the effect it might have on th Daily Worker, where I was working at the time. I just presumed that Palme Dutt, chair of the British Communist Party as well as Editor of Labour Monthly, had cleared such a move with both the Party and the paper.
I went into the office of David Ainley, the paper's administrative head, to discuss leaving. He sat stonily silent as i told him my news, and then, without even loking up, he said "Never forget that even a cleaner at the Daily Worker does a more important job for the party than any luminary at Labour Monthly." But the party did agree that i should make the move.
MEET THE BOARD
Angela was a great story teller and as we drove each month to the printers she had me as a captive audience. She regaled me with stories of dancing through the streets and colleges of Oxford naked beneath her fur coat. She had seemingly always mixed pleasure with business. She taught me all the tricks of the trade: how to sub the articles, how to lay out the magazine, how to deal with the printers, and it was she who instructed me in how to get my man when we wanted an interview with a trade union leader at conference. "Stand outside the gents lavatory" she told me. "That's the one place they have to go to. They'll promise you anything in their desperatio to get inside quickly." Many an embarrassing hour I stood outside those doors.
On my first day at Labour Monthly Angela warned me that Raji Palme Dutt, the Editor, would never let anyone beyond the front door of his flat. His privacy was sacrosanct, and he defended it against all comers. "Don't think he'll let you in when you go to collect the manuscript of his "Notes of the month", she warned. "He may not even open the door. Sometimes he pushes the pages through the letter box to you." And that was true at first.
Even at the Board meetings he hardly ever glanced in my direction. None of them paid me much attention at first. But what a lot I learned by just sitting there listening to them - Palme Dutt, Robin Page Arnot, Andrew Rothstein, Ivor Montagu, Steve Boddington, Will Paynter and other trade union leaders.It was like a living history lesson listening to them reminiscing about past political events. They made the General strike come alive for me, telling how they brought out the bulletin and distributed it. I heard stories of their meetings with such legendary figures as Lenin, Stali and Dimitrov. They would swap tales of how they smuggled things in and out when they were serving their terms of imprisonment for one political reason or another. They told, too, of strolls in the gardens of Sidney and Beatrice Webb's house with George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Ivor Montagu would tell us hi adventures organising ping-pog matches around the world and then would switch easily from that into an account of film-making with Eisenstein.
Such stories were the preamble before we started on the business of the day. They were like the curtain raisers for the main event. Raji would give a resume of the current political scene to help us decide on the themes of the articles for the magazine that month.
Gradually I won Raji's confidence and the door of his flat was opened to me. He even invited me into the inner sanctum, his book-lined study, and I began to know him not just as a leading comrade but also as a vulnerable human being. Wherever he went on his many journeys abroad he sent me a postcard, but his spindly writing was so bad I could hardly make out the messages.
Once he invited me out to dinner and a trip to the theatre to see Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession". Over dinner he told me stories of his courtship of Salme, his wife. Salme's family had a country estate in Finland, carved out of the woods around. He told me of tea on the lawns in sunny weather, of bears wandering in fro the woods, attracted by the smell of honey on the tea table, and how they would sway from side to side just as if they were dancing to some tune they could hear.
Raji came to share Christmas lunch with my family and enjoyed a game of scrabble with us. Then for his 70th birthday I organised a huge party with an iced cake, candles and all. But soon after the Party asked me to return to the Daily Worker as its Fund organiser, replacing Barbara Niven, just as it was changing its name to The Morning Star. On this occasion, contrary to my eperience when i first left the Daily Worker for the Labour Monthly, the move was made amicably.
Around that time Raji's health began to deteriorate rapidly. He often went off to a sanitorium just outside Moscow to recuperate. These trips were paid for out of the royalties that accrued through the sales of his books in the USSR, and he always brought me back a little present, assuring me that the royalties had to be used up.
Even though I disagreed with him on many things, I was very fond of him, and it seemed he was of me. When he died he left me a bequest of £50 in his will. That was great wealth to me in those days.
My work at Labour Monthly involved commissioning, chasing up and editing articles. I also had to do all the publicity, publih special booklets, solicit advertising and gain support for the journal from the trade union movement.
I became a familiar figure at trade union conferences, wheedling donations out of the harrassed members. many of the leading members of the movement took me under their protective wings. Mick McGahey of the Scottish miners used to invite me to join his table at the Mayor's reception at the TUC, where drinks flowed freely, though by no means free. Their drinks kitty was often larger than my whole week's salary.
Bert Ramelson, industrial organiser of the Communist Party introduced me to all the leading trade unionists and to foreign delegates attending the conferences. The Russians were always clustered around Bert, who spoke their language, and they would keep his glass topped up with vodka which they could handle better than poor Bert. Once, at Blackpool, Gordon McLennan came over to me and suggested I get Bert away from the Russians and back to his hotel in a taxi, before he said or did anything he would regret the next day.
Bert was a large man and I found it rather difficult holding him up unti the cab came. It felt a little like being in a Laurel and Hardy film - every time I propped him up he would gradually slide down again. What impressed me, however, was that when eventually I did get him back to his hotel, he remembered to phone home to assure his wife all was well.
Another of my duties was to organise gatherings of the great and wealthy, ostensibly to celebrate the journal's anniversaires, but actually to raise funds. People frm every branch of cultural and political life came to pay homage to Palme Dutt and the journal from james Aldridge, novelist, to Malcolm Muggeridge, broadcaster; Allan Bush, coposer, to Lee Chadwick, artist; MPs and trade unions, doctors and lawyers, as well a the loyal readers from every walk of life.
What I am most proud of in my time at Labour Monthly is persuading Raji to open the pages of the journal to uncensored debate on the arts. I gathered together an editorial group for the new section to be called "The Arts Today". They came from television, film, sculpture, painting, music and poetry and they selected Stuart Douglas as editor. The section, begun in 1967, was to be readable, factual and analytical and it attempted to dig deeper into the relationships between the artist, their subject matter, their achievement, and their contribution to society. Raji was very anxious about it for fear that an anti-Party te might creep into the pages, yet he agreed to write in his Notes of the Month that whilst all in the editorial group were not marxists, "no attempt wil be made to impose formulas from without or limit the judgement of theme and treatment by those contributing ...Nowhere more than in the field of the creative arts is broad co-operation and wide freedom of epression essential. The Muses can ever be constrained; they need to follow their inspiration, if they are to give of their best."
Despite lots of arguments and minor skirmishes, I kept Raji at bay, and had a very interesting time in discussion with all the artists. But then I left the Journal in November of that year. The irony was that the Party wanted me to take over Barbara niven's job at the "Morning star". I was back to square one I giggled to myself at the thought of David Ainley having to welcoe me back to the paper after what he said when I left.

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