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  • Abe Lazarus and the Lost World of British Communism
  • Geoff Andrews (bio)

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Fig 1.

Abe Lazarus campaigning in Cowley Road, Oxford, in the 1930s.

The British Communist Party (CPGB), despite what Raphael Samuel called its 'vocation of leadership', was not noted for the quality of its national leaders – Harry Pollitt excepted – while only a handful would merit recognition as 'mass leaders'. These were the figures whose devotion to the cause was paramount, for whom self-sacrifice and commitment to the Party overrode any sense of personal advancement or career aspirations and who were [End Page 272] identified by their ability to inspire members, galvanize followers and popularize working-class struggles. The South Wales Miners' leader Arthur Horner, Wal Hannington, leader of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement (NUWM) and Willie Gallacher the communist MP, are notable figures in trade unionism and politics. Abe Lazarus was a less well-known example, and unusual also in that he came from the ranks of full-time Party organizers, those hard-working but often undistinguished cadres who helped sustain the life of the Party in its districts and committees. (Bert Ramelson, the Party's Industrial Organiser, could claim such an influence in a very different period, the 1960s and 1970s.) Lazarus was one of the rising stars in the interwar years and played a prominent role in mass strikes, housing protests, opposition to Mosley's fascists and in galvanising support for Spain and the Popular Front. The high point of his activism was in Oxford, where his oratory and organizational skills resulted in trade-union representation at the key moment of the city's industrialization, while his activism transcended both 'town' and 'gown' divisions and those between Labour and Communist parties. In doing so, he carried with him some of the hopes of the Communist Party at a critical point in its history as well as being a pivotal figure in the development of the modern Oxford left.

To tell the full story of the life of Abe Lazarus, however, requires us to think again about how we write histories of the 'lost' leaders of the left. Notably, this means avoiding histories that are overly partisan, or at least ones constrained by narrow orthodoxies. These have now and then afflicted historians of the CPGB and socialist historians generally, who risk slipping into the role of 'custodians of the past'. Such dilemmas were, after all, at the heart of the debates in the Communist Historians' Group in the wake of 1956, and resulted ultimately in James Klugmann's unsatisfactory official histories. One of the main criteria as to whether a biography is worthwhile is the extent to which someone's life can inform a wider story. Abe Lazarus is interesting in this respect, as a figure whose 'rise and fall' seem to reflect that of his wider party, though the full story has perhaps only been made possible through memoirs and with the opening of archives and now Security Service files. For almost the entire period from when he started as an active communist in the early thirties until his withdrawal from political leadership in the early fifties he was under surveillance; at different times he was observed, had his phone checked, his correspondence opened, and his house raided. At the peak of his influence, in Oxford in the mid to late 1930s, this diminutive figure, who had risen to prominence very quickly, was the hope of the left. His youth, vitality and commitment seemingly represented the hopes of a generation, while 'his ringing voice could be heard, without the aid of a microphone, from one end of St Giles to the other'.1

Arthur Exell, former car-worker at the Radiators site of Morris Motors and an old Party comrade of Lazarus, began to write Lazarus's story in the 1980s, but came up against some of the dilemmas alluded to above.2 Unofficially supervised by Raphael Samuel, Exell's attempt reflected some [End Page 273] of the pitfalls – as well as strengths – of writing an inside account of a former comrade. Samuel told Exell that 'there were too many triumphs and not enough difficulties and disagreements' in...

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