Christmas 1937 came and went. The Spanish Civil War was drawing to its painful end with increasing Nationalist advances. By March 1938 they were breaking through the Aragon Front. Joe also noted the carrying out of the Anschluss by Hitler in February 1938 and the executions of Bukharin and Rykov in March as the Soviet Purges continued. He notes that in April the Nationalists had succeeded in cutting republican Spain in two. Joe also noted that on the home front a new movement was coming to the fore. This was the tenants movement against slum landlords. It was prominent in Stepney where a Stepney Tenants Defence League was set up. Phil Piratin refers a great deal to this movement in his book Our Flag Stays Red (see especially pages 33-49), but Joe pointed out in his notes on this book that the impression given that this was the first attempt at tenants movements was wrong. In Joe’s own story he has referred to some earlier tenants struggles (1). Nevertheless this movement became widespread in the Whitechapel area only from late 1938. Successful struggles to reduce rents and get essential repairs done were carried out during the first three months of 1939. The most famous conflicts occurred in Flower and Dean Street. Similar movements took place in Willesden in West London. Tenants struggles were also taking place in Birmingham at that time. The Communist Party was extremely prominent in the Stepney Tenants Defence League, probably controlling it. Joe himself noted the role of one of his friends, Tubby Rosen, as one of the League’s leading members and spoke with admiration of his courage in these struggles. Joe at this time it will be remembered had been expelled from the Party. He did not take an active role in this movement but was certainly present at least at Flower and Dean Street during the Rent Strikes.

Meanwhile back in 1938, Joe was still hoping to get back into the Party. fold. On June 1st 1938, after a long silence he sent a letter to the London DPC to say he had just appealed to the Central Control Commission of the British. Communist Party about his expulsion. This appeal was timed to coincide with the annual District Congress and the June 1st letter was a request that Joe’s case be brought before the Congress. At the same time Joe wrote in his appeal letter to the Central Control Commission of the National Party a statement of circumstances surrounding his expulsion. He decided to write to the highest of all bodies in Britain. He complained of the cavalier way in which he said he was treated at the time of his expulsion. And the way in which his own statements and that of the DPC were never discussed. He described his last meeting with three local Party leaders on December 16th 1937 and the way in which he felt he had not been allowed to reply to the DPC statement. He repeated to the National Party leaders that other comrades had not been allowed to see the documents in question nor hear Joe’s case and asked again to be allowed to explain why he thought the charges brought against him were false, so that his expulsion could be rescinded. Then he wrote he could ‘assist in rooting out weaknesses in the Party, to enable us to quickly achieve unity of action of the whole Labour Movement against the National Government, fascist and War’. Joe added he had failed to appeal before now because he had been ‘unable to give the attention necessary for such action’. Nothing is recorded of Joe’s personal life and so we can only speculate as to why he had not the time to give this matter his attention beforehand.

Joe ended this letter by speaking of ‘a stand I intend taking against the actions of the Stepney Branch Committee and the DPC for the mistakes which have been made during the course of this struggle’. Joe added that he would appreciate any help given him in the form of information regarding procedure or any other help. He offered to supply all relevant documents assuring the Central Control Commission that it could not make a decision without them.

On June 7th 1938 the Control Commission replied that it already possessed the documents to which Joe referred and asked him to submit any other material he wanted to send as quickly as possible. On June 8th Joe received a reply from Elinor Burns at the DPC. It stated that Joe could not speak before the District Congress because the procedure was that all appeals went to the Party’s Central Committee and after this comrades had the right of appeal to the National Congress. There was no appeal at District Congress level. On June 21st Joe received a letter from the Control Commission of the CPGB, King Street, London. It began ‘Dear sir’ and was signed ‘yours etc’. The letter stated that after having studied all the documents in question the Control Commission found the expulsion justified and endorsed it. The letter added:

‘We are of the opinion that six months delay in lodging an appeal against a decision to expel you from the Party shows a completely irresponsible, light-minded attitude to Party membership totally unworthy of anyone claiming to be a Communist.’

Joe was exasperated by this comment because for over a year many of his letters and appeals had been left unanswered by Party Officials for months at a time. Joe noted that the six months wait had been a mistake and that he would explain why he had waited so long, but unfortunately this explanation was never to be given.

On June 27th, he tried yet again. This time Joe wrote to the National Party’s Secretariat. He wrote that since the decision to expel him had been endorsed by the Control Commission without his being invited to state his case, he thought he should be allowed to do so at the forthcoming National Party Congress in September. On June 28th the Control Commission replied (this time reverting to the usual ‘Dear Comrade’) that he could put his case before the appeals commission of Congress in front of whom he could appear, but only the appeals commission could decide if any appellant was allowed to address Congress. On August 14th Joe wrote that he was unable to submit any further statements, as he had made attempts to write one, but found it ‘very difficult’, but he said he would be prepared to argue and defend his case at the appeals commission in person in September. This was accepted by the Control Commission in a reply on August 18th.

While all this was going on there were many other things that were preoccupying Joe’s mind. Fascists were still meeting locally in Jewish areas. Joe had noted on July 3rd and July 10th such meetings had taken place. A Stepney Green march proposed by fascists for September was the object of local Party circulars. Local CP supporters were told to boycott such meetings and marches. This to Joe was more proof that the Party wasn’t being active enough against the fascists.

* * * * *

As if this were not enough in the summer of 1938, news came to Joe like a bolt from the blue. It was of his younger brother, Hymie, of whom he had not heard for nearly two years. The news came from Burgos, Spain. A letter from the British Diplomatic Service to say that Joe’s brother was a prisoner of war at the concentration camp at Vinulta, Palencia in the Province of Burgos and that he had goven Joe’s name as the person in Britain to contact on his behalf. Joe could not have been more astounded. Hymie had apparently written previously from a prison camp at San Pedro where he was first held. But this letter had never got through the censors. He had been captured with many others while fighting with the British Batallion of the International Brigade in March 1938. Later in the summer 100 of these men had been transferred to Palencia to be exchanged for Italian prisoners (2). It was while they were awaiting eventual release that Hymie again wrote to Joe and this time letters were being forwarded. Joe wrote back immediately. On August 25th he received a letter from David de Renzy-Martin of the Foreign Office in Burgos. It read:

Dear sir,

On August 24th I visited the prisoners of war at Vinulta, Palencia and saw your brother, H. Jackson [Hymie had changed his name to Harry Jackson for ‘professional reasons’]. He was looking well and said he had received your letter but no money as yet and asks you to send future letters etc. via the British agency, Burgos. At present he himself can only write via Red Cross, which is very slow at forwarding letters. I have the permission of the British Agency to write for him via the Foreign Office and in writing to him you should address your letters etc to

H. Jackson (1 1/2 d stamp)
By: Prisoner of War, Vinulta, Palencia
bag c/o British Agency, Burgos, Foreign Office, Whitehall
to Burgos

Yours sincerely

David de Renzy-Martin

Hymie sent a letter directly himself, the envelope postmarked 29th August was kept by Joe but the letter is missing. The envelope is stamped ‘Censura Militar Palencia’ and the address written in Hymie’s hand. Further correspon- dance took place betwen Joe and A. Cadogan at the Foreign Office in Septem- ber, no doubt concerning Hymie’s repatriation as one of the 100 prisoners earmarked for exchange.

The arrival of the news about Hymie caused complete turmoil. Joe descr- ibed in later years what a complete shock the news was to him. He had had no idea where his brother was and certainly had never guessed he could be in Spain. Hymie (or Harry Jackson as he subsequently became known to many of his friends) later described how be came to be fighting in Spain and how he spent nine months in Franco's prison camps. He did not have the same memory for detail as his older brother had and was less convinced of the necessity to write everything down and preserve documents. The following account is therefore patchy and may not be 100% accurate, but it does correspond to other accounts of members of the International Brigade in all important details.

Between 1935 and 1937, Hymie had continued his life of living off his wits in the Soho underworld of race-goers, gamblers, prostitutes, pimps and petty criminals. As he admits himself he had several brushes with the law. As a result of one of these he had thought it best to lie low for a while and try going abroad. He entered France on a weekend excursion ticket. He could not give a precise date but this was some time in the beginning of 1937. He stayed a short while in France illegally, but thought it might be safer in Spain and so crossed the Pyrenees on foot! He still doesn’t quite know how he made it. It took him fifteen days. On his arrival over the border as a total stranger who had no legal right to be there, he thought that the logical thing to do was to try and locate the British soldiers fighting with the International Brigade. He was also attracted by the idea of adventure. He had always lived dangerously from his earliest childhood. This was not an ideological commitment. Hymie had always scorned Joe’s activities in the Party as a waste of time. He wanted the fruits of a society without hard labour now. If anything, he was a sort of individualistic ‘Anarchist’, a dreamer drifting along the edges of the criminal underworld and thus according to the Communists, a typical member of the lumpen proletariat. But he fought with the republicans and admired their cause. He mentioned the bravery especially of the Anarchists to whom he was attracted without quite understanding all the ideological implications. He had little respect for the CP leaders of the British Battalion.

Hymie arrived in Spain from Perpignan in France over the Py Feriees at a small town called Figueras and went across country to Tarazona (not far from Saragossa) where there was an International Brigade reception centre. He spent a week training with the British Batallion. The Batallion moved South to defend the Aragon front. Here Hymie was slightly wounded and spent two weeks at a military hospital at the 15th Batallion (British) base at Albacete. His section then moved on to the Alicante and the Costa Blanca. During the campaign here William Rust, the CP joumalist who later wrote his book on Britons in Spain, visited the troops, according to Hymie, with the famous black American singer Paul Robeson, Hymie said that he passed a message on to Rust for his family and that this would have been in late 1937, but the message if given was never delivered. Early in 1938 he was again on the Aragon Front participating in its desperate defence, when the fascists broke through.

What left the deepest impression on Hymie’s mind of what he saw of Spain during the Civil War was the power of the Catholic Church and the ferocity of the priests. Near Albacete one day he described how he and other advancing soldiers were held at bay by a priest high up in the tower of a church, who was armed with a machine gun. The priest knew his position was suicidal, but he mowed down several of the Republican soldiers, before the batallion commander decided that the only thing they could do was to blow up the Church. In another small village on the Aragon Front, Hymie described what they found in a captured church. They had a hard time removing the 300cwt gold halo encrusted with precious Jewels surrounding the painted Christ. The hatred of the local people for the Church was what struck Hymie most.

His batallion moved North along the Aragon Front trying to stop the breakthrough. On March 31st at Calaceita near Gandesa south of Lerida they walked into an ambush of tanks. Hymie has always claimed that this was incompetence on the part of the batallion commanders. Tom Wintringham, he says, said ‘They’re ours’ and maintained that the approaching tanks were safe until the tanks opened fire on them. Many were killed including Walter Tapsell, one of the leading Communist commanders, and 140 were taken prisoner including Hymie (3). They were taken to San Pedro prison near Burgos. Here they were under virtual sentence of death for every day men were picked out and taken to be shot. There were prisoners of all nationalities. Hymie learnt Spanish at an alarming rate. One of Hymie’s comrades, Jimmy Little, was ‘taken out and never seen again’. There were prisoners hung up by their hands for hours in the hot sun. The prison camp was an old convent.

In the Burgos sector, local villagers were pro-nationalist, or rather under the thumb of the church. Hymie remarked that all the local houses had bars on the windows. When he asked why he was told that the rich put bars up for fear of attack or burglary, but the poor peasants thinking this was the latest style had put bars up on their windows too without quite knowing why. The local villagers were starving. Some of the captured soldiers had managed to escape. shortly after capture. Others had ‘disappeared’; shot, or tortured to death by the prison guards. Exactly a hundred prisoners from the British Batallion were left when the decision to exchange them for Italian prisoners was made. They were transferred to Pelancia, again in the Burgos sector and it was again in an old convent that they were incarcerated to wait for their release. This time the prison guards were Italian. Hymie became camp cook somehow or other. He and his comrades managed to feed local villagers on what they smuggled out of the camp. Hymie, it will be remembered, was used to dodging the authorities. He even told a story of how he once cooked a cat in a stew for the prison guards and absconded with the rabbit provided for the meal. He said he was found out but doesn’t say how he managed to escape the wrath of the Prison Officers. The story might just be true. In any case the important thing he noted was that the prison guards were living off the fat of the land, but the hungry prisoners were no worse off, in fact probably better off, than the poverty stricken, priest ridden local peasants.

The waiting period for release was long. The final order didn’t come through until the end of October 1938 (4). And in November 1938, ninety nine ex-Spanish prisoners of war arrived home in England, ninety nine because one had died of peritonitis through lack of adequate medical attention in Palencia just before leaving. Hymie came back to the East End and took up with his West End underworld friends again until the outbreak of the War when yet more rocambolesque and dangerous adventures befell him.

* * * * *

Joe during the latter half of 1938 was preoccupied with preparing for his brother’s release from Spain and also no doubt with the rest of his family, but he was also preparing for the National Congress of the CPGB, where he was to appeal against his expulsion. The Republican troops in Spain were being pushed back from the front and defeat now seemed inevitable. War clouds were gathering, the temporary lull brought about by the Munich agreement of September 1938 when all the Western Powers gave in to Hitler was felt at the time by those on the left to be but a temporary respite. In this troubled period Joe carried out his attempt to get back into the Communist Party.

He had already secured the right of appeal to the National Control Commission of the Party and on September 5th he wrote to them again asking if he could not appear before the appeals commission on Sunday September 18th, rather than the times suggested as this would be more convenient for him. On September 14th he received a reply to his letter saying, ‘We have to state that we don’t know whether or not you will be received or not by the Appeals Commission at the Congress’. The letter added © . . . but as you intend to present however he would suggest you attend if possible on Saturday September 17th. If this does not suit you, then you could attend as you suggest on Sunday September 18th.” Joe wrote a comment on the bottom of this letter when he received it: 'This letter is no good. Right of appeal was already given and presence agreed upon’.

Joe went to Birmingham for the Congress. He was allowed to make a statement in front of the Appeals Commission but not allowed to attend the Appeal Commission’s deliberations nor the Congress proper. He wrote later in his notes: ‘No attempt was made to save me’. On September 20th Joe received aletter from the Secretariat of the CPGB. It began ‘Dear sir’ and ended ‘Yours faithfully’. The rupture was final. The letter said:

‘We have to inform you that after perusing all the documents and hearing your own statement against the expulsion from membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain, the Appeals Commission unanimously reject your appeal. The Congress endorsed this rejection. PS. In a seperate envelope we return the papers you left behind in Birmingham.’

Luckily these papers were returned for they have been among the documents used to compile these last two chapters.

Joe must have made one last desperate effort to get back into the fold as on October 17th 1938 he received a letter in reply to one of his sent on October 15th (no copy of Joe’s letter exists). This letter stated:

‘You should now be aware that your appeal came before Congress and the Party Congress endorsed your expulsion. In the circumstances we do not understand you references to further appeal.’

Joe later wrote some very rough notes on ‘Why was I expelled?’, but they were only too brief and partly illegible. They were no doubt a rough indication of arguments to be developed and explanations to be given. Readers must draw their own conclusions. He listed the following points:

‘1. The family spirit
2. Careerist Communists
3. [Illegible]
4. Covering up mistakes
5. Prevention of Concrete Criticism
6. Violation of Party Democracy’

* * * * *

Things were at a low ebb for Joe. He had lost his battle with the Party. His long, loving courtship with Pearl was showing signs of strain. This even resulted in a (temporary) separation. Joe obviously meant to describe what happened for he kept the letter Pearl wrote to him at the time with his other documents concerning this story. The letter is a mock legal style declaration (in pencil) on headed notepaper from her home. It read:

‘I Pearl Cohen aged 22 do hereby declare that Joseph Jacobs 25 is released from any ties of friendship with me from this day October 22nd and hereafter,

signed,

P. Cohen’

This break didn’t last long however for the two were together again in 1939.

Christmas 1938 came and went uneasily. In Spain the trial of the POUM came to an end. Barcelona capitulated in January. In February resistance in the whole of Catalonia was over. In March the fascist Junta took over. Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. In May Franco and the Nationalist Junta marched in victory through the streets of Madrid. The Italians concluded a military alliance. On August 23rd the Hitler-Stalin Pact was signed which put members of Communist Parties all over the world in a very awkward position. On September 1st 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and on September 3rd Britain and France declared war.

This was the time Pearl and Joe chose to marry, after having waited so long. It was now or never. No one knew what the war might have in store. Perhaps fear of prolonged separation precipitated this long overdue marriage. On October 3rd 1939 Joe Jacobs and Pearl Cohen were married in the Stepney Registry Office with their respective brothers Harold Jacobs and Harold Cohen as witnesses. Joe’s mother was furious that the two had chosen a very simple registry office wedding and had not been wed according to the Jewish rite in a synagogue. She refused to talk to them for a while but the row was soon made up and when Joe was mobilised some months later, Pearl became a frequent visitor at his mother’s house. When Joe and Pearl got married Joe had only 1s 9d in his pocket. The two newly weds in their smart new suits, Pearl wearing a green carnation, went to the ‘Troxy’ Cinema, Commercial Road ‘for their honeymoon’. There was no wedding reception and their only present was two glass vases from Pearl’s older sister Becky, but they were both very happy and this somewhat frugal and unconventional start to married life was the beginning of twenty six years together, only ended by Pearl’s untimely death. The couple found makeshift lodgings. It was to be a few months before Joe was mobilised.

Throughout this major change in his personal life, Joe had not forogtten the Communist Party. In November 1939 he wrote once again to the Communist Party of Great Britain as follows:

‘It is now just over a year since my expulsion from the Communist Party. I had plans relating to my case which, since the outbreak of the Imperialist War are almost impossible to realise.’

Apparently Joe had more than toyed with the idea of going to Moscow to appeal directly to the Party there! He often said afterwards how lucky it had been for him that he had never been able to make it. Joe’s letter continued:

‘My position is untenable and after due consideration, I am now tendering my application for re-admittance to the Party. Under all circumstances I have endeavoured to carry out Party decisions and have discussed my case only in correct Party fashion. If, in your opinion, I can be of use to the Party, I am ready and anxious to co-operate . . .’

Joe felt as he said later politically in ‘the wilderness’, or to quote the above letter, his position was ‘untenable’. Only the war events immediately afte: the war in the early 1950s were to change his point of view.

Many felt that to leave the Party would result in ending up in a political and social ‘wilderness’ to such an extent that they did not even have the courage of their convictions to stick to their criticisms of the Party. Such a one was Nat Cohen. He backed down before getting to the point of expulsion. He preferred to forfeit his friendship for his old ‘pupil’ than forfeit the Party. He cut off all social contact with Joe and this hurt both of them. Nat stayed with the Party until his death a few years ago, but in the last years he had lost his former vigour and enterprise. At the end of his life partly through the death of his Spanish wife, Ramona, partly through just being mentally worn out, but Joe suspected partly through the strain of having had to suppress so much of himself to stay in the Communist Party fold, he became a victim of mental illness. Long before then friendly relations had been restored between the two, but they were never as intimate as meetings were very episodic. When Joe first contacted Nat about his projected book, Nat was very friendly but re- fused absolutely to talk about their experiences in the 1930s. He quickly changed the subject.

Meanwhile back in 1939 Joe’s November letter applying for readmission to the Party was referred to the London DPC and then to the Stepney Branch. A certain Harry Roth, membership organiser, wrote back on December 28th 1939:

‘Dear Sir,

The Stepney Branch Secretariat has considered your application for readmission to the CPGB. Arising from ensuing discussion, I hereby request you to present yourself for an interview with myself on Tue 2nd Prox (sic) at precisely 8.30pm at the above address.

Should this arrangement prove unsuitable, I shall be pleased if you will inform me by return of post, so that an early alternative can be fixed.

When attending next Tuesday, you should bring with your TU membership card.

Yours faithfully
...

This hardly inviting letter, written as if to a total stranger, could not have encouraged Joe. We do not know whether he attended this interview. On February 6th 1940 he received the following:

Dear Mr Jacobs,

I have to inform you that your application for membership of the Stepney Branch of the Communist Party of Great Britain was rejected after due consideration.

Yours Truly, pp H Roth’

Joe was mobilised in the middle of 1940. He took all his correspondence with the Communist Party over the last three years with him. In his army kitbag he kept his precious documents with him night and day, thinking that they would come in useful one day. He did the right thing without knowing it, for his brother Hymie anxious to get rid of what he thought was a load of old junk and thinking perhaps he could get some money persuaded his frightened mother that to have so many books in the house on communism in wartime was highly dangerous. So she helped Hymie get rid of all Joe’s books. When he came home on leave to his great shock, sorrow and anger they were all gone. Joe kept only his precious letters. He continued to sell the Daily Worker under cover and to speak in favour of the CP to army comrades. Joe’s war is not the subject of this story. How he spent six months of it in an army prison for striking a superior officer and his other acts of indiscipline in the army must be told elsewhere.

His wife Pearl became a camp follower as Joe’s unit was moved round the country until her family was evacuated to High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire during the Blitz. In 1944 their first daughter was born. After demobilisation in 1946 they settled down to real married life. A second daughter was born in 1947. Joe became increasingly more active in the Trade Union and in industrial struggles. He became a shop steward at Lewis and Goldstein’s clothing factory in the West End. He was an active and known organiser when this time he applied for readmission to the CPGB and he was welcomed back with open arms. He was an influential and useful member to have.

In 1950 and 1951 Joe took part in one of the earliest modern factory occupations in Britain, or stay in strike as they were called at the time. This occurred in the Lewis and Goldsteins Cothing Factory in Warren Street, W1. The story of this occupation is a fascinating one and it may well be told one day for Joe’s own account and documents relating to the whole episode had been scrupulously kept by Joe. He had not lost his pre-war habits in this respect. With these documents are those relating to Joe’s second expulsion from the Communist Party in 1952. The conflicts began again this time centred around Joe’s militant stand during the clothing occupation. They culminated in expulsion, this time on the grounds that Joe was concentrating too much on industrial work and not enough on other general social issues! The wheel had come full circle. Joe’s activity on the shop floor had become too dangerous for the CP’s new social policies. This time Joe did not seek re- admittance into the Party.

Joe did not intend in this book, however, to go beyond the first divorce between himself and the British Communist Party. He wanted to reserve his later story for another time and place, because he thought that 1939 marked the end of an epoch in his life and in the class struggle as a whole and as he wrote in a sketch for the beginning of a conclusion to his book:

‘Hitler had begun what was to be the end of my East End. It was also the end of my beginning. I was 26 years old. Pearl was 24 and we were married. We left the East End for the duration of the war along with thousands of others. Many were never returned. As I write forty years on, I remember the blood, the tears, the laughter, without the means of separating one from the other. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.'

The very last lines of this book come also from Joe himself. Very shortly before he died he scribbled down the paragraph written below. He surely meant this to be the final summing up of this account. It is also a most fitting epitaph for a man whose life was dedicated to the search for personal and general emancipation from all oppressive institutions and organisations within modern capitalist society. Joe Jacobs wrote:

‘I am aware of the “ego-ethno-social-centrism” of any attempt to describe experience. This is not an exercise in “writing” History, only a witness account of what I and my friends were doing in a place which was a melting pot of political and other social activity. We radiated the results of our handling of events and influences which came into our lives in this unique place.

I am not deliberately seeking to influence anyone towards an acceptance of my ideas, although these ideas do influence my unavoidably selective and incomplete account. With hindsight, you and I can make up our own minds about what is interesting, relevant or significant. Many of the problems we faced still exist. This story ends at the outbreak of World War Two, when I was only 26 years old. The next forty years transformed my ideas in a constantly changing world. To “Keep your head” (5) simply means keeping up with these changes without getting too confused, or worse still completely lost. Survival is not only about physically keeping your head. It is also about the quality of survival. Is survival acceptable, if it can only be secured at any cost to integrity and self-respect?’

Notes

1. See p 115, Flower and Dean Street, 1933, for example.
2. See William Rust, Britons in Spain, p65.
3. William Rust, op cit, pp 152-4.
4. William Rust, op cit, p 65.
5. The reference is to a line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem: ‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you’. It was the only poem Joe knew by heart.