Dear Comrade: 1946

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John Lethbridge, who has identified the previously anonymous authors studied by George Orwell in his ‘Politics and the English Language’ now applies himself to another figure otherwise unidentified in George Orwell’s circle

Who was Walter Henry James Wood?

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Introduction. On 15 February 1946 George Orwell sent a handwritten letter to W. Wood the Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist Party. It read:

Dear Comrade

Copy is signed herewith, but you haven’t got nearly enough people on the letter you are circularising. I am making out & sending separately a list of suggestions – even if they won’t all sign, some will, & the more the better.

The circular letter Wood had sent concerned charges made at the 1936 and 1937 Moscow Trials that Trotsky had negotiated with the Nazis; and made a treasonable agreement with Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess. Mr Wood wanted the allied prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials to question Hess about this; and for allied investigators to examine Gestapo records to see if there was any evidence to support it.

In a letter Orwell sent to Wood the next day Orwell gave him a list of ten people who might sign this circular letter. They were drawn from the great and the good of the non-communist left.

Workers International News was the Theoretical Organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party

The Search for W. Wood. So what was the full name and what sort of a person was W. Wood. The experts at the Orwell Society could not help. Nor could the experts at the People’s History Museum in Manchester who have been very helpful in the past. My own checking of genealogical websites was of no avail. Wood is a very common surname and several common forenames begin with a W.

Warwick University Modern Records Centre keeps many Trotskyite records. They passed me on to the Hull University History Centre Archives who keep the Jock Haston papers i.e. those of James Ritchie Haston a prominent Trotskyite. Andrea Lamb of Hull History Centre found that W. Wood was Walter Henry James Wood, a son-in-law of (Archibald) Fenner Brockway, a prominent British left winger.

Early Life. Walter Henry James Wood was born on 15 May 1911 at 106 Church Hill Road in Croydon. His parents were Walter John Wood, a chauffeur; and Rose Wood née Pepler. The birth was registered on 16 June 1911. He had at least one younger sibling.

On growing up Walter Wood worked for Woolwich Equitable Building Society, which was then a mutual i.e. it was officially owned by its depositors. It was founded in Woolwich in 1847. George Orwell’s in The Road to Wigan Pier wrote that a typical socialist type is:

A prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Non Conformity behind him, and above all with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting. This last type is surprisingly common in socialist parties of all shades, it has perhaps been taken over en-bloc from the old Liberal Party.

Marriage and War. On 2 October 1936 at Watford Register Office in Hertfordshire, Walter Henry James Wood, twenty five, of 114 Church Hill Road, South Croydon, a Building Society Clerk, married Frances Audrey Brockway, twenty one, of The Spinney, Loudwater, Rickmansworth, a shorthand typist.

The groom’s father Walter John Wood, was called a chauffeur for a brewery company. The bride’s father Archibald Fenner Brockway was called a journalist.

Fenner Brockway was born in Calcutta in 1888, a missionary’s son; studied at Blackheath School for Missionary Sons; edited the Independent Labour Party (ILP) journal The Labour Leader; in 1914 married Lilla Harvey Smith a clergyman’s daughter; led the No Conscription Fellowship in the First World War; was given four prison sentences during it, spending two years and four months in gaol including eight months in solitary confinement; and was freed in April 1919.

Fenner Brockway stood for parliament several times; and was the 1929-1931 ILP Leyton East MP. He campaigned against the arms trade but abandoned pacifism because of the rise of Hitler; helped recruit volunteers including Orwell for the ILP contingent that fought against Franco; saw the suppression of POUM which turned Brockway against Stalinism; supported the Second World War British war effort; but also helped conscientious objectors. Frances Audrey Wood was the oldest of his four daughters by Lilla his first wife.

Walter Wood continued working for the Woolwich Equitable Building Society. In 1939 with war coming it moved its headquarters to Pilgrim House in Westerham, a small town near Sevenoaks in Kent. The 1939 National Register lists him and his wife living at Pass Christian, Hosey Hill, in Westerham. During the Second World War Walter Wood joined the RAF, working on ground duties.

Frances Audrey Wood née Brockway had worked for Odham’s Press when it published the Daily Herald; was William Mellor’s secretary when he founded Tribune in 1937; and worked for Reynolds’ News. During the Second World War when her husband was stationed in Liverpool she joined him there, and was the secretary at the Liverpool Chinese Consulate. She then worked for the Chinese Embassy in London which represented Chiang Kai Shek’s Chinese nationalist government.

On Friday 13 June 1941 the Sevenoaks Chronicle reported that one of Frances Wood’s younger sisters Mrs Margaret Irene Lomas née Brockway, twenty four, the wife of Corporal Douglas Francis RAF, was killed in a bicycle accident in Sevenoaks on Saturday 7 June 1941. She had lost control of her borrowed bike and collided with a bus. The Tuesday 10 June 1941 inquest returned a verdict of Accidental Death.

After being demobilised Walter Wood qualified as a teacher. He was Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist Party. It disintegrated and its remnants joined the Labour Party following Trotsky’s 1934 advice to his followers to infiltrate mainstream socialist parties. One group became the Revolutionary Socialist League i.e. the Militant Tendency (which was led by Isaac Blank alias Ted Grant a South African-born Russian Jew). Another remnant became the International Marxist Group.

A pamphlet issued by the Revolutionary Communist Party, reprinting Trotsky’s 1931 examination of the world, with an Introduction by Ted Grant

Later Life. Walter and Frances Wood adopted a son John Darenth Wood who was born in 1948. Walter Wood did well as a teacher and rose to be appointed Headmaster of the Inner London Education Authority Stoke Newington New River Day School for Partially Sighted Children in 1971. He retired in 1976 aged sixty five. The school is now the Betty Layward School, an ordinary primary school.

Walter Wood was a leading light in Westerham Labour Party and Sevenoaks Constituency Labour Party of which he was Chairman and then Secretary for some years. He was known as Jim Wood. He did not usually use his first name perhaps wanting to distance himself from his Trotskyite past.

Once her adopted son was old enough Frances Wood became the Secretary to Leslie Cannon the General Secretary of the Electrical Trades Union (the ETU). They were based in Hayes. Les Cannon was initially a communist but had left the communists in 1956 being one of those who got off at Budapest. He initially had to return to work as an electrician, but co-operated with Frank Chapple and others in exposing the communist rigging of ETU elections.

Les Cannon died of cancer at the Mount Vernon Hospital in Northwood in Middlesex on 9 November 1970 aged fifty, If he had lived another year he would have been knighted. His secretary, Frances Wood, organised and fund-raised for the creation of a library at Mount Vernon Hospital in his memory. This hospital still exists but I do not know if the library still exists.

Frances Wood was also for many years Secretary of Westerham Branch Labour Party; was a Westerham Parish Council Labour member from 1962 to her death losing her seat once but regaining it at the next election; and several times unsuccessfully stood as a Labour candidate for Sevenoaks Rural District Council. She helped lead the fight to secure Westerham Hall for the town and was a Governor of her adopted son’s school.

The End. Frances Audrey Wood nee Brockway died at her Pass Christian, Hosey Hill, Westerham, Kent home on Christmas Day 1974 of cancer aged fifty nine. Her younger sister Olive Fenna Outrim née Brockway informed the authorities of the death. Frances Wood left £1,480. The cremation service was held privately at Worth Crematorium. A memorial meeting to celebrate Frances Wood’s life was held privately at Westerham Hall on Sunday 19 January 1974,

Walter Henry James Wood was found dead at his Pass Christian, Hosey Hill, Westerham home on Christmas Day 1976 aged sixty five. He had died of ischaemic heat disease and bronchial pneumonia. The authorities were informed of the death by his adopted son John Darenth Wood. There was a post mortem but not an inquest. Walter Wood left £48,604.

Walter Wood’s funeral was held at Worth Crematorium. Those attending it included John Darenth Wood; Richard Redden the Prospective Sevenoaks Labour Parliamentary Candidate; Brian Smith the Sevenoaks Constituency Labour Party Secretary; and several Sevenoaks Constituency Labour Party General Management Committee Members.

Fenner Brockway was by this date eighty eight but was still politically active. He and his first wife had divorced in 1945 and in 1946 aged fifty seven he married Edith Violet King an electricians’ daughter aged thirty nine. Fenner and Edith Brockway had a son Christopher Brockway born in 1946.

Fenner Brockway was elected Labour MP for Eton and Slough in 1950 and was a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Movement for Colonial Freedom. He held his seat until the 1964 General Election when he lost it by eleven votes. This was possibly because of his strong support for a race relations act. In 1965 Harold Wilson the Prime Minister made Brockway a life peer. Fenner Brockway died on 28 April 1988 aged ninety nine at Watford General Hospital in Hertfordshire.

After Thoughts. Richard Redden who attended Walter Wood’s funeral was the Labour Sevenoaks Parliamentary candidate at the 1979 General Election; got 14,583 votes; and came second. The victorious Conservative (Geoffrey) Mark Wolfson got 36,697 votes and held the seat until he stood down in 1997. The Liberal Graham Phillips got 11, 839 and kept his deposit. The National Front’s Michael Easter got 821 votes and lost his deposit.

Richard Redden later left the Labour Party and joined the Social Democratic Party (the SDP). At the 1987 General Election he stood for Newham North-West; got 4,920 votes; and kept his deposit. Tony Banks the sitting Labour MP held the seat with an increased majority.

The Woolwich Building Society ceased to be a mutual and became a PLC in 1997. It was listed on the Stock Exchange and was a FTSE 100 Index Company. In 2000 it was taken over by Barclay’s Bank. This usually happens to mutual companies which outgrow their roots.

The communist rigging of EPU elections became notorious. Allegedly moderate trade unionists also sometimes rigged elections and got caught. The courts have invalidated some such elections as they dealt with the communists at the EPU. However surprise, surprise, there has been far less publicity about such cases.

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Our thanks to the People’s History Museum in Manchester, Warwick University Modern Records Centre,  and particularly to Andrea Lamb of Hull History Centre.