£3.50 Kindle, £9.53 Hardback, £9.25 Paperback Review by Gerry Downing

Graham Durham has written a fascinating historical fiction novel detailing the lives of his five central characters, from Ireland, Norfolk, Leeds and Darlington, in the decade from 1936 to 1945. The title of the book is a play on the name of the best-known Trotskyist newspaper of the time, Socialist Appeal.

The whole novel is an extended defence of the revolutionary socialism of the Trotskyists of those times, Gerry Healy, Ted Grant, Jock Haston and others and an exposure of the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism, particularly the leading party hacks like Harry Pollitt and how this influenced the lives and loves of the central characters.

It opens with his first central characters, Bridget O’Brien from Bantry in West Cork, emigrating to London where she accidentally ran into a riot in Aldgate and helped a man called John Stone, another central character, who was bleeding badly from a wound in his scull from a policeman’s truncheon.

It was the time of the Cable Street confrontation on October 4, where Oswald Mosley’s fascists were routed by a mass mobilisation of workers, including Irish dockers and the local Communist party who had forced their leaders belatedly to tackle the English fascists instead of having a rally in support of those fighting fascism in far away Spain.

The chapter ends with a communist party member justifying the Moscow Trials with Zinoviev in the dock and Trotsky in exile as the main defendant. Billy was confused but Tom assureds him, “these traitors conspired against the Soviet Union. They are fascists and every one of them deserves to be shot as the workers demand.” The central characters were employed in Smith’s Factory in Cricklewood, what is now the sites of the Wickes and Matalan stores, that was producing a lot of war material.

That sets the tone on the Stalinist-Trotskyist conflicts for the rest of the book but the next chapter deals with Ireland and Bridget’s sympathies for the IRA via her brother Conan, who was a member. She fell out with her friend from Clonakilty because she had boasted that Michael Collins was born there. She went to the Old Bell in Kilburn for a singsong. On hearing her voice, they asked to sing. She sang, Take in Down from the Mast Irish Traitors, the bitter Irish Republican song against the Free Staters who had betrayed the Republic of 1916-19 and was then used against Eamon de Valera, the Irish Taoiseach, who was jailing and hanging Irish Republicans.

 A fight broke out over the song, the police and Special Branch came, she was arrested, and they asked her why she sang that song. She said it was the only one she knew. They then tried to recruit he as a spy and she had to go along to avoid charges. She told her IRA contact, who advised her to give some irrelevant information and false information whenever they were planning any actions.

Jock Haston got 1,781 votes in the Neath byelection, 15 May 1945. The posters above include the scandalous Communis party one. He wrote, “In desperation not to be embarrassed on their home turf, the Stalinists (along with the Daily Mail), launched a hysterical campaign of abuse, lies, and slander toward the RCP, accusing them of being “Hitler’s agents”. Shamefully, a CP poster read: “Trounce the Trotskyites…A vote for Haston is a vote for fascism.”
 

Our readers should get this gripping novel and follow the lives and loves of these central characters. The murder of Trotsky by Ramon Mercader on Stalin’s orders and many other historical events from that era are covered. Fittingly it ends with the account of a debate between the South Wales Communist Party and the Trotskyists in the Revolutionary Communist Party, led by Ted Grant and Jock Haston. A Communist party member, Alan Thomas, interjected from the floor. “In Russia they defeated fascism because they shot all the Trotskyists and the Fifth Column scum, and if we had our way, these people on the platform would be shot”. “So we are going to be shot if the Communist Party come to power” Grace observed after. ▲