24.10.2024

Four matches and a friend

Jack Conrad remembers Tom May, December 4 1940-October 5 2024

First time I met Tom May, I was a very young member of the Young Communist League. I joined as a callow 13-year-old in early 1969 (having applied a year before and hearing nothing back - the branch had apparently suffered a Maoist takeover and split).

Whatever the exact year - maybe 1969, maybe 1970 - the occasion is seared onto my brain. There was I giving an education talk to my fellow Hemel Hempstead YCLers on materialism. What on earth I was going on about has, thankfully, long faded from memory. But I expect it was some dreadfully crude stuff about stuff being just stuff. What I do remember, however, is Tom’s entry into our little meeting.

A giant of a man - and, adding to the striking image, he could even have been wearing a bowler hat and a cloak. Anyway, Tom stood there for a couple of minutes listening to my nonsense. Then, instead of condescendingly telling me that I was talking nonsense, he calmly got out his box of matches - Tom smoked a pipe - and proceeded to slowly place on the table four matches arranged into a square. I don’t think he said a thing. But I got the point instantly.

That was Tom. A great teacher.

However, Tom had to go through many struggles. Life was not given to him on a platter. He was born and raised in working-class Battersea, his father was a self-employed cobbler … and by all accounts a Tory bigot. To make matters worse, school was tough. Tom, like myself, was dyslexic. So it is truly remarkable that, having gone from school to do various manual jobs, including a stint in the London docks, Tom was able to succeed in formal education. His particular forte was mathematics. After getting a degree he became a lecturer in further education … and a leading rank-and-file member in the Natfhe union.

Tom was a committed communist through and through. He joined the YCL and then the CPGB and, not uncritically, remembered mentors such as R Palme Dutt, John Gollan, Jimmy Reid and Harry Pollitt - after whom he named his daughter, Harriet. His other children with his first wife, Rosemary, were James and Oliver - honouring, of course, Connolly and Cromwell.

James died tragically in 2012. He committed suicide. Both Harriet and Oliver did readings at his funeral. His granddaughter, Lilith, paid a moving tribute too. Tom, not surprisingly, was, for once, lost for words.

After migrating from London, Tom went on to become chair of the South East Midlands district of the CPGB - an area stretching from Watford in the south to Corby in the north, but HQed in Luton. Here we had three industrial branches - two in Vauxhall, one in Skefco. There were also two town branches, Luton and Dunstable … and a Luton college branch founded and built into something of a force by Tom himself. Later he got me in to establish a CPGB student branch.

Tony Chater - future Morning Star editor - lectured at Luton too, but made not the least impact. Tom despised him as a bureaucratic nonentity and was glad to see the back of him. Tom was much more in tune with industrial militants such as George Slessor (convenor Dunstable Vauxhall) and Harry Harbottle (convenor Luton Airport). Tom’s and Rosemary’s house on the Lewsey Farm estate was a chaotic hive of political activity, children and comrades coming and going.

Tom was very much a man of his times. Politically he was formed by direct experience of living under the social democratic consensus, on the one hand, and what appeared to be the inexorable forward march of the Soviet Union and the ‘socialist camp’, on the other. Put another way, his world view relied on rapid economic growth and - as a consequence, or so he thought - inevitable social progress: communist man and woman would colonise the solar system and in time go beyond to the stars. Meanwhile, here on Earth, everything was getting better … and in the late 1940s, 50s and 60s it demonstrably was. Science, machines, technology … and rising GDP figures were always a source of optimism for Tom. Doubtless, overoptimism: he was - how shall we put it? - sceptical when it came to human-induced global warming. Climate crisis stood in flat contradiction to his productionist narrative.

Not that he thought everything was automatic. History sometimes needs a nudge. At one point, I would guess in the late 60s or early 70s, he secretly organised comrades for military training - a ‘crime’ which earned him a brief suspension from CPGB membership. In that context, it is worth mentioning that during one of our long talks - over a glass of wine or two - he won me to accept that old slogan of the physical force wing of Chartism: ‘Peacefully if we can, forcefully if we must’ (now found in our Draft programme). I needed convincing on the ‘peacefully’.

Nonetheless, I would call Tom an ‘anti-Khrushchev Khrushchevite’ - a description, which, when I put it to him, he readily accepted. The collapse of bureaucratic socialism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union therefore came as a body blow. He had friends and comrades in the German Democratic Republic who in an instant ceased being friends and comrades, and broke off all contact.

Well before that though we had already drawn him towards The Leninist - the forerunner of the Weekly Worker. In 1981, after a brief sojourn in the Communist Party of Turkey, I systematically approached - and met face-to-face - a long list of contacts in and around the CPGB, with the idea of obtaining financial backing for our proposed factional journal. Whether it was my inability to convince, the political degeneration of those I was trying to convince or the political times themselves, I do not exactly know. Either way, I could only report back, to the three other founding comrades, a complete lack of success … apart from Tom May. He handed over a £100 cheque (the minimum we would accept). To be honest, though, I think that this owed more to friendship than any conviction that we would make a success in what was, after all, a crazily ambitious venture.

My nearest and dearest says that Tom was a surrogate father for me. An exaggeration, but with more than a grain of truth. He certainly helped me personally on many levels. A source of advice, inspiration and, when needed, criticism. But sons - if their fathers have done their job - outgrow them. And Tom did his job.

He formally joined our ranks for a brief while. But it was clear that our politics and eagerness to engage with the best available Marxist ideas made him feel uneasy, uncomfortable. We were in the same cell studying István Mészáros’s Marx’s theory of alienation, along with a couple of diehard Stalinites from the Open Polemic faction - we took them in and spat them out. Tom instinctively sought shelter under their threadbare comfort blanket in discussions.

That said, Tom helped us till he was no longer able to do so. He turned up week in and week out for collating and mailout. He took charge of doing the stamps. That always meant a higgery-piggery arrangement and sometimes even stamps appearing over the edge or on the wrong side of the envelope. He also brought the whole team fish and chips and kept us entertained in the pub afterwards.

Tom was generous to a fault and always eager to lend a hand. That could, on occasion, extend, though, into what might be considered domineering behaviour. He was not without fault. Nowadays Tom would be branded a male chauvinist by heresy-hunters and that would not be entirely unfair. But many women knew exactly how to deal with him and put an instant stop to any sexist bullshit. First and foremost here I would mention Rosalind Malcolm, Tom’s partner till his death. He was very lucky to find her. Something he knew full well.

It should also be understood that Tom liked to be the centre of attention. Any phrase, line or ‘innocent’ term of endearment that could put up hackles is just what he wanted. He got noticed. However, it was not simply about ego. Tom thrived on getting people to think out of the box. If that meant stirring things up, so be it.

From childhood Tom questioned. He questioned his parents. He questioned his schoolteachers. He questioned friend and foe alike. He questioned official party policy. He questioned the Soviet Union … and in many ways found it wanting. He questioned everything … and quite rightly too.

So he would adopt provocative ideas whenever and wherever he found them. Sometimes I know he simply did not believe in them, while other, entirely dubious, ideas I am not so sure about - he could have really been persuaded.

Last time I met Tom May his mind had already gone walkabout. We took him to our regular haunt - the Pembury in Hackney - and bought him pizza and a pint. He could not settle. He wanted to get back home, back to Rosalind. Nonetheless, every time one of us opened our mouths and talked about this or that, he immediately interjected with a “Well, what do you mean?” or a “Are you really sure?” It was not that he could put us right about anything now. It was simply that he was argumentative to the very core of his being.

I am glad I met Tom May.

PS. Tom hated charities with a passion. Rosalind says that she would like people to make donations to the Weekly Worker fighting fund in his memory.