31.10.1996

Tsarism in Yorks

From the Workers’ Weekly, paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, November 5 1926

The communist campaign on behalf of the miners has called forth energetic opposition from the authorities...

Surely the following record easily stands out as being an object lesson to us all as to how the class struggle should be waged. The following are the results... since May 1:

• Mrs Brown, three months, seditious speech (Castleford)
• Four Rotherham comrades, £10 fine each for strike bulletins
• George Ives, six weeks; George Brown, two months; EN Armitage, two months; Arnold Smith, six weeks; Mick Kerran, six weeks; Jack Perry, one month; R Fox, one month; Mary Hutton, 14 days, for distributing communist literature
• H Birkhead, three months, seditious speech (Castleford)
• Samson Barrett, six months, £200 fine for chalking slogans on pavement (afterwards released on appeal - bound over)
• H Firth, three months, in possession of YCL leaflets
• Mrs Cartwright and her baby, one month, alleged intimidation of blacklegs
• D Gough, three months (Castleford), seditious speech
• J Shaw, three months (Castleford), seditious speech
• Mrs Brown, three months (second time), seditious speech at Altofts and Normanton
• Seventy-two miners, sentences ranging from one to three months, for mass picketing in the Doncaster area, and scores of minor charges too numerous to specify...
• A decision has been taken to stop all communist meetings in the West Riding ...
• Our comrade Parkes received four months at Morpeth for urging a mass demonstration to pull out the safety men. Comrade Alex Henry ... has got three months for ‘intimidating’ an RO - ie, asking him to give relief to men who were destitute.
• Two of our Castleford comrades, D Gough and JW Shaw, were sent down for three months for urging militant steps to stop scabbing and withdraw safety men, and for saying that workers’ defence corps were necessary so that the workers could meet the police on equal terms.