Guide to Communist Biographies

Read nearly one thousand individual Communist Biographies in this section of this site, covered in some third of a million words! Work on newly researched biographies is on-going and new suggestions and new information, additions and corrections from readers are always welcome. Reminiscences that readers have are particularly interesting. Use the contact me tab to get in touch.

"Man's dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world - the fight for the Liberation of Mankind."

Nicolai Ovstrovsky, "How the steel was tempered"

This is a rather esoteric collection of life sketches of members of the British Communist Party and, for reasons of history, the Communist Party of Ireland. No special objective has been applied to selecting names; rather they constitute a selection from a file of a large number of life stories garnered by myself over some decades from obituaries, biographies and memoirs. These were collected to satisfy my interest in the personalities of Party history and a wistful feeling that one day I would in some way help to retain their memories.

I have applied no sectarian exclusion. By no means all of them stayed with the Party, inclusion is only justified by a period of significant membership and by the fact that the individuals are mostly (but not exclusively) deceased! (Being dead is not an obligatory requirement if the subject approves of being entered into the Compendium and the text used). The relatively famous and the not so famous are included. The source of the material is credited where this was noted by me at the time of collection, although in most cases the sources have been considerably varied.

The project is, as they say, a work in progress. Since I began this project some years ago, other, academic, initiatives have begun to focus on Communist biographies. I sometimes despair at the lack of sympathy and understanding; some academics seem to view Communist lives with less understanding than ornithologists might their particular subjects! I therefore feel there is some value in a public airing of the details of these remarkable lives in a compendium of this nature.

The only observation I make is that it is evident that the British and Irish Communist Parties attracted an extraordinary range of talented individuals. If the collection does no more than further an understanding that such individuals were by no means psychologically flawed, a theory beloved of cold war warriors and often seemingly furthered by supposedly sympathetic academics with their fondness for tittle-tattle, then some purpose is served.

Should readers have suggestions of any changes and additions, I should be only too delighted to admit these, largely unedited, and credited unless otherwise requested. My thanks to the many collaborators who have submitted their own entries and these are usually provided with a by-line; all entries without a name are my own responsibility in their entirety. Special mention must surely go to Michael Walker, a tireless collector of Communist biographies, especially - but not exclusively - with a Welsh, agricultural, or Middlesex angle, who has contributed a very large number of entries, particularly of the `unsung'.