COLD WAR CHALLENGES – AND A LIFELONG AMBITION
At this time (1950) a petition had been launched to collect signatures against the proliferatation of nuclear weapons. We in the union branch at the New Cross tram depot decided to set up a Peace Committee to collect signatures for the Stockholm Peace Appeal.
The Cold War was intensely pursued by the Western powers. Charlie CHaplin was thron out of America and Paul Robeson too.
We had a big meeting in Camberwell to support Paul Robeson, to which he sent a recorded message, but we were up against the full wight of an anti-communist media.
I even stood as one of three candidates for the Communist Party local elections in Debtford, as their proposals seemed at the time to best address the needs of ordinary working people. But this was at the time of the Yangtse incident, where the Chinese communists were fired on by a British warship and the McCarthy era in the United States was in full swing.
The Vauxhall Tram authorities gave permission for a stall to be set up for just one day in the garage – and we were successful in collecting over 900 signatures for the Stockholm Peace Appeal, which I delivered to their offices near Regent’s Park.
I would collect the Daily Worker newspaper before my shift and do leafletting after my shifts, early morning or late. The shifts were spaced such that it was impossible to go home in between shifts. They were long days away from home.
Over the seven years I was active in the Transport and General Workers Union we were always under pressure and the canteen was a hive of activity with the early morning sales of all kinds of newspapers. We had to prove we were selling all papers inside the garage and not just the Daily Worker – this we did from outside the garage!
Then we were banned from selling the paper when we had tram uniforms on. The attempts at control were relentless.
There were of course already some big improvements such as improved provision if social services and the formation of the National Health Service in 1948; it is hard today to imagine not having an NHS and having to pay to see a doctor.
I knew that improvements to the lives of ordinary working people would have to be fought for by ordinary people like me and the hundreds of thousands of people who were now finding ways of making progress through sound argument and political pressure.
This was the challenge of winning a better future for everyone and pursuing this has been my lifelong ambition.
Progress is never guaranteed and things are sometimes disappointing, but I have seen poverty, war and destructive chaos and I know that only through ordinary working people struggling together will the devastating evils of poverty and war be avoided in the future.