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Revolutionary who trained Dad’s Army

Tom Wintringham pioneered the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and went on to train the Home Guard in guerrilla warfare writes Dan Carrier

The Last English Revolutionary, Tom Wintringham 1898-1949
by Hugh Purcell. Sutton Publishing, £20.


The Tom Mann centuria. Tom Wintringham is crouching centre left


Tom recovering in London with Kitty in 1938
THE Spanish dawn came as quickly as a theatre curtain opens,” wrote Tom Wintringham to his mother from a field dressing station in Spain during the country’s civil war.
He was speaking of the morning in Jarama, a valley to the east of Madrid – and writing with a bullet in his leg, with no painkillers and little hope of seeing a doctor in the foreseeable future.
But rather than display the silent charms of the Spanish countryside, the sunrise brought a scene of military devastation.
Wintringham’s comrades had been fighting to gain control of a hilltop, a campaign he took charge of after the commanding officer was shot, and had such poor odds of success that it became known as Suicide Hill to the British International Brigade.
This was Wintringham as a soldier. He had gone to Spain to confront fascism. But the communist activist, whose life is chronicled in an informative biography by Hugh Purcell, was, as the daybreak phrase suggests and as those who believe in a socialist utopia often are, a romantic at heart rather than a fighter.
Purcell’s biography uses Wintringham’s life to tell the story of the evolution of left-wing politics during its most telling phase – the 1930s – and is also about how a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain eventually fell out of love with the political philosophy he dedicated his life to.
The name Wintringham holds romantic connotations for the British Left, particularly Camden left-wingers of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, in whose circles he moved.
He settled in King Henry’s Road, Primrose Hill, on his return from Spain and became known locally for his hospitable nature – and it was from King Henry’s Road he established a new, albeit short-lived, political party – the Common Wealth.
And from his Primrose Hill base came the work that made him a household name: he wrote articles for the Picture Post, poetry, books, pamphlets and articles for the Daily Worker.
Spain cemented his reputation – and laid the foundations for his work with the Home Guard during World War II, which gave his military expertise respectability.
This is uncovered by Purcell’s research, which was helped by a remarkable archive. As Purcell explains, he had been watching Ken Loach’s Spanish Civil War epic Land and Freedom with Wintringham’s daughter Lesley. The opening scene shows the granddaughter of a veteran sorting through his possessions – and Purcell was told of similar suitcases kept in the home of Wintringham’s elder son in Brussels.
They were full of files, letters and pictures – a biographers dream, and, when combined with his public records and published works, has allowed Purcell to create a complete picture of his subject. Wintringham’s life was complicated: he was not just a mirror of changing political perceptions, as the reality of Stalin’s version of communism undermined his loyalty to the Comintern, but his private life too. Such was his popularity, when he was recovering from the wound in 1938, four women who all called themselves Mrs Wintringham appeared at his bedside.
He was married twice, and managed to keep on good terms with his lovers – two of which who were so in love with him they insisted on taking his name, without nuptials.
Much of his time in Spain is covered in the book he wrote about his experience, The English Captain, which covers the battle of Jarama. But he leaves out the story of how he met and fell in love with Kitty – so it is down to Purcell to piece together the story.
Kitty, an American journalist, wrote about meeting Tom in Barcelona. She wrote: “At Café Rambla, I eyed the group at a corner table. I saw a moving forest of knees. Only the English could produce anything so incredibly tall and fresh as those boys. Blankly and coldly they looked at me as only the English can. Then a soft voiced bald man touched my arm: ‘You must join us.’ Relaxing gradually I realised I was talking to a gifted conversationalist, cultured, intelligent, witty.
“That’s Tom Wintringham, I was told. “He’s a big shot in the English Communist Party, but he’s an old sweetie.”
The meeting between Tom and Kitty is not a just a good example of the mores of a passionate man – Purcell explains how it played an important role in his disillusionment with the Communist Party.
It was not only the betrayal of the Spanish workers by the anti-revolutionary Comintern that made Tom re-think his loyalties. When Kitty was labelled a Trotskyite spy, and therefore Wintringham’s own credentials were called in to question, he realised he could no longer tow the party line.
His war record between 1939 and 1945 was impressive: unfit for active service he decided to lend his military expertise to the creation of the Home Guard.
He saw the Guard as a bulwark against a Nazi invasion – or, more sinisterly, a fascist coup led by the British ruling classes who Wintringham did not trust. He believed they were capable of striking a deal with Hitler as they were more scared of Soviet Russia than the Third Reich.
Wintringham set up a school to teach the tricks of guerrilla warfare – he wanted to change the idea of the Home Guard of being an elderly milkman armed with a broomstick: he wanted an armed citizenry.
This linked in with a career of writing articles in publications like Picture Post, The Daily Mirror, the New Statesman and Tribune on such topics as how to make bombs and plan ambushes.
Above all, Purcell’s work is an enjoyable tale of the life of one of the heroes of the British left: his story is worth telling because as an individual he was interesting – and it works as an insightful appraisal of the politics of the mid-20th century.