Thomas Henry Wintringham | |
|---|---|
 Wintringham inSpain, 1937 | |
| Born | (1898-05-15)15 May 1898 Grimsby,Lincolnshire, England |
| Died | 16 August 1949(1949-08-16) (aged 51) Owmby,Lincolnshire, England |
| Allegiance |  Spanish Republic United Kingdom |
| Branch |  International Brigades |
| Unit | The British Battalion, part of the XV International Brigade |
| Battles / wars | Spanish Civil War |
| Spouses | Elizabeth Arkwright, Millie Baruch,Kitty Bowler |
| Children | 4 |
Thomas Henry Wintringham (15 May 1898 – 16 August 1949) was a British soldier, military historian, journalist, poet,Marxist, politician and author. He was a supporter of theHome Guard during theSecond World War and was one of the founders of theCommon Wealth Party.
Tom Wintringham was born 1898 inGrimsby, Lincolnshire. He was educated atGresham's School,Holt, andBalliol College, Oxford. In 1915 he was elected to aBrackenbury scholarship in History at Balliol,[1] but during theFirst World War postponed his university career to join theRoyal Flying Corps, serving as a mechanic and motorcycledespatch rider.
At the end of the war he was involved in a brief barracks mutiny, one of many minor insurrections which went unnoticed in the period. He returned to Oxford, and in a long vacation made a visit of some months to Moscow, after which he returned to England and formed a group of students aiming to establish a British section of theThird International, a Communist party. As the party was formed, Wintringham graduated from Oxford and moved to London, ostensibly to study forthe bar at the Temple, but in fact to work full-time in politics.
In 1923, Wintringham joined the recently formedCommunist Party of Great Britain. In 1925, he was one of the twelve CPGB officials imprisoned forseditious libel and incitement tomutiny. In 1930, he helped to found the Communist newspaper, theDaily Worker, and was one of the few named writers to publish articles in it. In writing for the Communist party's theoretic journalLabour Monthly, he established himself as the party's military expert. InLM articles and in booklets on the subject, Wintringham formed the arguments against Air Assault and called forair raid precautions (ARP) several years before thebombing of Guernica. His arguments were the basis for the most successful of the Communist Party's wartime campaigns, that for ARP provision, and shaped government policy on the issue in the years leading up to the war.
Although at the centre of the CPGB organisation, he was often at odds with Party policy, believing in a communism of alliance and co-operation, rather than the dominantComintern ideology of "class against class". Wintringham's ideas became party dogma when the Comintern announced the 'Popular Front', a form of communism Wintringham was prepared to fight for.
In 1934, he became the founder, editor and major contributor ofLeft Review, the first British literary journal with a stated Marxist intent. Although published by Wintringham and funded by the CPGB, it embraced writers of all shades of socialism, regardless of their party affiliations. The journal established a pattern for what was to become cultural studies.
In 1935, he wroteThe Coming World War, which was published both in the UK and the USA. In it, he predicted an inevitable world war between the imperialist powers and the USSR, most likely beginning with a conflict overManchuria; that it would be primarily a mechanised conflict and therefore susceptible to revolutionary action by the working class.[2]
At the start of theSpanish Civil War, Wintringham went to Barcelona as a journalist for theDaily Worker,[3] but he joined and eventually commanded theBritish Battalion[4] of theInternational Brigades. Some socialist commentators have credited him with the whole idea of "international" brigades.[citation needed] He also had an affair with a US journalist,Kitty Bowler, whom he later married.
In February 1937 he was wounded in theBattle of Jarama.[4] While injured in Spain he became friends withErnest Hemingway, who based one of his characters upon him.[citation needed] He spent some months as a machine gun instructor. When he returned to the battalion the next summer he contractedtyphoid, was again wounded at Quinto in August 1937 and was repatriated in October. His later bookEnglish Captain is based on these experiences.
In 1938, the Communist Party condemned Kitty Bowler as aTrotskyist spy but he refused to leave her, quitting the party instead. He came to mistrust the Party's subservience toJoseph Stalin'sSoviet Union andComintern. Back in England,Tom Hopkinson recruited him to work for the magazinePicture Post.
On returning from Spain, Wintringham began to call for an armed civilian guard to repel anyAxis invasion, and as early as 1938 he had begun campaigning for what would become the Home Guard. He taught the troops tactics ofguerrilla warfare, including a movement known as the 'Monkey Crawl'. They were also taught how to deal with dive bombers.
At the outbreak of theSecond World War, Wintringham applied for an army officer's commission but was rejected. When the Communist Party promulgated its policy of staying out of the war due to theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact, he strongly condemned their policies. Because of theappeasement policies of prime ministerNeville Chamberlain, he also imagined theTories to be Nazi sympathizers and wrote that they should be removed from office. He wrote forPicture Post, theDaily Mirror, and wrote columns forTribune and theNew Statesman.
In May 1940, after the escape fromDunkirk, Wintringham began to write in support of theLocal Defence Volunteers, the forerunner of the Home Guard. On 10 July, he opened the private Home Guard training school atOsterley Park, London.[5]
Wintringham's training methods were mainly based on his experience in Spain. He even had veterans who had fought alongside him in Spain who trained volunteers inanti-tank warfare anddemolitions. He also taughtstreet fighting andguerrilla warfare. He wrote many articles inPicture Post and theDaily Mirror propagating his views about the Home Guard with the motto "a people's war for a people's peace".
The British Army deemed Wintringham unreliable because of his communist past, and after September 1940, when the army began to take charge of the Home Guard training in Osterley, Wintringham and his comrades were gradually sidelined. Wintringham resigned in April 1941. Despite his activities in support of the Home Guard, Wintringham was never allowed to join the organisation itself because of a policy barring membership to Fascists and Communists.
In 1942, Wintringham proceeded to found aCommon Wealth Party withVernon Bartlett, SirRichard Acland andJ. B. Priestley. He received 48 percent of the vote at theMidlothian and Peebles Northern by-election in February 1943, previously a safe Tory seat.[6] In the1945 general election he stood in theAldershot constituency, theLabour Party candidate standing down to give him a clear race against the incumbent Conservative MP.[7] His election agent wasMamie Woolf. His wife Kitty stood in the same Midlothian constituency that he had come close to winning two years earlier, but neither was elected. After the war Wintringham and many of the founders of Common Wealth left and joined the Labour Party, suggesting the dissolving of CW.
In his later years he worked mainly in radio and film, both producing documentary and critical programmes and writing criticism. He continued to write about military history, opposing the use and development of atomic weapons and championing Mao's China and Tito's Yugoslavia over the monolithic bureaucracy of the Soviet Union. While he recognised and opposed the purges and repression that marred the achievements of the Soviet Union, he never accepted that Stalin himself was complicit or responsible for them.
His later campaigns and writing were mainly centred on the formation of a 'World Guard', a neutral volunteer force (initially) to police Palestine and the partitioned India, and to be at the disposal of theUnited Nations.
Tom Wintringham died on 16 August 1949, aged 51, after a massiveheart attack while he was staying with his sister at her farm atOwmby, Lincolnshire.[8]
| Media offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Editor of theWorkers' Weekly 1926–1927 | Succeeded by Publication closed |
| Preceded by New publication | Editor ofWorkers' Life 1927–1930 | Succeeded by Publication closed |
