On the 28th March, 1923, Lord Curzon asked in the House if Battersea Borough Council could not be prevented from purchasing a plot of land for £4,000 for the purpose of building a showroom for the sale of electrical appliances. Mr Saklatvala was quick to defend the local interests of his constituency. "Is the Hon. and Gallant Gentleman aware," he asked, "that the Battersea Borough Council , by running its own power station, are selling electric current at fourpence-half-penny compared with eightpence in the neighbouring Borough by a private company, and in view of this, and especially when the landlord will not part with the land cheaper, will the Hon. and Gallant Member consider this a reasonable demand?" Thus the benefits of privately versus publicly owned services were under discussion then as now.
On the same day, Saklatvala asked the Home Secretary if he was aware that the appeal against the death sentence of Bernard Pomeroy has been dismissed; and, in view of the close similarity of the mental condition of Pomeroy to that of Ronald True, is he prepared to have a medical enquiry into this case in the same manner as in the case of Ronald True? Mr Bridgeman replied that it did not appear that there is reason to believe that the prisoner is insane and no medical enquiry would take place. This is an illustration of Saklatvala's ability to plead compassionately for individuals as much as for the rights of millions.
On the 16th April, 1923, Stanley Baldwin presented his budget and, in the Debate that followed, Saklatvala made the following contribution:
MR SAKLATVALA: I wish to put a few questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in order that we may understand some of the issues raised by him in his speech. The Chancellor congratulated the country and the Government on the appreciation af all Government stocks. I should like to know from the Chancellor, who is a man of business experience, if he does not attribute some of this apparent financial appreciation and prosperity to the continuance of unemployment in this country. There is no doubt that the public debt at the present moment is of a different character from what it was in pre-war days. The finances of this country as well as the finances of other countries are also of a different character. Everywhere we suffer either from inflation of currency, from paper currency or from unemployment. At the present time Great Britain is in the happy position from the financial point of view, and from the Bankers' point of view, of not having continually to put forward more paper money, because of a very substantial reduction in the wage-earning power of the working classes. I will not enter into any disputable figures, but it is admitted that between three hundred million and five hundred million pounds a year represents the reduced wage bill, so that the Government has not to produce so much money to be paid in wages. Is not that reponsible for this apparent prosperity?
There is another lesson in this apparent prosperity. Last year Income Tax was reduced by a shilling in the pound, and it was supposed that all these shillings would go back into industrial investment. Instead of that it is obvious that those who have saved a shilling are less anxious to spend it on private enterprise and are running to Government Securities, and that is the reason for the appreciation of Government Securities. That appreciation must be directly in proportion to the lack of private enterprise and industrial investment. It shows how sadly money is running away from industrial investment, and is trying to get some earning on a safe basis from Government Securities. If that is so, is it wise for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give another reduction of sixpence in the same fashion?
If reduction in the Income Tax was justifiable, was there not a way of making that reduction so as to increase the buying capacity of the consumer? That way of doing it is by exemption of all income up to £250 from any Income Tax whatever. This is done in the case of large companies, which, before making their Income Tax returns are permitted to deduct the sums that are necessary for the requirements of staff and plant. The individual wage-earner's staff and plant is his body. Why should we not allow for the maintenance of that before he begins to be taxed? Who can argue that four or five pounds is not a bare allowance to keep a man and his family going? That is the staff by which he earns his income. If the Chancellor could still see his way to give this relaxation out of the Income Tax, not in the shape of another sixpence which will go into the pockets of the dividend earner, but by exempting entirely incomes up to £250 free from all taxes." (Do these arguments not have a familiar ring to them in 1989?).
...The Chancellor has referred to the interest on debt and the method of lightening it as speedily as possible. He has not said much with regard to his own successful manipulation of the American debt. The Chancellor went to America. He made certain appeals to the reason of the American financiers and was successful in inducing them to accept 3% interest. Why should not the Chancellor, immediately after coming back, have called together the British financiers and appealed to their sense of patriotism and sense of human duty and told them that the Americans had put them to shame by reducing the interest, and why should the British financier not reduce the interest for the British poor and the working classes? That remains yet to be explained. We were told in a speech in the House that the question of interest on the debt is a question of contract. When there was an interjection regarding the American debt it was said that America voluntarily reduced the interest. Why do not the British owners of the national stock offer voluntarily to reduce their interest? Are they waiting for us to compel them to do so? Has the Chancellor of the Exchequer made any attempt? It was his sacred duty to this nation to make that attempt and if it has failed he has not stood by the British nation as his duty required.If he made private efforts and failed it was his duty to expose the names of all those patriots who refused to act towards the British people as the American financiers agreed to act. That information would be enlightening if the Chancellor of the Exchequer would give it.
It has been well known that out of the national debt there is about 250 million which may be said to belong to the man in the street. The remainder belongs to fairly comfortable people and to the big financiers themselves, and those people, in paying Income Tax and other taxes, are merely paying to themselves the interest on their national stock, and they are not shouldering the burden of national revenue for education, Army, Navy, and all the other estimated expenditure of the country.... .... At present, the burden of taxation for maintaining the services of the country falls upon the poor people, and those who pay Income Tax out of their incomes, which the poor people earn for them, are getting back almost the whole sum in the shape of interest due to themselves on the national stock which they hold. I submit for the serious consideration of the Chancellor that he should devise a method by which the Income Tax payer would do no more than he did before the War, paying a just contribution towards the standing expenses of the country."
During this his first term in Parliament, Saklatvala, as a member of both the Communist and Labour Parties, was anxious to promote co-operation between the two and to give offence to neither. (indeed, for several years this cooperation was the hope and intention of the Communist Party). He had, in any case, promised at the time of his endorsement as a Labour Candidate, to follow the aims and the manifesto of the Labour Party. That he rebelled over the Irish question was inevitable, but in general terms he toed the official Labour Party line. But on the question of India, he could be more independent, since he was frequently asked for guidance in this sphere by the Labour leadership and his expertise on Indian affairs was greatly valued by both the Labour and Communist parties. He was the only M.P.in both parties who had extensive experience and knowledge of Indian business and economics, Indian politics and the suffering of the urban and peasant poor. This does not mean that the Party took the advice which he proffered; indeed, Saklatvala became more and more disillusioned with the Labour Party in this field, seeing them as behaving more like the Liberal Perty than a Socialist one. While Saklatvala demanded absolute and total freedom for India,(and for all subject peoples) the Labour Party were loth to yield Great Britain's power and worked more for that power to be used benevolently than for it to be totally relinquished. In most matters, Saklatvala balanced on a precarious tight-rope between the two parties but, since neither the Communist Party of Great Britain nor the Communist International had at that time finally resolved how to deal with imperialism and the colonies, when speaking on Indian affairs he could afford to follow his individual line without upsetting the Communists or the Labour Party.
As early as April, he had raised a question concerning a major mining disaster in India and the answer given by the Under-Secretary of State (Earl Winterton) revealed that until new legislation came into force in July, there was no question of paying compensation to the bereaved families or wounded miners. Saklatvala always used his position in Parliament to expose such inhuman iniquities of the imperial system.
A little later, in May, he raised the question of the Demster Steamship Company having introduced lower wages for Indian seamen as compared to European ones.
In June he spoke on a far more serious and emotive issue - he asked the Under-Secretary of State if the decision of the Appeal Court against 172 death sentences in the Chauri Chaura case had been given; and,if so, would he tell the House what the final verdict is? And the chilling answer was that 19 death sentences had been confirmed, in 110 cases they were commuted to transportation for life and there were 38 aquittals. Some of the life transportations were shortened to a specified number of years. Such was the fate of Indians who agitated in India for their freedom. I can just imagine the outcry in the U.K.Press today if we read of such sentences being handed out in the Soviet Union against their freedom-loving dissidents. Anyway, Saklatvala at least gave the harsh and ignominious facts a public airing.
On a similar theme, Saklatvala asked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether he would state the nature of the offence proved against, and date and term of sentence passed, on Lala Lajpat Rai, President of the 1st Trade Union Congress of India, whether the Lala is now reported to be suffering from tuberculosis, and whether, bearing in mind this disease, his age, and his past great services to India, the Government will grant a remission of the remainder of his sentence? The reply revealed that Mr Rai had been sentenced in March 1922 to one year's simple imprisonment, and to one year's rigorous imprisonment under the Seditious Meetings Act, the sentences to run consecutively. And no,the noble Earl was not prepared to put in a plea for clemency. When pressed by another Member, Earl Winterton said (inter alia) "...If enquiries are to be made into the health of any one prisoner, there is no logical reason why they should not be made into the health OF HUNDREDS OF OTHERS..." What an admission from a responsible Minister of a democratic British Government that so many Indians whose only crime was to demand the same freedom that Englishmen were so proud to enjoy, were languishing in Indian jails. Several Labour Members spoke in support of Father's plea but the noble Earl was adamant. Saklatvala had the last word: "Will the noble Lord consider that a sentence of one year's penal servitude or simple imprisonment should not be permitted to be converted into sentence of death, if the state of the man's health is as reported?" In fact, Mr Rai was released from prison on 16th August, due to his ill health and, perhaps in part, to the intervention of Saklatvala and his fellow members in the House.
On the 27th June 1923 Earl Winterton asked the House to pass a Bill enabling the Government of India to raise a loan in the U.K. for fifty million pounds to spend on the development of the Indian railways and Saklatvala pointed out that it was eventually the people of India who would thereby incur the responsibility for repayment of the loan; and, while the railways were in public ownership, quite a few of them were managed by private companies acting as agents for the Government of India. He spoke at some length and to forceful purpose against the Bill, which, of course, was carried. During the course of the Debate, he was, at the request of a Labour Member, reminded by the Chairman that it was not in order for the issue of nationalisation to be discussed. Saklatvala said, politely, "I will follow the procedure you have been good enough to suggest." His unfailing courtesy in the House was remarked on more than once; while he spoke fearlessly and honestly, he was invariably courteous; and while he himself was frequently subjected to jeers and schoolboy rudeness, he was never guilty of such ungentlemanly behaviour himself.
On April 21st 1923, the Workers' Weekly had carried an article headlined, "Indian Tax on Poverty". It read, "The Indian budget this year revealed a deficit of 12 million pounds - this is largely due to the enormous expense of the army (60% of the budget). The Government intend to make up the deficit on next years estimates by doubling the salt tax, already one of the most oppressive taxes on the millions of poverty-stricken Indian peasants. Even the servile members of the Legislative Assembly refused to pass the tax, but the Viceroy, Lord Reading, has once more made use of his supreme dictatorial power, which allows him to override decisions of the Assembly if he thinks fit, and he has re-imposed the measure. Thus the mockery of the so-called reforms granted to India is again exposed. ..."
Everyone who saw the film of Gandhi will recall his dramatic march across the continent to the sea, followed by thousands of protesters against the tax; they all demonstrated their civil disobedience by making salt on the sea shore in contravention of the tax. They were unmercifully beaten by the police and soldiers. And many of the marchers, including prominent leaders in the Indian political sphere, were imprisoned. This tax caused not only hardship but great unrest and agitation among millions of people.
It was not till July 5th that Saklatvala made a major speech in the House on the subject. It was reported the next day by the Evening News without any reference to the hardships of the Indian workers, but merely making frivolous fun of Saklatvala. "There were superbly turbaned Indians in the Gallery; and it was reported that they had left their elephants in Palace Yard, grazing on the lawns - do elephants graze, or do they feed on buns only? - However, no doubt the police saw to that while, for the benefit of his countrymen, Mr Saklatvala made a speech full of curry, real hot stuff, charging the Government with causing death, insanity and the worst kind of poverty among Indians." This report was accompanied by a cartoon showing Saklatvala leaping in the air, brandishing his outstretched arms wildly above his head, with flushed face and lines radiating from his head suggesting the heat of his emotions. (When I was a little girl, people often remarked on my likeness to Father and they would say, "She's just a little version of her Father!" And for years, I was convinced that I looked like the 'little versions' of Father as depicted in cartoons - so I had an anguished and unflattering view of what I looked like!"
Saklatvala's speech started off mildly enough. He pointed out that the India Office were reluctant to pass their work to the newly formed High Commission for India, thereby creating administrative confusion and dissipation of money. He said that gradualness would not work and that the responsibilities that were to be handed over should be handed over immediately. (Was he perhaps sending a little message to the Fabians within the Labour Party?) He went on to mention another injustice "which the people of India have felt in a very small way, but there it is. I understand that the entire property belonging to the India Office has been obtained from monies paid by India, whereas no such charge has been levied for the Colonial Office on the Colonies; and when the India Office falls back on its normal political functions, to be carried on for this country, as it is now alleged, then I think due compensation ought to be paid for the property that the India Office will take over from the Government of India completely under their own charge. In fact, if that had been done this year, the whole of the vexatious argument regarding the two and a half million pounds for salt would not have arisen.
He then once again described the unfairness of loans being raised in the name of the Indian people, who were totally ignorant about such matters but who would one day be called upon to repay vast sums of money raised by outsiders in their name. "I think these people will be perfectly right, some day, in saying, 'We know nothing about these loans. Somebody came to our country, raised these loans in our name, and spent them on themselves just as they pleased, and we cannot honourably or honestly be asked to repay these loans.' It will create a very serious situation when the people of India do recover their consciousness, and, in view of this, not from any political motives, but in view of these ordinary standards of honour in business matters, the Government of India must alter their methods of continually raising loans in Great Britain. ........there is one phase of life which the public politicians in Great Britain and India scarcely like to touch, but which brings the people of this country and the people of India into very intimate relationships. There may be troubles in the Punjab and a few riots in the streets of India, and you believe that that is endangering the lives of some Britishers, but I would point out that hon. Members sitting in this House are themselves quite unconsciously involved in activities which endanger the lives of many more Britishers than a few revolutionaries in the Punjab can ever do. I am drawing attention to the entire industrial activity which is being carried on in India, .... The noble Lord the Under-Secretary of State had occasion once or twice to tell us that the Trade Union Act is under consideration, that it is coming some day......but in the meantime I ask the Committee to give serious consideration to this close relationship of the ordinary daily lives of the working class people of Great Britain and the working class people of India. .... I will give you one example. We have recently heard a good deal in this House of trouble in Dundee. This House has tried to find many solutions and to appoint an arbitration board to find out how the life standard of the people of Dundee can be maintained so that their women and children can at least have daily food, if nothing else, and that they can somehow or other manage to have a decent house in which to live. This does not apply only to the workers of Dundee. It applies similarly to textile workers, to seamen, and colliers, and iron and steel workers, and people in the engineering trades. What is the position? In Bengal our British financial friends have raised 74 jute mills. They are quite welcome to do so. The Bengalis have a right to see these jute mills erected in their midst, and the financier has a perfect right to go anywhere and direct any factory, if the people are simple enough to allow him to do so, but the real position is this. Only abiout 4 weeks ago,I minutely worked out the figures, taking the published reports of 41 concerns in this jute industry, every one of which is controlled by British firms. ... I have found that on a capital investment of £6,140,000 they earned, in the 4 years 1918, -19,-20, -21 £22,900,000 as dividends and that those 41 jute mills had, besides their profits, set aside £19,000,000 as reserves.
"The standard of wages in these jute mills never reached 5 shillings (25p) a week in the spinning department and never reached 10 shillings (50p) in the weaving department, and taking the Bengali output at only 1/3 (in reality it is 2/5) of that of the Scottish worker, the disparity of the wages is evident. I can quite realise that this great jute industry may have increased the wealth of a few scottish families..., but does it not appear to Members on the other side of the House that the position above means starvation for thousands of workers in Dundee and also for the workers of Bengal? Out of their low wages, the people in Bengal cannot have education, medical assistance or proper housing. The same with regard to the colliers. ..."
Here the Chairman intervened, saying, "The hon Member must connect this with the Government of India. I do not know whether he suggests that the Secretary of State for India can reform the conditions of which he speaks." And Saklatvala replied with some heat, "I mean that the Government of India, having granted concessions to merchants, protecting them with their Armies and Navies, at the same time have failed to introduce Trade Union legislation and trade union activities and the union standards, and so are responsible for this condition I will give you a more direct example. Take, for instance, the iron and steel industries here. The Government were bound, with regard to the giving of Indian orders, not to place orders for iron and steel materials where trade union wages were not paid. That condition automatically?gets altered when the Government of India puts orders with firms who pay one tenth or one twentieth of the wages that are trade union wages in this country. There is another direct responsibility upon the Government of India. In India, the largest employer of labour, the biggest capitalist, is the Government of India, and they themselves started miserably low wages. They set a bad example, they have maintained it, and have carried on the whole system as a practice. I ask the Government of India to realise that, even if it does not matter to them, it does matter to thousands of working class people in this country that the standard of wages be not unequal, and I think it is most necessary and most important, in justice to the Indian investors, as well as to the British working classes, that a Committee of Investigation should be first appointed to find out the disparity of wages......There is another serious consideration. The Government of India was asked only last March by the peopple of India, at least for the sake of humanity and morality, to stop, in the Mining Act, 50,ooo women with their infants going into the pits every day to work. The Government of India has got another direct responsibility in the matter. ...Here are the figures from the Government of India's statistics of infant mortality....In the northern Provinces, 216; Bengal, 185; Madras, 194; Punjab, 248; Bombay, 217; The Central Provinces, 227; Burmah, 220; the whole average of British India being 206, compared with 97 in Scotland, and 91 for the United Kingdom.(These figures are per 1000) You cannot attribute it to climatic conditions. ... There is a private and confidential report, which was published for private circulation only by Capt. E.D.Richards of the Calcutta Improvement Trust, in which it is stated that in certain wards the deaths of children up to 12 months old for 4 years from 1916-1919, were never less than 575, and reached as high as 680 (per 1000). These are not things which a responsible Government can really pass over with the remark, 'Well, these are Indian conditions. ...' The people must have either an Eastern or a Western life, an agricultural peasant life or an industrial life; we cannot compel human beings to do work of different conditions, to live as they would live upon farms, where very little nervous or physical strain is required in their daily life. This is the position, and I ask the noble Lord to set aside all humbug about liberal reform. It is all cant; - there is no soul in these reforms either for the people of India or Britain; it is only political tactics, to spread salt on the tails of one or two Indian politicians. - The real reforms are these. Let us have a Committee of Investigation to find out how the working classes in India are living, and how the conditions are responsible for want of education, want of sanitation and human dignity, and also responsible for starvation and unemployment in this country by the blacklegging of labour for large contracts.
The other topic discussed was the Salt Tax. I remember a number of pleas put forward by the noble Lord. Of course, he was not responsible; he was telling us what the Viceroy told him. If we were to believe his whole series of pleas, and that it does not matter whether you double or treble the Salt Tax in India, then we have got to disbelieve a dozen British statesmen and Viceroys who have said horrible things about the cruelties of imposing the Salt Tax. I believe the noble Lord who now presides over the destinies of the Foreign Office" - (he was referring to Lord Curzon) -"when he played the Super-Viceroy of India, considered himself very happy that he found it possible to reduce that Salt Tax, and laid it down that it should be the marking- stone for the future of British Policy to remove the Salt Tax as hastily as possible. Salt is not in the nature of raspberries and cream - No human being would take more salt than is necessary, and the noble Lord has got in his own official record substantial statistics, worked out for over 50 years, to show that whenever the Salt Tax was high, the consumption of salt per head went down low. You do not want us to believe that when salt is cheap people eat handfuls of it -. Perhaps it is never cheap enough to enable people to have a sufficient quantity at any time, but when cheap they take as near the necessary quantity as possible, and when it becomes costly they have to abstain from it. That is the only conclusion and I think the noble Lord must have in his archives a report from one of the Commissioners of Bombay - I believe Mr Ackland - in which he, after due investigation, found that when the consumption of salt is curtailed it spread the horrible scourge of leprosy in those districts. ... I read a telegram in the Daily Herald that there is another conflict in Bengal already. In putting additional taxation on salt, the Government of Bengal find it necessary to tighten the inspection against smuggling. ... but fishermen, and ignorant villagers who do not know what is the salt tax or what is legislation, or what is the Viceroy, go round the coast line, and on the sea board perhaps cure their fish by means of salt water. That is a contravention of the Salt Tax; they are smugglers and are punished. All along the sea board you have got thousands of inspectors who bully the poor villagers and make their lives miserable. People living on the sea shore often innocently get salt water and boil a few mangolds, and they are charged immediately with having smuggled salt without paying duty on it. ...
"You created an innocent Legislative Assembly, and you want this House, by confirming the erratic action of the Viceroy, to tell the people of India that all the members of the Legislative Assembly are brainless chaps who know nothing about the people and know nothing about salt, and that we here are the clever people who know everything about everything. That is the message which you want to send forth. You want to say to the Legislative Assembly. 'It is not your job to know whether poor people are able to buy salt or not; we know much better here in Westminster. It is not for you to know whether the Salt Tax is good for you or bad for you. You represent your people, but that is nothing. When we take it in our heads to ride rough shod over you, we shall do it, because we know everything under the sun, and you people do not know anything about your own country.' What is behind it all? The hon Member for Derby (Mr C.Roberts) told us that the Indian extremists, of whom I am proud to be one, and the Conservative die-hards are sometimes akin. It may be so, because we both like to look at facts as facts, and do not wrap them up in diplomatic language. ...The action of the Viceroy in going over the heads of the people ... is wrong in principle, and,...it is a principle with which the House of Commons ... should never associate itself, any more than with the idea that the dictation of the Crown is always superior to the wishes and intelligence of the people. Yet we are going to do this. Why?
"I hope that members of the Committee will not misunderstand me. I have no bitterness in my heart. I wish to see life as it stands. ......I agree with every Member on this side of the House, that if it were possible to let the Viceroy obey the people of India, it should be done, but I doubt whether it is ever possible for any one country to dominate another country and to send out a Viceroy and to say: 'Go there and obey the people of that country.' Such a thing is impossible. I do not believe in political phraseology which is used for the sake of convenience - Dominion Home Rule, and this and that. It may all look very well on paper. How can you expect a self-respecting community to take charge of its country's purse and affairs and to say, 'I will preserve all this, and manage all this, for the benefit of the people of Britain in the first instance, and for the benefit of the people of India in the second instance, if possible.' Such a thing is unnatural and not to be expected. ... There is one solution and only one solution, for the future. Why not look at it like bold and brave people, who are conscious of the future? There are many results in our present life and constitution and civilisation to be ashamed of. ... Not politicians should count, but humanity. If you once start a scheme by which the workers and peasants of India enjoy the same standard of life as the workers and peasants of Europe and of America, you will have abolished every need for sending out a Viceroy either with a mandate to obey the people of India or with a mandate to obey the people of Britain against the interests of the people of India. You are on the horns of a dilemma. When the day has come that the peasants and the working classes have established a uniform standard of life and political rights throughout the civilised world, the working-class international organisations will arrange our international life."
Thus Saklatvala combined his pleas for Indian freedom with a proclamation of his own unshakeable conviction that international Communism was the only answer to the exploitation of man by man. He was performing a double duty; and at the same time, he was expressing views which he personally, passionately, believed in. It was his last major speech in the House before the long summer recess.
Even though he was hardly ever absent from debates while the House was in session, Saklatvala continued to travel up and down the country at week-ends, holding meetings and addressing large and enthusiastic crowds. He took part in demonstrations and mass meetings in Trafalgar Square, he held regular monthly assemblies in Battersea where he reported on the events in Parliament to his constituents; he visited universities and spoke to students, particularly to Indian students, clearly with the intention of passing on the message of Communism to them; he hoped that they would actively engage in the cause when they finally returned home and form a strong Communist Party there to fight for India's freedom, and, more specifically, for freedom from exploitation of the working and peasant class from whatever quarter such exploitation might come, whether from British or from Indian capitalism. Because for Saklatvala, NATIONAL freedom was not enough, he demanded freedom for the workers from oppression from any masters, be they British or Indian; he forsaw that they would need protection against exploitation even under Indian rule so long as an Indian Government remained a capitalist one. When one looks at the poverty persisting among the masses in India today, more than 40 years after independence, one must concede that he perhaps had a point.
Not all his meetings were without dramatic incident. The Oxford Times reported on June 1st, 1923, under a headline MR SAKLATVALA, M.P. AT THE TOWN HALL. ALLEGED KIDNAPPING PLOT "Mr Saklatvala, the Indian Socialist M.P. addressed a public meeting in the Town Hall on Friday evening under the auspices of the City Labour Party. ...In declaring the meeting closed, the Chairman asked that a number of friends should stay behind as... there was a 'rag' on foot and Mr Saklatvala might be kidnapped in a red Rolls-Royce car. A number of Indian students and members of Ruskin complied with the request and Mr Saklatvala had a strong body-guard as he walked to Ruskin College where he spent the night." Saklatvala's impassioned speech and the questions that followed, were reported in full. This threat of kidnapping was not an isolated incident - such menaces were made several times but there was always a willing contingent of strong men to protect him and sometimes he was whisked away through the back doors of halls down little side-streets, sometimes on the pillion of a motor-byke. I do not think that either of my parents felt at all alarmed by these bullying tactics - my Mother was even less impressed than Father, finding such histrionic behaviour too silly to be taken seriously - she treated threats very much as she treated squabbles between the boys at home and remained her usual placid and unruffled self. And we all lived in the shelter of her calm and were consequently blissfully untouched by all the dramas.
Saklatvala was a tireless propagandist in the Comnmunist cause. He was seldom home and when he was, he was almost always entertaining political friends, Indian journalists, doctors, businessmen. Our house was always full of strangers (well, strangers to US, that is, all, of course, well known to Father). They were entertained to breakfast, lunch, tea, supper. We all took it for granted that we sat quietly by while political discussions went on around us. When he WAS at home at week-ends, his old friend Kaikoo Mehta was a frequent and welcome visitor; he brought jollity and light-hearted chatter, social, frivolous, non-political - we were all happy to see him. He would take us on to Hampstead Heath and play cricket and tennis with us and generally entertain us.
Another frequent and welcome visitor was Dr Gotla, another old boyhood friend of Father's from his Bombay days. He had a very vivacious English wife and three children, the youngest, Micky, a boy of my age. We all enjoyed each other's company and visited each other's homes. Mummy and Mrs Gotla enjoyed days out together and their close friendship lasted through to old age and ended only when Mrs Gotla died at about 80 years old. This personal warmth and affection between the two families thrived in spite of acute political and social differences. Dr Gotla, along with many other socially successful Parsis, thought that Father's concerns for working people were something of a joke. I remember once when I was in Dr Gotla's car with all his family we passed one of the new complexes of slum-clearance flats; Mickey, the young son, said incredulously, "Fancy building flats with BALCONIES for POOR people!" But I had learned at a very young age to keep outrage and indignation to myself until I reached the private haven of home, when I could explode to Mother and liberate my frustrations. Love and friendship had to transcend such differences.
The house was not only open to outsiders and political allies, but we nearly always had one of Mummy's numerous relatatives staying with us, Grandma or one of the sisters with their children. So, although Father was so often away, we were never lonely. I loved all my Mother's sisters and all my cousins and looked forward to their visits and dreaded their departures - and Father was always more than happy to have them around - there was never any sign of music-hall-joke,in-lew tension; we were a happy tribe.
During the summer while the House was in recess, Saklatvala and Newbold were invited to Moscow to a private meeting with members of the Communist International. It was to be Father's first visit and he took my Mother with him. When I say he was invited, it is probably an understatement - I imagine it was more an order than an invitation. The same went for Father's invitation to Mother to accompany him - I don't think she was given any choice. Father sent her off early in the summer to Dymchurch to look for cheap accomodation for the family. Sally's sister Annie was to be asked to come to Dymchurch with her daughter, (and my close and much-loved cousin) Lily. Annie was to look after all of us while both our parents were in Soviet Russia; they were to visit the Ruhr on the way back, for Father to see for himself the sorry plight of the German people. It is likely that the two Communists who were Members of Parliament were to discuss with Members of the Communist International exactly what their role in the British Parliament should be, what strategy was to be followed in relation to the colonies and imperialism and what other functions they might be able to fulfil. It was Father's first direct contact though doubtless he had had similar consultations at second hand in London. It is certain that Saklatvala did not merely receive orders and instructions but contributed his own ideas, particularly where Indian and imperialist problems were concerned and his expertise on this subject was recognised and appreciated. At that time, an Indian Communist, M.N.Roy was on the Executive Committee of the Communist International; but he and Father were not always in agreement.
During this period, the Communists were anxious to unite with the Labour Party (although the Labour Party were not willing to work with them and time after time rejected their applications for affiliation). The Communist Party sought political co-operation of all socialists to fight capitalism as a combined force. The Labour Party seems always to have viewed acceptance of members of the Communist Party, not as co-operation on the part of the Communists so much as infiltration. There was always the contention that all communists took their orders from Moscow and that, therefore, communists were anti-British. I really do not agree that this was in fact the case. Just as members of many nations come together at United Nations Assemblies for mutual discussion, and as members of the E.E.C. discuss economic and political matters, so I think members of the Communist International discussed policies and events. One has to agree that the Moscow voice was probably stronger than most other voices, but I am sure that Communists were able to put their views on many subjects to the Communist International, even if they might not always have been acted upon. But the idea that all Communists put love of Russia before love of Britain is a fostered error; the difference between traditional patriots and Communist patriots is that Communists accept that one must love ALL British people, not just the ruling class; they recognise that working class people are as British as the aristocracy (perhaps more purely so!) and to work for the working class Britisher is just as patriotic as to work for the master class Britisher. Anyway, when Saklatvala went to Moscow on 27th August 1923, he went for consultations and discussions and not merely to receive orders.
It was also Father's first opportunity to witness Communism as then practiced in Soviet Russia. There was at the time a big exhibition in Moscow of Russian handicrafts and, of greater interest, of the progress being made in agriculture. He was more favourably impressed than was my Mother. Mother, who hated being parted from her children more than anything, was appalled at the idea of creches being used for children while their mothers went to work (they have become an accepted part of British life now, of course, but then they were unheard of). When she saw that workers' families were housed in what had been sumptuously furnished and beautifully appointed flats and saw them with enamel washing-up bowls on buhl escritoires, her sensibilities were offended; whereas Father saw all this as a way of giving working people reasonably comfortable homes to live in instead of the hovels to which they had been relegated under Tsarist despotism; my band-of-hope Mother was scandalised by the drunkenness while Father chose not to notice it. Knowing that his wife was likely to be uninhibited in her criticisms of the regime, he told her bluntly that it was HE who had been to observe conditions and that SHE had gone merely to keep him company, and that therefore she should refrain from airing her views in public - it was HIS views that were sought, not hers. While I have to deplore this muzzling of female expression, (especially from a man who publicly upheld the rights of women!) I have to concede that the Communist International would not have taken kindly to Mother's views being broadcast.
For the rest of us, our parents' travels gave us our first ever family sea-side holiday. Our landlady was not over-generous. The curtains were torn and none too clean; she had a little toddling boy who never wore trousers or knickers, but was always clad in a tatty old jersey, its front and back pinned together between his legs with a giant safety-pin as a concession to modest respectability. The food was apparently awful (though at 4 years old I was too young to notice) - one day when the meat was even tougher than usual, my outspoken sister said Mrs Clayton should have used the meat for curtains and stewed the curtains for lunch. The landlady was listening outside the door and created a great hullaballoo; Aunty Annie was embarrassed but we all thought it was great fun, and that Candy had scored a point since her remark, (which we all thought so very witty!) had been overheard. I was introduced to the lures of capitalism in the shape of a penny-dip in the local sweet-shop; Lily and I came rushing home and I proclaimed excitedly, "I gave him a little tiny white penny and he's given me all these big brown ones and our presents as well!" (an old fashioned sixpence had yielded 4 pennies and two goes in the penny dip). With all the excitement of the sea-side and having all the family and Auntie Annie and Lily together, our parents were really not missed. And on their return we enjoyed having them to ourselves without the intrusion of friends either social or political, and just for a few days Father was just a Father and not a politician - and it was a most joyful holiday for us all.
The Parliamentary recess ended on Tuesday, the 13th November when Stanley Baldwin explained to the House that, after profound consideration on the problem of unemployment, he felt he could not steer the country through the winter without using 'an instrument which I could not use having regard to the pledge given a year ago by Mr Bonar Law'. He felt he needed to abandon the policy of free trade and to adopt a protectionist policy. Parliament was, therefore, to be dissolved on Friday, 16th November 1923 There was to be a General Election, and Father's first term as an M.P. was brought to an early close.??.