Palme Dutt wrote in the Labour Monthly of February, 1936, the following tribute to his friend and colleague.
"The death of Shapurji Saklatvala removes from our midst one of the most valued contibutors of 'The Labour Monthly' since its earliest days. Shapurji Saklatvala was in the truest and highest sense a revolutionary tribune of the people, a leader of the British working class and of the exploited and subject peoples all over the world against the bondage of imperialism and for the victory of the international revolution. The British working class, to whom he devoted the twenty-six most fruitful years of his life in ceaseless labour and struggle, owes him a deep and imperishable debt. The Communist Party, whose banner he upheld from its foundation, for whom he first blazed the trail of representation in Parliament, to whose cause he gave unflinching service through all this decade and a half, owes no little of its present growing hold in the heart of the masses to his work and to his teaching. Trade Unionism has lost one of its most devoted champions, who understood as no other the unity of the trade union fight in Britain and in the Empire. In India, and among all the subject peoples of the British Empire, his name is a name of veneration. The armed might of the British Empire feared this man as no other, whose only weapon was the truth, and dared not let him tread foot in its subject territories or even among his own people in the country of his birth. ...In him burned the true fire of revolutionary internationalism, the hatred of all oppression, the burning enthusiasm springing from the depths of love for humanity, which made him one of the greatest orators of our generation and the beloved of the masses wherever he spoke. In the history of the international revolution and in the memories of many peoples over the earth, the stature of Saklatvala will grow greater as time recedes, and as the great work to which he set his hand goes forward to the victory for which he laid the foundations."
The Daily Worker printed its own sad message:- The Editorial Board of the Daily Worker expresses its heartfelt grief at the death of Shapurji Saklatvala who, in the midst of his myriad other activities, always found time to render us any assistance that we might require. We feel sure that in expressing these feelings we are also voicing what is in the mind of every reader of our paper.
From early morning until we went to press yesterday we were being inundated with similar messages from individuals and organisations all over the country, a selection of which we print below." There follow messages from Jawaharlal Nehru, George Lansbury, Clement Attlee, M.Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador in London, Georgi Dmitri of the Communist International, William Gallacher and many others. The message from Harry Pollitt, close friend of Fathers and Secretary of the Communist Prty in Great Britain, was printed as a separate article. This is what Pollitt wrote:-
"By the death of Saklatvala, the Indian people have lost their greatest and most sincere champion, the Communist Party one of its most devoted and self-sacrificing leaders, and his family a kindly, gentle, loving husband and father.
The honoured name of Shapurji Saklatvala was known the world over, and he will be mourned by millions of oppressed peoples, who appreciated his fight for their liberation and independence from the yoke of imperialism. Never have the workers in Britain, and the workers and peasants of India especially, had a leader who did so much and who sacrificed himself so much to their service as Saklatvala.
His amazing vitality, his profound knowledge of anything he undertook, his ready and comradely advice, his cultural attainments, and his unrivalled abilities as an orator and exponent of the revolutionary principles of the Communist International, leave a wide gap in our ranks. Only those who have known him intimately can form any idea of the work he did. Night after night, year after year, in all parts of Britain, he carried out his task of working class agitation, education and organisation.
Countless memories flood in on me as I write. I remember in 1927 when he spoke at a meeting on the Sunday night in Edinburgh, took the night train to Crewe, motored to Ogmore in South Wales for a Miners' May Meeting in the morning, did a further meeting in Swansea at night and travelled all night, back to Battersea for a Committee Meeting on the Tuesday morning. That was how he worked....." There follows a factual account of Father's various activities. He then goes on, "In 1934 Saklatvala again visited the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and was enthusiastically welcomed by the workers in Leningrad and Moscow. But the proudest moments of his life, he recently told me, were those he spent in Turkestan, Kazakstan and Transcaucasia, where for weeks he was wildly greeted by tens of thousands of people freed from the yoke of Tsarism by the Russian Revolution. He saw the new industry, new collective agriculture, new culture and life, that free peoples can develop when once communism has given them their independence and emancipation. 'Oh, Harry, what my people could do in India,' he said, 'if only they were as free as my comrades in these autonomous republics of the U.S.S.R.' This experience seemed to give even Comrade Saklatvala new and greater energy and impulse in all his later work. He went with renewed enthusiasm into the struggle for Indian independence, for solidarity between British and Indian workers, and for unity between all those organisations in India that fight against British imperialism.
On the very day of his death he carried on this work. I know that all Thursday, and within two hours of death claiming him, he had been patiently trying to bring about unity between two groups of Indian comrades in London. One could say that 'Unity, unity alone can give our people its freedom,' were his last words.
Saklatvala has gone from our midst. Another soldier of the revolution has passed on. We lower our red banners before your closed eyes, dear Comrade Saklatvala, we pay tribute to all that you have done and taught us. We are proud that you carried your early work to its logical conclusion by embracing and becoming a fearless exponent of of the principles of the Communist International. You have built better than you knew. Your work will go on.
We swear before your open grave that the red bannner you held so proudly aloft, the hope and inspiration you gave to millions living in the darkness of imperial slavery, shall be carried forward to other fights and victories.
We pledge ourselves that your unparalleled devotion and self-sacricice shall be the example we will endeavour to emulate.
...........Today in the mining valleys of South Wales, the cotton towns of Lancashire, the shipyard centres of the North-East coast, and the factories and shipyards of Scotland, workers mourn and grieve for your passing. But you will live again in the work that will follow. The workers of the world will unite. They will break their chains. They will build that new world of which you have been so mighty an architect."
But I will end this story of Father's life by quoting once again the words my brother Beram composed for the tablet in Brookwood, "Nothing but death could end his courage and determination in the cause of humanity. Nothing but such determination could conquer death...His work lives on."
The End