Mike Davis on 60 years of activism
Wherever the Struggle Is by Bob Newland published by Merlin Press
Bob’s a mate. We met in the Wapping branch of Poplar and Limehouse Labour Party. We discovered much in common: years of activism in international solidarity politics, support for Jeremy Corbyn and Apsana Begum as our parliamentary candidate, then MP, and a common enemy in Brexit. The difference, Bob spent years in the British Communist Party, several years as a paid organiser and worker on the Morning Star, and joined the Labour Party in the late 1990s, a few years after the CPGB broke up.
His autobiography covers sixty years of political activity. Turning the pages of his story, his dedication to many international liberation causes is palpable. From anti-Vietnam war activities to his abiding Anti-Apartheid campaigning, taking in Irish solidarity and trade union activism along the way. He describes meetings with prominent leaders in these struggles and more with modesty and humour.
The book contains many encounters with the British state, including an amusing brush with the security services and another with a bailiff and Barings Bank when battling to keep the Morning Star afloat. There is a chapter on the London Recruits, of which he was one of a dozen or so brave young leftists who volunteered to smuggle leaflet bombs into cities in South Africa in the 1970s. Support for South African liberation became a lifelong crusade, continuing to this day. Many years working against the state finds the author in later years working with the local state in Greenwich on illegal vehicle disposal.
However, there is a major lacuna running through the book, namely, the Soviet Union and Russia. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 gets no criticism, nor the sustained repression of dissidents, absence of pluralist democracy, independent trade unions and all the rest that went along with the Soviet regime, and continues today. Sadly, there is no reference to Putin’s brutal and sustained war against Ukraine, let alone solidarity with the resistance, despite the acknowledgement that “injustice in one land demands a response from all lands”. This absence sits uneasily with his embrace of national liberation movements fighting US and British imperialism. Bob is hugely well travelled with accounts of visits to many states, including Libya, Cuba, Bulgaria, the old USSR and many to South Africa. There is an amusing account of a Soviet-funded holiday largely spent in a Soviet health resort where he had to go naked for his ‘theoretically healthy’ condition.
The book is an engaging read, with many insights, particularly into the internal machinations of the imploding CPGB. His decision to rejoin the CPB in 2024 echoes the disillusionment of many with the lack of Labour Party democracy and the government’s current trajectory.