Thomas Henry Wintringham (15 May 1898—16 August 1949) was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 soldier, military historian, journalist, poet, Marxist

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

, politician and author. He was an important figure in the formation of the Home Guard during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 and was one of the founders of the Common Wealth Party

Common Wealth Party

The Common Wealth Party was a socialist political party in the United Kingdom in the Second World War. Thereafter, it continued in being, essentially as a pressure group, until 1993.-The war years:...

.

Early life

Tom Wintringham was born 1898 in Grimsby

Grimsby

Grimsby is a seaport on the Humber Estuary in Lincolnshire, England. It has been the administrative centre of the unitary authority area of North East Lincolnshire since 1996...

, Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

. He was educated at Gresham's School

Gresham's School

Gresham’s School is an independent coeducational boarding school in Holt in North Norfolk, England, a member of the HMC.The school was founded in 1555 by Sir John Gresham as a free grammar school for forty boys, following King Henry VIII's dissolution of the Augustinian priory at Beeston Regis...

, Holt, Norfolk

Holt, Norfolk

Holt is a market town and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The town is north of the city of Norwich, west of Cromer and east of King's Lynn. The town is on the route of the A148 King's Lynn to Cromer road. The nearest railway station is in the town of Sheringham where access to the...

 and Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

. In 1915 he was elected to a Brakenbury scholarship in History at Balliol, but during the First World War

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 he postponed his university career to join the Royal Flying Corps

Royal Flying Corps

The Royal Flying Corps was the over-land air arm of the British military during most of the First World War. During the early part of the war, the RFC's responsibilities were centred on support of the British Army, via artillery co-operation and photographic reconnaissance...

, serving as a motorcycle despatch 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 the Third International: a Communist Party. As the party formed, Wintringham graduated from Oxford and moved to London, ostensibly to study for the bar at the Temple, but in fact to work full time in politics.

Political career and the Spanish Civil War

In 1923, Wintringham joined the recently formed Communist Party of Great Britain

Communist Party of Great Britain

The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...

. In 1925, he was one of the twelve CPGB officials imprisoned for seditious libel

Seditious libel

Seditious libel was a criminal offence under English common law. Sedition is the offence of speaking seditious words with seditious intent: if the statement is in writing or some other permanent form it is seditious libel...

 and incitement to mutiny

Mutiny

Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly situated individuals to openly oppose, change or overthrow an authority to which they are subject...

. In 1930, he helped to found the Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker

The Morning Star

The Morning Star is a left wing British daily tabloid newspaper with a focus on social and trade union issues. Articles and comment columns are contributed by writers from socialist, social democratic, green and religious perspectives....

, and was one of the few named writers to publish articles in it. In writing for the Communist party's theoretic journal Labour Monthly, he established himself as the party's military expert. In LM articles and in booklets on the subject, Wintringham formed the arguments against Air Assault and called for ARP precautions

Air Raid Precautions

Air Raid Precautions was an organisation in the United Kingdom set up as an aid in the prelude to the Second World War dedicated to the protection of civilians from the danger of air-raids. It was created in 1924 as a response to the fears about the growing threat from the development of bomber...

 several years before Guernica

Bombing of Guernica

The bombing of Guernica was an aerial attack on the Basque town of Guernica, Spain, causing widespread destruction and civilian deaths, during the Spanish Civil War...

. 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 dominant Comintern

Comintern

The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...

 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 of Left 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.

At the start of the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

, Wintringham went to Barcelona as a journalist for the Daily Worker, but he joined and eventually commanded the British Battalion

British Battalion

The British Battalion was the 16th battalion of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.- Early volunteers :A number of British volunteers, including Tom Wintringham and Nat Cohen, arrived in Spain during August-September 1936 and formed the Tom Mann Centuria - a rifle company in...

 of the International Brigades

International Brigades

The International Brigades were military units made up of volunteers from different countries, who traveled to Spain to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939....

. Some socialist commentators have credited him with the whole idea of "international" brigades. He also had an affair with a US journalist, Kitty Bowler, whom he later married. In February 1937 he was wounded in the Battle of Jarama

Jarama

Jarama is a river in central Spain. It flows north to south, and passes east of Madrid when El Atazar Dam is built on a tributary, the Lozoya River. It flows into the river Tagus in Aranjuez...

. While injured in Spain he became friends with Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

 who based one of his characters upon him. He spent some months as a machine gun instructor. When he returned to the battalion the next summer he contracted typhoid, was again wounded at Quinto in August 1937 and was repatriated in October. His later book English Captain is based on these experiences.

In 1938, the Communist Party condemned his wife as a Trotskyist

Trotskyism

Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...

 spy but he refused to leave her: he quit the party instead. He came to mistrust the party's subservience to Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

's Russia and Comintern.

Back in England, Tom Hopkinson recruited him to work for the newspaper Picture Post

Picture Post

Picture Post was a prominent photojournalistic magazine published in the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1957. It is considered a pioneering example of photojournalism and was an immediate success, selling 1,700,000 copies a week after only two months...

.

World War II

At the outbreak of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, 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 the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...

, he strongly condemned their policies. Because of the appeasement

Appeasement

The term appeasement is commonly understood to refer to a diplomatic policy aimed at avoiding war by making concessions to another power. Historian Paul Kennedy defines it as "the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and...

 policies of prime minister Neville Chamberlain

Neville Chamberlain

Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...

, he also regarded the Tories

Tory

Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...

 as Nazi sympathizers and wrote that they should be removed from office. He wrote for Picture Post, the Daily Mirror, and wrote columns for Tribune

Tribune (magazine)

Tribune is a democratic socialist weekly, founded in 1937 published in London. It is independent but supports the Labour Party from the left...

 and the New Statesman

New Statesman

New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....

.

In May 1940, after the escape from Dunkirk

Battle of Dunkirk

The Battle of Dunkirk was a battle in the Second World War between the Allies and Germany. A part of the Battle of France on the Western Front, the Battle of Dunkirk was the defence and evacuation of British and allied forces in Europe from 26 May–4 June 1940.After the Phoney War, the Battle of...

, Wintringham began to write in support of the Local Defence Volunteers, the forerunner of the Home Guard. On July 10, he opened the private Home Guard training school at Osterley Park

Osterley Park

Osterley Park is a mansion set in a large park of the same name. It is in the London Borough of Hounslow, part of the western suburbs of London. When the house was built it was surrounded by rural countryside. It was one of a group of large houses close to London which served as country retreats...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

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 in anti-tank warfare and demolitions. He also taught street fighting

Street fighting

Street fighting is a colloquial term used to denote unsanctioned, illegal in some countries, hand-to-hand fighting in public places, between individuals or groups of people....

 and guerrilla warfare

Guerrilla warfare

Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...

. He wrote many articles in Picture Post and the Daily Mirror propagating his views about the Home Guard with the motto "a people's war for a people's peace".

The British Army still did not dare trust Wintringham because of his communist past. After September 1940, the army began to take charge of the Home Guard training in Osterley and Wintringham and his comrades were gradually sidelined. Wintringham resigned in April 1941. Ironically, 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 Communists and Fascists.

In 1942, Wintringham proceeded to found a Common Wealth Party

Common Wealth Party

The Common Wealth Party was a socialist political party in the United Kingdom in the Second World War. Thereafter, it continued in being, essentially as a pressure group, until 1993.-The war years:...

 with Vernon Bartlett

Vernon Bartlett

Charles Vernon Oldfield Bartlett CBE was an English journalist, politician and author who served as a Member of Parliament from 1938 to 1950.-Life:...

, Sir Richard Acland

Richard Acland

Sir Richard Thomas Dyke Acland, 15th Baronet was one of the founding members of the British Common Wealth Party. He had previously been a Liberal Member of Parliament and joined the Labour Party in 1945...

 and J. B. Priestley

J. B. Priestley

John Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...

. He received 48% of the vote in at the Midlothian and Peeblesshire by-election in February 1943, previously a safe Tory seat. In the 1945 general election

United Kingdom general election, 1945

The United Kingdom general election of 1945 was a general election held on 5 July 1945, with polls in some constituencies delayed until 12 July and in Nelson and Colne until 19 July, due to local wakes weeks. The results were counted and declared on 26 July, due in part to the time it took to...

 he stood in the Aldershot constituency, the Labour Party

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 candidate standing down to give him a clear race against the incumbent Conservative MP. His wife Kitty stood in the same Mid-Lothian constituency that he had come so close to winning two years earlier, but neither were elected. After the war Wintringham and many of the founders of Common Wealth left and joined the Labour Party suggesting the dissolving of CW.

Later life

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 understood that Stalin himself was complicit or responsible for them.

Tom Wintringham died on 16 August 1949, after a massive heart attack while he was staying with his sister at her farm at Owmby, Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

Books by Tom Wintringham

• War! And the way to fight against it., Communist Party of Great Britain, London, 1932
• Air Raid Warning! Why the Royal Air Force is to be doubled, Workers' Bookshop, London, 1934
• The Coming World War., Wishart 1935
• Mutiny. Mutinies from Spartacus to Invergordon., Stanley Nott, London 1936
• English Captain., Faber 1939 (also in Penguin)
• How to reform the army ('Fact No. 98'), London, 1939
• Deadlock War., Faber 1940
• New Ways of War., Penguin Special 1940
• Armies of Freemen., Routledge 1940
• Ferdinand Otto Miksche: Blitzkrieg, translated by Tom Wintringham, Faber, London, 1941
• Guerrilla Warfare., By "Yank" Levy. Foreword Wintringham.
• Peoples' War., Penguin Special 1942
• Freedom is our Weapon. A Policy for Army Reform., Kegan Paul 1941
• Politics of Victory., Routledge 1941
• Weapons and Tactics from Troy to Stalingrad., Houghton Mifflin, Boston, USA 1943, republished 1973 with Col. John Blashford-Snell ISBN 0-14-021522-0
• Your M.P. By 'Gracchus'. Gollancz 1944
• We're Going On - Collected Poems, Smokestack Books, UK, 2006

Books about Tom Wintringham

• William Rust - Britons in Spain
• Angus L. Calder - The Common Wealth Party 1942-1945 (1968)
• Jason Gurney - Crusade in Spain (1974)
• David Fernbach - Tom Wintringham and Socialist Defence (1981)
• Peter Tatchell - Democratic Defence (1985)
• David Margoleis - Writing the Revolution - The Left Review" (1993)
• Hugh Purcell - The Last English Revolutionary: A Biography of Tom Wintringham 1898-1949 (2004) (ISBN 0-7509-3080-2)
• Stephen Cullen - Home Guard Socialism (2006)
• Paul Preston - We Saw Spain Die (2008)

External links

• Tom Wintringham: His Place in History by Hugh Purcell
• War of Words: The Life and Writing of Tom Wintringham, an exhibition.
• Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London Index summary
• The Poet of Action, Morning Star
  The Morning Star
  The Morning Star is a left wing British daily tabloid newspaper with a focus on social and trade union issues. Articles and comment columns are contributed by writers from socialist, social democratic, green and religious perspectives....
  
  , 14 March 2006.