Breaking The Fetters

This Land Is Your Land: “After you’ve stopped the boats; after you’ve deported your neighbours; after you’ve waged war on woke, shrunk the state even further and redesigned the economy in the mould of Javier Milei what happens when people realise their lives are still shit?”

This Land Is Your Land. (Night Off). Gillian Welch, David Rawlings and Breakfast With Friedrich Engels. David Rawlings and Gillian Welch at Manchester 02 Apollo. Picture shamelessly nicked from The Guardian. I hadn’t realised quite ho…

Here I ramble on about Caerphilly, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Woody Guthrie and Friedrich Engels. This Land Is Your Land.

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Breaking the Fetters Chapter 16: The Caerphilly By-election. Election Poster 1921. This was the first parliamentary election ever to be contested by the British Communist Party. The decision to contest was taken by the Party Executive on July 16th 1921. The …

Wondered why I was getting so many views on my communist family history blog. Getting a lot more traffic than usual due to the Caerphilly By Election. Here’s Bob Stewart’s account of being the first communist Parliamentary candidate in 1921.
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Looking forward to reading this. Claude McKay attended the same Communist Unity Conference in 1920 that my ancestor Bob Stewart did. Found this out after one of McKay’s poems was included in the GCSE syllabus. Can anyone pick him out of this photo?

Oh man. Diane Keaton. Yes - the first two Godfather movies. But, come on, her performance as Louise Bryant in Reds is formidable and in a just world everyone would recognise this.

NEW POST! Wartime Scrapbook (Marxist-Leninist).

Bob Stewart, Yvonne Kapp AND Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton!

Harry Pollitt and the Chamber of Bastards. When we started this project on our great grandfather Bob Stewart, my brother and I both agreed that we thought there was much to admire about the man but also much to criticize. Although I’ve trie…

NEW POST! ‘Harry Pollitt and the Chamber of Bastards’ in which I write about my great grandad Bob Stewart attempting but failing to do the right thing in the wake of Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939.

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Harry Pollitt and the Chamber of Bastards. When we started this project on our great grandfather Bob Stewart, my brother and I both agreed that we thought there was much to admire about the man but also much to criticize. Although I’ve trie…

NEW POST! ‘Harry Pollitt and the Chamber of Bastards’ in which I write about my great grandad Bob Stewart attempting but failing to do the right thing in the wake of Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939.
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/02/h...

Books: ‘The Romance of American Communism’ by Vivian Gornick. “The idea that market crashes can act as catalysts for revolutionary change has a long history on the far left, most notably in the Bolshevik theory that hyperinflation, by destroying the value of …

Recommended Gornick’s The Romance of American Communism to someone last week. Just had a look at a piece I wrote on it a while back. Still quite pleased with it. Includes a gratuitous reference to Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile.

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Ridiculously pleased with the title of my forthcoming piece about how the Communist Party of Great Britain responded to Stalin’s pact with Nazi Germany in 1939. Ashamed to say great grandad Bob Stewart did not exactly cover himself with glory here.

William Stewart and the National Unemployed March to London, 1929. The 1929 National Unemployed March from Glasgow to London arriving at Hyde Park. Frankly, the 1920s do not seem very different to our own times. Huge inequality, increasing poverty and a government…

More Tom Mann action in this post about our grandad Bill Stewart.

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Comrades: Tom Mann Tom Mann addressing the crowds at Trafalgar Square. Possibly at the Sacco and Vanzetti protest in 1927. Few members of the public might recognise the name Tom Mann these days but, even though he di…

This post on Tom Mann I did a while back is getting a lot of views this last month so thought I’d give it a boost.

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And thanks from this account to @mauricejcasey.com and @worsted.bsky.social for their help! X

Bob Stewart, Ho Chi Minh and the Tattered Red Flag of the Communards. L-R: Bob Stewart, Unknown, Nikolai Antipov, Grigory Zinoviev, Kliment Voroshilov, Ho Chi Minh, Unknown. Partially visible behind L-R: Avel Yenukidze. One of the benefits of researching a distinctiv…

Finally written something new. This has everything!

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Bob Stewart, Ho Chi Minh and the Tattered Red Flag of the Communards. L-R: Bob Stewart, Unknown, Nikolai Antipov, Grigory Zinoviev, Kliment Voroshilov, Ho Chi Minh, Unknown. Partially visible behind L-R: Avel Yenukidze. One of the benefits of researching a distinctiv…

NEW POST- Investigating the picture of my great grandfather Bob Stewart, Grigory Zinoviev and Ho Chi Minh. The Tattered Red Flag of the Communards. Hope and despair!
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NEW POST INCOMING!
Been a while…

Repost with a group you’d love to hang out with.

#OtD 22 Aug 1893 Dorothy Parker, US writer and victim of Hollywood blacklisting, was born. Radicalised by the executions of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, she later founded the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and helped Spanish civil war orphans. stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9447...

Every time you submit a large application for research funding the university should send a team to spring clean your house imo.

Comrade ‘Robin’ is very much missed.

Any historians of communism or espionage out there willing to hazard a guess as to why Bob Stewart of the CPGB made several journeys to France (Boulogne & Dieppe then to in all likelihood on to Paris) during the first eight months of 1939? MI5 were very interested. As am I.

I don’t think I’d describe myself as a writer but I do have one writing tip for anyone whose topic is Britain in the 30s & 40s: The British Film Institute and Pathe newsreels on YouTube are your friends.

Photo of a sketch of a Neanderthal. The headline reads: Scientists Growing Neanderthal 'Minibrains', Will Connect Them to Crab Robots

Go for it. I don't even care any more.

‘We will give it back when we have carried it around the world.’ Extraordinary.

Comrades: Annie ‘Nan’ Stewart. L-R Bob, Annie and Margaret Stewart. Photograph probably taken in Moscow around 1924. Today’s post is about Bob Stewart’s youngest child, his daughter Annie who was my dad’s aunt.…

Read through the letters last night. Wonderful You’re right about his handwriting. The ‘Little Harry’ in the transcript should be Little Nannie- Bob’s ten year old daughter- my dad’s Aunt Nan. There’s more about her in Moscow and back in Scotland here.

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Brilliant- you’re a star.

Tom Mann was a good guess but don’t think it’s him- he’s looking a bit greyer in this picture with Bob in Faustovo 1924. Could be the other guy either a moustache though. No idea who he is.

Voroshilov according to Maurice Casey!

This is gold. Thank you! X