MARCHING THROUGH HEREFORD - VBCW "BUF CABINET"

From the bulging manila files of "Big X", Anglican spymaster and Chief of the Ecclesiastical Intelligence Service, Ludlow, emerges these VBCW BUF photographs:

The Leaders - the "BUF Cabinet"
Back Row, L to R - John H. Hone, Jack E.M.Atherley, John Thompson, Richard A Plathen, Robert Gordon Canning,
John W. Beckett, Bryan D.E. Donovan, Lt-Col.Charles S. Sharpe, William Leaper
Front Row, L to R - Alexander Raven Thompson, Eric Hamilton Piercy, Ian Hope Dundas, Oswald Mosley, Neil LM Francis Hawkins, Wilfred Risdon, William Joyce.

The Followers - Hereford VBCW BUF marching across Castle Green in
celebration of the capture of the Bishop of Hereford and the fall of the City.
 An early phase of the Civil War. It is likely that these troops took an active
part in the Battle of Ledbury as a component part of the "Three Counties Legion".

Notes

(1). perhaps surprisingly, the political structure relied upon by Mosley upon his accession to "the Premiership" at the beginning of the VBCW has not (as yet) been subject to a great deal of historical research. What can be said with confidence is that, while the existing outward structures were maintained (the House of Commons and Lords, etc.), real power was exercised, in tandem, by the King in person (supported by his devoted "Royalists") and Mosley and his BUF Cabinet (supported by his fanatical 'movement').

(2). Historians of the alt-universe (of self-styled "reality") argue that the second photograph is in fact of the East Ham BUF on 11th November 1936, on their way to lay a wreath at the local War Memorial. It is presently unclear when the first photograph was taken, but it is also likely to be 1936 (Joyce, for example, left the BUF in 1937). Historians of the VBCW, dealing of course with an entirely different time-line and arguing that such historical judgments are "as likely as a grocer's daughter becoming Prime Minister" place the BUF Cabinet photograph firmly in 1938 and point out that the topography of Castle Green is 'clearly recognisable' in the second photograph (albeit that its most notable feature, the Nelson Monument, is 'regrettably just out of shot').

THE HARRY POLLITT SONG

Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain
1929 - 1956 (with an unfortunate interruption, 1939/1941)

Recent posts on BUF History in the interwar period may have left readers suffering from a surfeit of black uniforms, stiff armed salutes and polished jackboots. The antidote? The Harry Pollitt song!

Harry Pollitt was General Secretary of the CPGB from 1929 until 1939, when he was forced to resign his position after breaching "the Party line" on the outbreak of WW2. Pollitt then supported Britain's Anti-Nazi struggle, publishing a pamphlet entitled "How to Win the War", but the Comintern's subsequent line (with the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact in their back pocket, and then half of Poland as a result) was that "the war is an imperialist and unjust war for which the bourgeoisie of all the belligerent states bear equal responsibility". Stalin's line on Poland was that it was simply another "bourgeois Fascist state" that had been "eliminated", and that the war was "a robber war kindled from all sides by the hands of two imperialist groups of powers".

The "Party line" changed - whoops! - when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. 

Pollitt was then reinstated as General Secretary of the CPGB, remaining in that position until 1956, when illness forced him from office, and he became Chairman of the Party. Always a slavishly convinced Stalinist (he called the Moscow Show Trials of 1937 "a new triumph in the history of progress"), he became disillusioned with Kruschev's attacks on Stalin and his record, saying of his favourite Stalin portrait: "he's staying there as long as I'm alive". Pollitt died in June 1960.

The origins of the "Ballad of Harry Pollitt" are lost to history, but it may have started during the 1940/1941 period, and grown organically in the ensuing years. The precise tune we can leave to later (you have to know the words first!) but apparently the singing must be loud and lusty, there must have been a large amount of beer consumed, and it is best accompanied by marching around enthusiastically but somewhat haphazardly :

THE BALLAD OF HARRY POLLITT

Harry was a bolshie and one of Lenin's lads

Was foully murdered by counter revolutionary cads

Counter revolutionary cads, counter revolutionary cads

Was foully murdered by counter revolutionary cads

He landed up in heaven trembling at the knees

'May I speak to God I am Mr. Pollitt please

Mr. Pollitt please, Mr. Pollitt please,

May I speak to God I am Mr. Pollitt please'

'Who are you' said God, 'if you're humble and contrite

And a friend of Lady Astor, then OK. you'll be alright

Then OK. you'll be alright, then OK. you'll be alright

And a friend of Lady Astor, then OK. you'll be alright'

They dressed him in a nightie, put a harp into his hand

And he played the Internationale in the hallelujah band

In the hallelujah band, in the hallelujah band

He played the Internationale in the hallelujah band

They put him in the choir, the hymns he did not like

So he organized the angels and he fetched them out on strike

Fetched them out on strike, fetched them out on strike

He organized the angels and he fetched them out on strike

One day as God was walking around the heavenly state

Who should he see but Harry, chalking slogans on the gate

Slogans on the gate, slogans on the gate

Who should he see but Harry chalking slogans on the gate

They put him up for trial before the Holy Ghost

Charged with disaffection amongst the heavenly host

Amongst the heavenly host, amongst the heavenly host

Charged with disaffection amongst the heavenly host

The verdict it was guilty, said Harry 'That is swell!'

And he tucked his nightie 'round his knees and he floated down to hell

Floated down to hell, floated down to hell

He tucked his nightie 'round his knees and he floated down to hell

A few more years have ended, now Harry's doing well

He's just been made the People's Commissar for Soviet hell

Commissar for Soviet hell, Commissar for Soviet hell

He's just been made the People's Commissar for Soviet hell

Now the moral of this story is easy for to tell,

If you want to be a Bolshevik, you'll have to go to hell,

You'll have to go to hell, Yes, you'll have to go to hell,

If you want to be a Bolshevik, You'll have to go to HELL!"

Various versions of the Ballad exist, all with slightly different wording. For an English folk rendition ("My Darling Party Line"), check out Joe Glazer's version HERE. For an American take, check THIS LINK, courtesy of "The Limeliters". And if you want to see Harry Pollitt propounding the Party line at the General Election of 1945,  courtesy of British Pathe, you can see the man himself HERE.