An hon. rebel with a cause

Press, 27 August 1977, Page 17

An hon. rebel with a cause

A Fine Old Conflict. By Jessica Mitford. Michael Joseph. 263 pp. and index. $13.45. (Reviewed by Joan Curry) When Jessica Mitford ran away to Spain in 1937 she was 20 years old and had been a communist at heart since her early teens. She was already a veteran of many skirmishes against the forces of fascism, in the shape of her sister Unity, with whom she shared a sitting-room in the Mitford family home while they were growing up. Jessica’s bust of Lenin challenged Unity’s picture of Hitler across the carefully-divided room which was frequently the scene of heated arguments and flying missiles. It was all rather jolly to start with but the political differences which separated Jessica and Unity had become deadly serious by the time of the outbreak of the Spanish civil war in 1936. Unity and Diana (Lady Mosley) had joined Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and were part of Hitler’s circle in Germany. Muv and Farve (Lord and Lady Redesdale) were fascist sympathisers. The other sisters Pam, Nancy and Deborah, and their brother Tom, do not appear to have taken sides in the family political feud but Jessica felt enough of an outsider to have started saving in a get-away fund when she was about 12 years old. Her first book, “Hons and Rebels,” described her life as a member of the remarkable Mitford family and ended with the death of her first husband, Esmond Romilly. In “A Fine Old Conflict” Jessica Mitford tells the story of her experiences as a communist in America. The war against fascism had moved into the real world. The Communist Party, U.S.A., had been driven underground by the witch-hunting, Red-baiting operations of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities which had been formed in 1938. Joining the party was therefore a furtive business and membership a hazardous one, involving all kinds of risk to families, associates and livelihoods. Jessica Mitford’s account of her 15 years’ membership is full of the sort of guerrilla warfare that was evidently much to her taste and has been recalled with relish. Her aristocratic English background was sometimes an embarrassment, and her relationship to the Mosleys made unwelcome publicity when it was discovered. In spite of these disadvantages, however, she was invited to join the Communist Party

and remained a member until after the Hungarian rising in 1956. This book is by no means a vehicle for the proclamation of communist ideology. Rather, it is about the struggle for civil rights and contains stories of campaigns against bigotry and injustice. For the relentless persecution of blacks, for instance, the district attorney of Alameda County was a target of civil rights campaigners for years. In court during a bitterly-fought case he saw Miss Mitford in the audience and, she writes, “pointing at me from the witness stand he shouted ‘that woman’s a communist! She’s been spending the last five years thinking of ways to torment me!’ ” One of the most spectacular campaigns described in this book was fought on behalf of Willie McGee, a black sentenced to death in Mississippi for the rape of a white woman. As a member of a small delegation of white women who went into the deep south to rally support for McGee, Jessica Mitford received much cautionary advice. A southern friend said, “Now honey, you be careful, they’ll likely tar and feather you and run you out of town on a rail” and from another friend came “Don’t be surprised if them Ku Kluxers give you a whupping.” The warnings were given in all seriousness — the case of Willie McGee had many explosive ingredients — but Southern respect for white womanhood saved the delegation from the physical violence suffered by men, white and black, who had already attempted to support McGee. In the climate prevailing in America during the forties and fifties the avowed communist needed courage and dedication. To these qualities Jessica Mitford added a sense of humour which saved her from the grim earnestness displayed by so many of her colleagues. Although she eventually resigned from the party her book is not one of the “I-was-duped” variety. On the contrary she continued to cherish the ideals and aims of communism but felt that the party itself had become stagnant and was unlikely to revive. She devoted much of her new-found leisure time to writing and followed the success of “Hons and Rebels” with other work, including “The American Way of Death” in which she shredded the undertaking business with devastating effect. Now she has written another most diverting book which should appeal to anyone with even a sneaking respect for a rebel with a cause.