Reddest of the Reds: SO Davies, MP and Miners’ Leader
by Robert Griffiths (Manifesto Press, £19.50)

IT IS likely that, outside Wales, most people in the rest of Britain will not have heard of SO Davies. 

This fact marks yet another lacuna in our knowledge of British labour history. 

[[{"fid":"19095","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]Rob Griffiths’s biography of Davies (or “SO” as he was universally known), rectifies this and provides us with a meticulously researched account of the life and times of an important labour movement leader. 

This book is a greatly expanded version of the author’s first biography of SO, published in 1983. 

Since then Griffiths has uncovered a wealth of new material about SO’s involvement in important organisations such as the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) and the League Against Imperialism (LAI). 

In addition, Griffiths has now finally solved the mystery of SO’s date of birth, which has long perplexed political commentators and historians. It is not one of the dates that features in any biographical records up to now.

SO was a miners’ leader, a socialist, an anti-imperialist and a perpetually rebellious Labour MP. He worked underground as a miner from the age of 12. 

As a checkweigher, miners’ agent and union official, he played an important role in the miners’ federations of south Wales and Britain. 

He opposed World War I, supported the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and was active in the Hands off Russia! and Hands Off Ireland! campaigns. 

At the Miners Federation of Great Britain conference in 1921, it was SO who proposed the motion (seconded by AJ Cook) to affiliate to the RILU. 

The motion was defeated, but SO’s speech which Griffiths has unearthed is worth reading. He subsequently supported the National Minority Movement, the miners’ section of which was successful in returning Cook as the union’s general secretary.

SO’s role in the 1926 General Strike and lockout gave rise to widespread press reports that many strikers wanted him to replace Cook in that post. 

SO’s socialist and internationalist politics were evident throughout his long life, including during his time as the Labour and then independent socialist MP for Merthyr Tydfil from 1934 until his death in 1972. 

Although he won his first election in 1934 by defeating, among others, the Communist Party candidate Wal Hannington, SO remained on friendly terms with communists nationally and internationally, and they never contested his seat again. 

This political standpoint, and his unwavering support for the Soviet Union, got him into trouble many times with the Labour Party leadership and explains why, during his long parliamentary career, he remained on the back benches. 

At a time when the British empire was at its height, together with its accompanying racist ideology, SO’s involvement in the League Against Imperialism is of particular interest. 

Griffiths has discovered more information about this which shows that SO was present at its founding conference in 1927, where he represented the South Wales Miners Federation and was elected to the League’s general council. 

His involvement brought him into close contact with many of the leaders of national liberation movements in the colonised world. 

SO remained a steadfast anti-imperialist, exposing the crimes of US and British imperialism from Ireland and India to Kenya, Cyprus, Korea and Vietnam.

However, as Griffiths shows, this internationalism did not conflict with SO’s Welsh patriotism. He was a well-known and very popular figure locally, famous for his advocacy for the interests of his Merthyr constituents — who included the victims of the Aberfan disaster — as well as for the people of Wales. 

In all these causes, he was completely indifferent to party discipline and was frequently suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party for championing such demands as nuclear disarmament and a parliament for Wales. 

As this biography reveals, Britain’s intelligence services took an interest in his domestic and international activities over a period of 40 years and more, eventually concluding that if not covertly a member of the Communist Party, SO Davies was “very close to it indeed.”

This is a long and impeccably researched book. Had the type face been (helpfully) larger, its number of pages would have risen to 700. 

Nonetheless, as usual, Griffiths writes with a compellingly lucid and fluid style and this, in addition to the important subject matter, will make this book interesting to non-specialists. 

Indeed, in these troubled political times for our movement, we can only hope that the Labour Party will be inspired by SO. 

Here was a Labour MP who combined his socialist vision with a practical dedication to class politics, earning him the enduring respect of his working-class constituents.

Fittingly the book is dedicated to the author’s “dear comrade and friend,” former Morning Star editor John Haylett.

Copies of Reddest of the Reds can be ordered from Manifesto Press at Ruskin House, 23 Coombe Rd, Croydon CR0 1BD (cheques payable to “Manifesto Press”) for £24.50 each (inc p&p).