Skip to main content
Nothing’s too good for the workers
MAT COWARD introduces the creator of the Good Food Guide, communist and crime fiction writer – Raymond Postgate
INNOVATOR: Postgate, pictured in 1970

THE Good Food Guide has its roots in a unique account of the 1926 General Strike. Although edited by a prominent journalist, A Worker’s History of the Great Strike wasn’t a top-down record of events as seen from the centre but was based on direct reports from activists nationwide. 

As explained in the introduction, “In effect the writing of this book is a first essay in a form of co-operative inquiry which we believe will be to the greatest benefit of the workers if it can be extended.”

Many years later that book’s editor, Raymond Postgate, used the same proto-wiki style of knowledge pooling to create The Good Food Guide. In between and either side of those two achievements, he spent time as a political prisoner, was a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, got sued by Babycham, and became one of the most lauded writers of British crime fiction — based on just one novel.

Born in 1896, Raymond was the son of a leading academic who was both well-to-do and politically Conservative. That man was to suffer several disappointments in the choices made by his children. By the time Raymond arrived at Oxford University he was a convinced socialist and pacifist, having witnessed the murderous violence with which the state suppressed the 1911 transport strike in Liverpool, where the family was then living. Reading books by left-wing economist GDH Cole confirmed his views.

Refusing to fight in the first world war, he spent time both on the run and in prison. It was through campaigning for Raymond’s release that his sister Margaret met GDH Cole; they married in 1918. The same year, in fact, that Raymond married Daisy, daughter of the London socialist George Lansbury who was later one of the Poplar Rebels and even became leader of the Labour Party briefly in the 1930s. Professor Postgate disinherited his wayward son and daughter, and banned Raymond from ever again setting foot in the family home.

Post-war, Raymond earned his living a journalist, initially on Communist Party titles. He soon split from the party — though never from Marxism — and worked on various socialist and co-op papers, mostly edited by his father-in-law. He also wrote well-received works of political biography and polemic.

Like many who’d been pacifists in the first war, Postgate changed his views when it came to the war against fascism and he was an early volunteer for the Home Guard. He was editor of the influential left-wing weekly Tribune for a while, until sacked by Aneurin Bevan following an explosive clash of personalities. He took wartime work as a civil servant.

Sometime in the 1940s, appalled by the “sodden, sour, slimy, sloppy, stale or saccharined” grub routinely served in British restaurants he joked about forming a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Food. Postgate was always uncompromising in his belief that working people were entitled to the best that life could offer, not rancid scraps from the rich man’s table: not only decent housing, education and healthcare, but also decent food and drink.

He formed the Good Food Club in 1950, and the Guide, which went on to be famous throughout the world and widely imitated, was first published the following year. It covered every type of eatery, from pubs and seaside chippies to expensive West End toff-traps and everything in between. Crucially, its volunteer inspectors were anonymous, and dined as ordinary customers, unknown to the management. Tip-offs from members of the public about places worth inspecting were invited.

The project’s aims were “to raise the standard of cooking in Britain” and “to do ourselves all a bit of good by making our holidays, travels and evenings-out in due course more enjoyable.” Establishments known to operate a colour bar were banned from the Guide, and today the book’s publishers claim to take a similar line with “any restaurant that is shown to neglect the welfare and mental health of its staff.”

Postgate’s sister and her husband, the Coles, wrote a lot of detective fiction together from the 1920s to the 1940s. But it’s Raymond Postgate’s Verdict of Twelve (1940) which excited the connoisseurs, then and now, being seen as a landmark work of the late golden age of crime writing. (He wrote two other crime books, but they didn’t make much impact.) It’s usually described as a psychological novel, which arguably misses its origin in Postgate’s understanding of dialectical materialism. The book’s epigraph is from Marx: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary their social existence determines their consciousness.” 

Verdict’s admirers included Raymond Chandler, and Britain’s most significant critic of crime fiction, Julian Symons — who also wrote an account of the General Strike, though his was from an essentially Trotskyist stance.

One of the last, and oddest, little adventures of Postgate’s life came in 1965 when he was sued by the makers of Babycham, after he’d written an article pointing out that the West Country’s second most famous drink was actually pear perry, even if it was served like champagne. The company said he was accusing them of trying to pass off Babycham as real cham; they lost the case.

Raymond Postgate died on March 29 1971; his wife Daisy outlived him by a few weeks. And if the name Postgate seems familiar to you, but you’re not sure where from, you’re perhaps thinking of their son John, the prominent microbiologist. Or possibly of their other son, Oliver, who created The Clangers.

You can sign up for Mat Coward’s Rebel Britannia Substack at www.rebelbrit.substack.com for more strange strikes, peculiar protests, bizarre boycotts, unusual uprisings and different demos.

 

 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
AIR WAR: A spitfire squadron flies to battle the Nazis, 1945
Features / 23 May 2025
23 May 2025

MAT COWARD tells the extraordinary story of the second world war Spitfire pilot who became Britain’s most famous Stalag escaper, was awarded an MBE, mentored a generation of radio writers and co-founded a hardline Marxist-Leninist party

SCIFI
Books / 22 May 2025
22 May 2025

Generous helpings of Hawaiian pidgin, rather good jokes, and dodging the impostors

Reverend Edward George Maxted
History / 16 May 2025
16 May 2025

MAT COWARD tells the story of Edward Maxted, whose preaching of socialism led to a ‘peasants’ revolt’ in the weeks running up to the first world war

crime
Books / 13 May 2025
13 May 2025

Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz

Similar stories
HIGHLY PRINCIPLED: (Left) Gavin Henderson, 2nd Baron Faringd
Features / 28 March 2025
28 March 2025
MAT COWARD recalls the communist and pacifist aristocrat whose commitment made a difference in the Spanish civil war, the Blitz and WWII Europe
A massive gathers in Hyde Park for a meeting during the the
Features / 10 December 2024
10 December 2024
From swimming pool soviets to piano factory occupations, early 20th-century radical organiser Lillian Thring chose street battles and mass action over the electoral path, writes MAT COWARD
A PEOPLE’S ARMY: A broomstick parade on a London roof by a
Features / 3 December 2024
3 December 2024
A crucial part of the war effort, the Home Guard, was launched partly due to the influence of Tom Wintringham, a revolutionary communist with a passion for DIY grenades and guerilla warfare, writes MAT COWARD
A monument to Margaret MacDonald in London
Features / 12 September 2024
12 September 2024
MAT COWARD resurrects the radical spirit of early Labour’s overlooked matriarch, whose tireless activism and financial support laid the foundations for the party’s early success