TOM MANN now threw himself into the issue of unemployment, becoming president of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement.

It put him in firing sight of the state, which used brutal repression and intimidation against the unemployed. On April 12 1931, he chaired a National United Front Conference.

Given the circumstances and the desperation in the country at unemployment benefit cuts, wage cuts and destitution, the attendance was a large and significant representation of the forces that had managed to survive the defeat of the miners, the capitalist onslaught and the Great Depression.

A motion was passed, again raising the question of a shorter working day to combat unemployment; Mann would not let the eight-hour-day issue rest.

Mann also supported Hunger Marches. The biggest in 1932 led to his arrest, aged 76. He was given three months in prison but was released early after one. His participation was more than symbolic; removing him from the struggle was a tactical move by the government.

Later that year, he helped bring together religious communities in Belfast during a struggle against the means test. A riot against the imposition of regulations was met with extreme violence, resulting in some 50 injured and two killed.

Mann was sent to speak at the funeral but was arrested and immediately deported. In December, attempting another visit, he faced preventative detention. This time, he went to prison for three months. Class justice did not respect age.

Solidarity with India and Spain

Between 1928 and 1930, India was riven by strikes in iron, textiles and on the docks. The government responded by putting on trial 33 supporters of the trade union movement, including three Englishmen who were singled out for especially harsh treatment. Although only a few of those tried were communists, scaremongering accusations of Comintern and RILU affiliation were deployed.

Mann contributed to the defence campaign, writing articles and agitating for the prisoners’ release. In March, shared a platform with Harry Pollitt at the Manchester Free Trade Hall along with Mrs Knight, a mother of the Meerut Trial Prisoners. This followed a demonstration, at which Mann marched at the head.

When fascists led a coup against the legitimate government of Spain in 1936 and the communists formed an armed international brigade of some 2,000 volunteers to support this government, Mann volunteered. Pollitt stepped in to block this, but the first group of volunteers fought as The Tom Mann Centuria.

A life well fought

In 1937, Mann returned for another visit to the USSR. He was impressed by the changes since his last visit, noting that education and standard of life were materially higher, with no fear of unemployment and economic crisis.

He wrote about his admiration for the Soviets’ aspiration for “universal co-operative ownership of the means of life and the co-operative principle of production for the wellbeing of all.”

When the second world war came, Mann feared Nazi-fascism. His exchanges with Ben Tillett, who was reluctantly pro-war, demonstrate a fear that it would undo much of their life’s work.

Henry Pelling claims that Mann voted with Pollitt to welcome the war. Incomplete records cannot prove this either way. Mann may have attended his last great labour movement gathering at a People’s Convention on January 12 1941, and this had a decidedly anti-war flavour.

He stayed in Kent through the early days of the war, only relocating to the North Yorkshire Dales during the Blitz.

The end came for Mann on March 13 1941. He was aged 84. Hearing of his parlous condition and low funds, Pollitt raced north to be by his bedside and made it in time to say his farewells and his thanks. He recorded some of Mann’s last words as, “Go on with the work. There will be setbacks, partial success and final success.”

At his passing, the local newspaper noted that Mann was “the most persuasive mob orator in the three kingdoms.” But in the Leiston Leader, a local radical newspaper in Suffolk, he was described as “leading from the front, untiring, incorruptible.”

On March 17, Mann was taken in a coffin draped with the flag of the Communist Party to Lawnswood crematorium, in Leeds. In death, all sides of Mann’s life came together, as Tillett gave the main oration, which Pollitt called “the most beautiful wording and phrasing I have ever listened to.” No-one recorded the speeches. Pollitt sent him on his last journey.

An impossible summing up

It is nigh impossible to summarise Mann’s contribution as a pioneer of the workers’ movement, a father of eight children, and an international figure who regularly appeared on the front page of the newspapers.

Mann had long believed that what was needed for the advance to socialism, was gathering all those with a unified outlook into one organisation. All his most famous speeches ended with his trademark “Three cheers for unity.” His commemorative postcards were often signed “Yours for the revolution.”

Mann had no formal education, but spent his life educating others. He was a class act who could hold an audience in the Albert Hall spellbound, or just as easily be your listening friend in a pub gathering of a dozen. His funeral was, by all description, a sombre affair. Mann had been lost at a time when his advice and contacts could be at their most useful.

Whether it is a product of the British dislike of venerating the dead or refusal to mark individual contributions, maybe a result of a lingering impact of the Cold War, or just a refusal to accept, on the part of some historians, that anything good came of the USSR or the Communist Party of Great Britain, it is remarkable how little exists to mark Mann’s contribution.

His legacy is in the organisations and orientation of the modern labour movement. He trained many of the union leaders who emerged post-war — in rail, nursing, teaching and mining — all sectors of the economy that went on to be taken into public ownership. For Mann, it is the legacy of his ideas that counts. These are the motor forces for social change.

Another version of his final words and legacy appeared in a memorial pamphlet simply entitled Tom Mann: “The young people will have a lot to go through, but they will succeed in the end.”

■ Phil Katz’s book Yours for the Revolution is published by Manifesto Press Co-operative Ltd. Readers can buy the book by visiting the Morning Star shop shop.morningstaronline.co.uk/collections/books. This article was abridged for the Morning Star by Chloe Mansola and Jasmine Niblett.

■ Phil Katz is a designer and writer and has been a union organiser for 40 years. He contributes regularly to the Morning Star.