Family

Some interesting people in my family, I think

I’ve just read Hadley Freeman’s and Polly Toynbee’s books about their family histories (both are fascinating and beautifully written) and it occurred to me that my family is pretty interesting too.

My father’s family is Jewish and my father was raised orthodox although he married out twice. He was a conscientious objector during the Second World War.

My uncle, David Crook, fought in the Spanish Civil War, and my great grandmother on my mother’s side, Rose Winstanley, was a Labour councillor in the 1930s.

My uncle David Crook joined the Communist Party in the 1930s and went to fight in the International Brigades in Spain. He had a bit of a run-in with a chap called Eric Blair (yes, that one) who was a member of the POUM, an anarchist brigade, and according to some accounts, may have reported him to the Communist authorities with not a great result.

At some point David was recruited by the KGB and sent by the Communist Party to Shanghai to infiltrate the Trotskyists and report on their activities although he was abandoned by the KGB soon after. He then travelled the country and returned to the UK to join the RAF and fight in the Second World War. In 1949 he went to Beijing where he taught in the university and had a family. In the Cultural Revolution the Red Guards broke into the British Embassy and found the files of British spies who had been following the David on the assumption that he was a dangerous Trotskyist. David was arrested by the Chinese revolutionary guards and imprisoned for five years, during which time he was in virtual solitary confinement. He once told me that he had been given only the thoughts of Chairman Mao and the bible to read. When he was released he continued teaching in the Beijing University of foreign languages and was awarded Spanish citizenship in recognition of his service to Spanish democracy.

When David died the Guardian published an obituary in which he was described as a ‘Revolutionary’.

His wife, Isabel, who has recently died aged 107, was also incarcerated but for only three years. She was held on the university campus, luckily able to see her three sons walk by sometimes although they could not see her.

Isabel was born in China to a missionary family. Her father was sent to translate for the Chinese labourers sent to France when the First World War ended to clear the barbed wire from the trenches. Many of them died during the flu epidemic and David and Isabel, the boys and I went to the Chinese cemetery on the Somme some years ago to mark their sacrifice.

Both David and Isabel taught world history in Beijing and Isabel was active in the women’s movements.

The three boys went to local schools and subsequently worked in factories and the fields alongside Chinese young people. Their first language is Chinese although they are also equally fluent in English. My cousins came to London this month to attend a memorial for Isabel’s sister who had lived in London, and it is always surprising to hear them switch from chatting in English to family seamlessly over to Chinese with each other. I call them boys but they are in the 70s now, Carl living in Vermont, Michael in Beijing and Paul in London.

On my mother’s side, my family come from Lancashire and my grandfather fought in the First World War then went on to become a Captain in the Church Army. My great grandmother was a Labour councillor and Mayor in Ince in Lancashire and I have her electioneering leaflet from 1933 asking for support for her as the official Labour candidate. My mother was a university and local government administrator and active Labour party member.

A mixed family background.