Capt Thomas Henry Wintringham (1898-1949)

Thomas Henry (Tom) Wintringham (15 May 1898 – 16 August 1949) was a British soldier, military historian, journalist, poet, Marxist, politician and author. He was an important figure in the formation of the Home Guard during the Second World War and was one of the founders of the Common Wealth Party.

Biography source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wintringham

Early life

Tom Wintringham was born 1898 in Grimsby, Lincolnshire. He was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1915 he was elected to a Brakenbury scholarship in History at Balliol,[1] but during the First World War postponed his university career to join the Royal Flying Corps, serving as a mechanic and motorcycle despatch rider.

At the end of the war he was involved in a brief barracks mutiny, one of many minor insurrections which went unnoticed in the period. He returned to Oxford, and in a long vacation made a visit of some months to Moscow, after which he returned to England and formed a group of students aiming to establish a British section of the Third International: a Communist Party. As the party was formed, Wintringham graduated from Oxford and moved to London, ostensibly to study for the bar at the Temple, but in fact to work full-time in politics.

Political career and the Spanish Civil War

In 1923, Wintringham joined the recently formed Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1925, he was one of the twelve CPGB officials imprisoned for seditious libel and incitement to mutiny. In 1930, he helped to found the Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker, and was one of the few named writers to publish articles in it. In writing for the Communist party's theoretic journal Labour Monthly, he established himself as the party's military expert. In LM articles and in booklets on the subject, Wintringham formed the arguments against Air Assault and called for ARP precautions several years before Guernica. His arguments were the basis for the most successful of the Communist Party's wartime campaigns, that for ARP provision, and shaped government policy on the issue in the years leading up to the war.

Although at the centre of the CPGB organisation, he was often at odds with Party policy, believing in a communism of alliance and co-operation, rather than the dominant Comintern ideology of class against class. Wintringham's ideas became party dogma when the Comintern announced the 'Popular Front', a form of communism Wintringham was prepared to fight for.

In 1934, he became the founder, editor and major contributor of Left Review, the first British literary journal with a stated Marxist intent. Although published by Wintringham and funded by the CPGB, it embraced writers of all shades of socialism, regardless of their party affiliations. The journal established a pattern for what was to become cultural studies.

At the start of the Spanish Civil War, Wintringham went to Barcelona as a journalist for the Daily Worker,[2] but he joined and eventually commanded the British Battalion[3] of the International Brigades. Some socialist commentators have credited him with the whole idea of "international" brigades. He also had an affair with a US journalist, Kitty Bowler, whom he later married.

In February 1937 he was wounded in the Battle of Jarama.[3] While injured in Spain he became friends with Ernest Hemingway who based one of his characters upon him. He spent some months as a machine gun instructor. When he returned to the battalion the next summer he contracted typhoid, was again wounded at Quinto in August 1937 and was repatriated in October. His later book English Captain is based on these experiences.

In 1938, the Communist Party condemned his wife as a Trotskyist spy but he refused to leave her: he quit the party instead. He came to mistrust the party's subservience to Joseph Stalin's Russia and Comintern. Back in England, Tom Hopkinson recruited him to work for the magazine Picture Post.

Second World War

On returning from Spain, Wintringham began to call for an armed civilian guard to repel any fascist invasion, and as early as 1938 he had begun campaigning for what would become the Home Guard. He taught the troops tactics of Guerrilla Warfare, including a movement known as the 'Monkey Crawl'. They were also taught how to deal with dive bombers.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Wintringham applied for an army officer's commission but was rejected. When the Communist Party promulgated its policy of staying out of the war due to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, he strongly condemned their policies. Because of the appeasement policies of prime minister Neville Chamberlain, he also regarded the Tories as Nazi sympathizers and wrote that they should be removed from office. He wrote for Picture Post, the Daily Mirror, and wrote columns for Tribune and the New Statesman.

In May 1940, after the escape from Dunkirk, Wintringham began to write in support of the Local Defence Volunteers, the forerunner of the Home Guard. On 10 July, he opened the private Home Guard training school at Osterley Park, London.[4]

Wintringham's training methods were mainly based on his experience in Spain. He even had veterans who had fought alongside him in Spain who trained volunteers in anti-tank warfare and demolitions. He also taught street fighting and guerrilla warfare. He wrote many articles in Picture Post and the Daily Mirror propagating his views about the Home Guard with the motto "a people's war for a people's peace".

The British Army still did not dare trust Wintringham because of his communist past. After September 1940, the army began to take charge of the Home Guard training in Osterley and Wintringham and his comrades were gradually sidelined. Wintringham resigned in April 1941. Ironically, despite his activities in support of the Home Guard, Wintringham was never allowed to join the organisation itself because of a policy barring membership to Communists and Fascists.

In 1942, Wintringham proceeded to found a Common Wealth Party with Vernon Bartlett, Sir Richard Acland and J. B. Priestley. He received 48 percent of the vote at the Midlothian and Peeblesshire by-election in February 1943, previously a safe Tory seat.[5] In the 1945 general election he stood in the Aldershot constituency, the Labour Party candidate standing down to give him a clear race against the incumbent Conservative MP.[6] His wife Kitty stood in the same Mid-Lothian constituency that he had come so close to winning two years earlier, but neither was elected. After the war Wintringham and many of the founders of Common Wealth left and joined the Labour Party, suggesting the dissolving of CW.

Later life

In his later years he worked mainly in radio and film, both producing documentary and critical programmes and writing criticism. He continued to write about military history, opposing the use and development of atomic weapons and championing Mao's China and Tito's Yugoslavia over the monolithic bureaucracy of the Soviet Union. While he recognised and opposed the purges and repression that marred the achievements of the Soviet Union, he never understood that Stalin himself was complicit or responsible for them.

His later campaigns and writing were mainly centred on the formation of a 'World Guard' a neutral volunteer force (initially) to police Palestine and the partitioned India, and to be at the disposal of the United Nations, which Christopher Hitchens credits as the genesis of the UN Peacekeeping forces.

Tom Wintringham died on 16 August 1949, aged 51, after a massive heart attack while he was staying with his sister at her farm at Owmby, Lincolnshir{7}

References

1.The Times, Tuesday, 14 December 1915 (Issue 41037), p. 11, col. F

2. Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds.)The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 2: My Country Right or Left (London, Penguin)

3. English Captain. Author: Wintringham, Tom. Publisher: Faber and Faber Ltd, Published 2011 [1939]. ISBN 978 0 571 28030 8

4.Tom Wintringham (History Learning Site) accessed 29 January 2008

5. Two By-Election Results Narrow Victory at Midlothian, The Times 13 February 1943 p2 column D.

6. Election Contests in 617 Divisions..., The Times 26 June 1945, p. 4, column A.

7.Wintringham, Thomas Henry (Tom) (1898–1949), socialist activist and military theorist by Adrian Smith in Dictionary of National Biography online (May 2006) (accessed 1 October 2007)

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WINTRINGHAM, Capt Thomas Henry (1898-1949)

Identity statement

Reference code(s)GB0099 KCLMA WintringhamTitleWINTRINGHAM, Capt Thomas Henry (1898-1949)

Date(s)1891-1982

Extent and medium of the unit of description (quantity, bulk, or size)23 boxes or 0.23 metres cubed

Context

Name of creator(s)

Wintringham, Thomas Henry, 1898-1945, socialist writer and military commentator

Administrative / Biographical history

Born 15 May 1898 in Grimsby, Lincolnshire.

Educated at Gresham's School, Holt, 1910-1916. 

Served in the World War One as a mechanic and motorcycle dispatch rider, Royal Flying Corps, Jun 1916-[Feb] 1919; Balliol College, Oxford, 1918-1920; visited Moscow, 1920; joined Communist Party Great Britain (CPGB), Feb 1923; assistant editor of Workers Weekly , 1923-1925. Married Elizabeth Emma Arkwright, 31 Aug 1923; imprisoned for sedition, Nov 1925-Apr 1926; editor of Workers' Life, May 1926-Jan 1930; editor of Daily Worker , Jan 1930-[1936]; founder editor of the Left Review , 1936; military correspondent of the Daily Worker , 1936. Joined the British Bn, International Bde, fighting with Republican forces, Spanish Civil War, Aug 1936-Aug 1937; machine-gun instructor for 11 Bn and 12 Bn, Nov 1936; commanded British Bn, 15 International Bde, 1937; wounded, Feb 1937; instructor at Officer's Training School, Albacete, Jun 1937; rejoined 15 Bde as a staff officer; wounded in Aragon, 25 Aug 1937; returned to England, Nov 1937. Expelled from the Communist Party, Jul 1938; divorced Elizabeth, Feb 1940; married Katherine 'Kitty' Wise Bowler, 25 Jan 1941; set up the Osterley Park Training School to provide instruction to the Home Guard, Jun 1940-[Jun] 1941; co-founder of the Common Wealth Party, July 1942; unsuccessfully ran in the 1943 by-election as Common Wealth Party candidate for North-Midlothian; unsuccessfully ran in the 1945 General Election as Common Wealth Party candidate for Aldershot.

Died 16 Aug 1949.

Publications:

The Coming World War (Wishart Books, London, 1935), revised edition (Lawrence and Wishart, 1936).

Mutiny. Being a survey of mutinies from Spartacus to Invergordon (Stanley Nott, London, 1936).

How to Reform the Army (Fact, London, 1939).

English Captain. Reminiscences of service in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War (Faber & Faber, London, 1939), second edition (Penguin, 1941).

Armies of Freemen (G Routledge & Sons, London, 1940).

New Ways of War (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth and New York, 1940).

Deadlock war (Faber & Faber, London, 1940).

Blitzkrieg by Ferdinand Otto Miksche, translated and with introduction by Tom Wintringham (Faber & Faber, London, 1941).

The Politics of Victory (G Routledge & Sons, London, 1941).

Freedom is our weapon. A policy for army reform (Kegan Paul & Co, London, 1941).

Guerrilla Warfare by Albert Yank Levy, ghosted and with an introduction by Tom Wintringham (Penguin, 1941).

Peoples' War (Penguin, Harmondsworth and New York, 1942).

Weapons and Tactics (Faber & Faber, London, 1943), reprinted with Col John Nicholas Blashford-Snell, (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973).

We're going on!: the collected poems of Tom Wintringham, edited by Hugh Purcell (Smokestack, Middlesbrough, 2006).

source http://www.kingscollections.org/catalogues/lhcma/collection/w/wi95 001/http://www.kingscollections.org/catalogues/lhcma/collection/w/wi95-001/

Placed in the Centre by the Wintringham family in 1998, second accession 2004.

Content of what is held at Kings college collection"

Papers of Tom Wintringham and his second wife Katherine 'Kitty' Wintringham ( née Bowler), 1891-1982.

Papers of Tom Wintringham relating to the Home Guard include correspondence, articles, radio broadcasts, press cuttings, photograph, report, lecture transcripts and training exercises.

Papers relating to the Common Wealth Party including correspondence, photographs, minutes, publications, papers on Common Wealth Party policy, formation, resignations, libel charges, election campaigns and conferences.

Other papers relating to Tom Wintringham including papers from his time at Balliol College, Oxford, 1918-1920

Wintringham's visit to Moscow, 1920

Various inventions by Wintringham, 1929-1949

The Communist Party, 1933-1944

British economic crisis, 1947, and obituaries and biographical articles.

Wintringham's correspondence includes his school days, First World War, prison, Spanish Civil War, Home Guard, Common Wealth Party and general personal and professional correspondence; Kitty's correspondence includes Spanish Civil War, the Common Wealth Party and general personal and professional correspondence.

Photographs notably cover the Spanish Civil War, Home Guard

Common Wealth Party

Tom and Kitty Wintringham, their children, friends and family.

Writings by Wintringham include draft and published articles (chiefly for the Picture Post, the Tribune , the Daily Herald and the Daily Mirror ), drafts of published and unpublished books, scripts, reviews, notes, short stories and essays. Draft articles by Kitty.

Poems by Wintringham and others on topics including World War One and the Spanish Civil War, 1910-1950 and printed material, 1923-1950.

System of arrangement

Papers are arranged in sections as follows: Spanish Civil War, Home Guard, Common Wealth Party, other papers relating to Tom Wintringham (excluding Spanish Civil War, Home Guard and Common Wealth Party), books by Wintringham, articles and other writings by Wintringham, articles by Kitty Wintringham, Wintringham's correspondence, Kitty Wintringham's correspondence, photographs, poems and printed material. Photographs and correspondence for the Spanish Civil War, the Home Guard and the Common Wealth Party have not been placed in 'Photographs' and 'Correspondence' but have remained in their respective sections.

Allied materials

Existence and location of originals
King's College London College Archives
Related units of description Collections also relating to the Spanish Civil War located in the Liddell Hart Centre include parts of the Bryant and Liddell Hart papers.

The Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives holds the following archives relating to Tom Wintringham: correspondence between Capt Tom Wintringham and Sir Basil Liddell Hart, 1938-1943 (LIDDELL: 1/758 and 9/22/7); article 'The War Office' by Wintringham in The Political Quarterly, Jun 1942 (LIDDELL: 13/17); Review by Liddell Hart of Deadlock war (Faber and Faber, London, 1940) by Wintringham, in The Listener, 2 Apr 1940 (LIDDELL: 10/1940/14) and papers of Lt Col Ferdinand Otto Miksche, (MIKSCHE) with whom Wintringham wrote Blitzkrieg , including correspondence with Wintringham. The centre also holds the following publications by Wintringham in the Liddell Hart Library: The Coming World War ; English Captain ; Weapons and Tactics ; Freedom is our Weapon ; New Ways of War ; Deadlock War ; Blitzkrieg , and How to Reform the Army .

Sources: Who was who.

Further Reading

http://spartacus-educational.com/Jwinteringham.htm

http://tom.wintringham.ch/

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F32056

http://diplomatist2.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/a-very-british-communis...

LOTFWW

British Royal Air Force, Airmen's service records 1912-1939

findmypast Transcription

• First name(s) Thomas
• Last name Wintringham
• Birth year 1898
• Birth date ? ? 1898
• Birth parish Grimsby
• Birth county Lincolnshire
• Occupation Motor Cyclist
• Attestation year 1916
• Attestation date 05 Jun 1916
• Attestation age 18
• Service number 29959
• Archive reference AIR 79/299
• Next of kin first name(s) -
• Next of kin last name Wintringham