Walton Newbold

John Turner Walton Newbold, known as Walton Newbold was the first Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom to be elected as a communist.

Born in 1888, Newbold became a historian. He joined the Fabian Society, supporters of the Labour Party in 1908, and then the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1910. In line with the ILP's pacifist position on World War I, he was a conscientious objector and for a while lived "on the run" from the authorities. He joined the No Conscription Fellowship.

In 1917, Newbold joined the Labour educational Plebs' League and the British Socialist Party. By 1920, he was a committed communist, stating "my loyalty, at any rate, is now - as it has been for two and a half years - first and foremost to the position of the Third International". In 1921, he resigned from the ILP and joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, becoming a member of its first central committee.

In the 1922 UK general election, Newbold was elected to represent the Motherwell constituency in the House of Commons. He received the support of the Labour Party, but unlike many other Communist candidates, including Shapurji Saklatvala who was elected in the same general election, he stood under the label "Communist". Additionally, he was refused permission to take the Labour whip and to sit with the Labour group. As such, he is sometimes counted as the first Communist MP in the United Kingdom. However, Cecil L'Estrange Malone joined the party from 1920 and is more often seen as its first MP.

He was sometimes seen as ineffective in Parliament, mocked by many other MPs for his old and frequently dirty clothing, but focussed on producing propaganda for the Communist Party. He lost his seat in the 1923 UK general election, after just over a year in Parliament. Increasingly disillusioned with communism, he resigned from the party in 1924 and rejoined the Labour Party. He stood unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate in Epping in the 1929 UK general election. In the same year, he was appointed to the Macmillan Enquiry into the operation of banking in the UK.

In 1928, Newbold joined the Social Democratic Federation, and edited its journal, "Social Democrat", from 1929 until 1931, when he supported the National Labour Party split from Labour.

Newbold died in 1943.

References

* [http://www.alor.org/Library/EnemyWithintheEmpire.htm "Enemy Within the Empire"] , Australian League of Rights
* [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/402/ourhistory.html "The tasks awaiting the Communist Party"] , "Weekly Worker"
* [http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/historian/A_J_P_Taylor.html "A. J. P. Taylor - revisionism"] , age-of-the-sage.org
* [http://www.marxists.org/archive/hallas/works/1982/revlp/revlp1.htm "Revolutionaries and the Labour Party"] , Duncan Hallas

External links

* [http://www.marxists.org./archive/newbold/index.htm John Turner Walton Newbold Archive] Marxists Internet Archive