Harry Pollitt’s grammar-school communists
sir – In response to John Gibson’s query (Letters, October 20), “Harry Pollitt was a Bolshie and one of Lenin’s lads,/ Till he was foully murdered by the anti-bolshie cads” was the version we sang at the inaugural and only meeting of the Sixth Form Communist Party at my grammar school in the late Forties.
We never did get to the end of it, as a master roared in, tore down the Red Flag and threatened dire punishment to the juvenile comrades gathered there. It was a bit like being a Brexiteer: faced with unconscionable power, democracy is always an illusion. Jack Oakley
Eastleigh, Hampshire
sir – One version of the ballad continues: He landed up in heaven
a-trembling at the knees: “Oh, may I speak to God, I’m
Harry Pollitt, please?” “You’re welcome here,” said God,
“if you’re humble and contrite. As a friend of Lady Astor, then you
must be all right.”
They dressed him in a nightie, put
a harp into his hand
And he played the Internationale
in the hallelujah band.
Allen Hugh Stephenson
Claygate, Surrey
sir – In reality, Pollitt was more of a Stalin fan. Nor was he foully murdered: he died in 1960, aged 69, while on the SS Orion returning from a lecture tour of Australia.
Dr John Black
Bristol