Unlike Leiston, Ipswich was never a ‘little Moscow’. As one wit put it:
‘The Communist Party never really took off in Ipswich. We were always more Co-op than Commissariat!’
However, there were two local women who did hold high-ranking posts in the Party, one in Dublin and the other in London. These were Anchoretta White and Betty Reid.
Anchoretta White (1897-1952)
Who knew that a young woman from Suffolk – an old girl of Ipswich High School for Girls, no less – became the leader of the Communist Party of Ireland in the early 1920s? Irish journalist, Mike Milotte, asked me to research the Suffolk end of Cora’s story while he dealt with the complicated politics between Dublin, London and Moscow at the time. Paul and I spent a great few weeks on this. Mike’s article on her has been published in Saothar, the journal of the Irish Labour History Society, vol 48, 2023.
And here’s the link to his related article published last year in the Irish Times about a workers’ take-over of the Dublin Rotunda in January 1922:
Betty Reid ((1915-2004)
Betty Reid was a ‘tough-minded Stalinist’ originally from Ipswich, who was given overall responsibility for enforcing internal party discipline and making sure the party was not infiltrated by the British security services or dissident left-wingers.
However, in the event, it seems that Reid herself was compromised. During the Cold War, MI5 followed her everywhere she went, recorded the identity of every person she met, listened to and transcribed every phone call she made, and opened and copied every letter she received. Even the live-in home-help she employed from an advert in the Soviet Weekly turned out to be an MI5 plant. And weirdly, it turns out that my friend, Michael Lumb, used to lodge with that very home-help. Small world.
Other female comrades
In his history of the Ipswich branch of the Communist Party, Richard Pipe hardly mentions any women at all, except for passing references to ‘Chris Stopher’s wife’, who was the District Literature Secretary, and Lesley Lewis. Pipe judged Mrs Lewis’ work alongside the Party as ‘invaluable’ but criticised her as she ‘would never read the Daily Worker’! As a lone parent of three boys and an active town councillor she quite possibly didn’t have time.
Sources include
- History of the Ipswich Branch of the Communist Party by Richard Pipe (SRO)
- Guardian 11 February 2004
- http://www.grahamstevenson.me.uk
- Interview by Andrew Whitehead at http://www.andrewwhitehead.net;
- Communist Party of Great Britain archives
Fieldwork 