Shapurji Saklatvala
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Shapurji Dorabji Saklatvala was a communist activist and British politician of Indian Parsi heritage. He was the first person of Indian heritage to become a British Member of Parliament (MP) for the UK Labour Party and was also among the few members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) to serve as an MP.
Shapurji Saklatvala
Saklatvala and his wife, c. 1936
Memorial to Shapurji Saklatvala on his mother's tomb in Brookwood Cemetery
Communist Party of Great Britain
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The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB founded the Daily Worker. In 1936, members of the party were present at the Battle of Cable Street, helping organise resistance against the British Union of Fascists. In the Spanish Civil War, the CPGB worked with the USSR to create the British Battalion of the International Brigades, which party activist Bill Alexander commanded.
The CPGB's General Secretary, Harry Pollitt, gives a speech to a large crowd outside the British Museum in support for the Aid to Russia Fund, 1941
CPGB poster supporting the British war effort against Nazi Germany during WWII
Harry Pollitt gives a speech to workers in Whitehall, London, 1941
William Alexander, representing to Politburo of the CPGB receives applause from the Presidium of the Fifth Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, East Berlin, 16 July 1958.