Shapurji Saklatvala

Comrades. Comrades. It was my intention tonight not so much to speak of money for unemployment benefit or regulations for stamps, etc., as to place before you a larger policy that would detect the root cause of unemployment in Great Britain and would deal with it in an adequate measure. How long will this nation be deceived that our unemployment is just a passing phase arising from some temporary trade depression? The right to live and the right to work are now permanently challenged by British imperialism, which even the British Labour Party in its parliamentary activity is artfully backing up and supporting. As long as this imperialist policy lasts, so long will British unemployment last. An immediate remedy is required to meet this new condition of shortage of work. That remedy is not miserable and semi-starvation benefits and guardians' doors, the real remedy lies with the trade union workers. If only the trade union organizations can free themselves from the grip of their present impotent bureaucrats, who themselves are playing the imperialist fiddle when Rome is burning.

Sehri: He used to take me round quite a bit with him when he went away to address meetings in the depressed areas, very often in south Wales. And I can remember sitting in meetings when I was dog-tired, and I can remember the halls being very hot and glaring lights and a lot of smoke in the air. And I can remember once my father smiting the palm of his hand with the fist of the other hand saying, 'Don't be misguided and don't be misled.' And under my breath I said, 'Poor, poor Mrs Kelly's a pain in her head.' I of course was too young to appreciate the quality of his speaking. But in later life when I've gone around in the theatre and during the war, meeting a lot of people in the army, the numbers of people who have said, 'I disagreed with every word that your father said politically, but I admired him so much as a speaker.'

Sharpurji: Unless the British Labour Party begins to be on the side of Labour, this situation can never be improved, but it must worsen every year. Well, have you any hopes of Labour parliamentarians risking their seats or popularity for the sake of emancipation of the unemployed and the oppressed? How long will you despise the clear call of world international Communist movement? Choose your path, make your bed and lie on it.

It was during the time of the General Strike, and he addressed a meeting in, I think it was in Hyde Park, in which he said to the soldiers, 'If you are called upon by the government to do the jobs of the miners, of the train drivers, of the bus drivers, tram drivers who are on strike, you should refuse. You are working people and you should support your own class.' And because he addressed this message to the soldiers, this was called inciting His Majesty's troops to mutiny, and he was put in prison for sedition. He could have been bound over and not served a prison sentence if he had undertaken not to make such speeches in the future. But in fact, when it was suggested to him that he could be bound over, he said in court, 'In my honour and conscience, I cannot accept your decision to be bound over, but will go to prison for two months.'

I never knew Daddy complain about anything that happened to him personally as a result of his politics. I mean, when telephone calls and letters were intercepted and he was followed around by a detective from time to time, it never worried him, and he never made any complaint about it. In fact, I was told that on one occasion, when it was pouring with rain and the detective was waiting outside the restaurant where Daddy was having lunch, Daddy went outside and said, 'Oh, do come in and wait inside out of the rain, no point in getting wet. I know you're there. You're only doing your job.' But when the British Government took away his passport and would not allow him to return to India, this really was a body blow. And for the first time in the House, his emotions come through. And he...and he stood in the House of Commons and said, 'For the last fifteen years, you have persecuted me, you've turned my family against me and you have pauperized me.' And my own feeling is that after that, my father lost his...his great drive, his great push. I don't think he was ever the same man after he knew that he couldn't go back to India. And he tried and he tried to get permission to go and they never relented.

Speaker: Mr Saklatvala.

SS: Mr Speaker, I pay homage to the British spirit of hypocritical statesmanship. Well, we're talking of the Indian empire, just in the same strain of common agreement with that very placid attitude of mind and physiology of speech as if we are discussing some matters relating to the renewal of furniture in the library or the cooking utensils in the kitchen of the House of Commons. We are debating here as if the Bengal Ordinances were never promulgated, as if the shooting of Bombay operatives during the cotton strike had never taken place, as if a great strike of thousands of railway workers is not even now going on in the Punjab, with men starving, and the government, the controller of those railways, taking up a hard-faced attitude as if all these things had not happened. As if a great controversy is not raging with the people all over the world, whether British imperialism is permissible to exist now. Is there a single man or woman in Britain, or anywhere in the world, who would tolerate for one day a power so despotic and arbitrary as the Crown under the imperial system is insisting upon enjoying in India?

• Shapurji Saklatvala

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Laura Owen