Sam Russell

Sam Russell

Manassah Lesser (Sam Russell) was born in Hackney in 1916. He won a scholarship to University College. When he was a student he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and took part in the demonstrations against Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. "The word went out to stop Mosley marching through the East End. There was the most violent anti-Semitism among the police; they sympathized totally with the blackshirts."

On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War the CPGB was the main force behind the creation of the International Brigades. Russell went to their headquarters in London and as he told Max Arthur, the author of The Real Band of Brothers (2009): "I'd only been abroad once, when I went to Paris a couple of years before, but I had a passport. I got in contact with the Communist Party and this chap who was organising it gave me £10 to buy a ticket to Paris, and an address to go to when I got there. So I kitted myself out - didn't say a word to my parents about this, just to my younger brother who was sworn to secrecy - and off I went across the Channel from Newhaven to Dieppe."

Russell was one of the first party members to join the International Brigades and was sent to Albacete for training: "I didn't have more than about three weeks' training near Albacete. That was in early November 1936, when we were told that we were going to Madrid. We were taken down in trucks to Albacete, put on trains there and went up to the front with the French Battalion."

Eventually, Russell became a member of the British Battalion. "They decided to gather all the British volunteers who were then at Albacete in various stages of their training and form a company - that's 120-130 men. We were under the command of an Irish comrade who was later killed - a wonderful chap. Of the volunteers that came from the British Isles, a considerable number were Irish. Some of them had got some military experience in the fighting against the British armed forces during 1922 and that period of very stormy relations between Great Britain and the newly formed Irish Republic, and many of them had been in the IRA".

Russell took part in the battle for Madrid and was with John Cornford when he received a severe head wound. "When the smoke cleared there was John Cornford with blood pouring down his face and head. We later discovered that it was one of our own anti-aircraft shells that had fallen short and had come through the side of a wall. They took John off and that afternoon he came back with his head bandaged, looking very heroic and romantic."

Russell took part in the fighting in Lopera. On 27th December 1936, John Cornford and Ralph Fox were killed. Soon afterwards he was badly injured and was seriously wounded and had been left in "No Man's Land" and his comrades decided it would be suicide to go and get him. He was eventually rescued by Jock Cunningham. According to Russell: "Jock, to his credit, said he was going anyway. He looked around and found me - then literally dragged me in, because he couldn't find a stretcher."

From left to right, standing, Margaret Powell, Susan Sutor, Annie Murray, Patience Darton, sitting Agnes Hodgson and Mary Slater (March 1937). Sam Russell married Margaret Powell in 1950.
From left to right, standing, Margaret Powell, Susan Sutor, Annie Murray,
Patience Darton, sitting Agnes Hodgson and Mary Slater (March 1937). Sam Russell married Margaret Powell in 1950.

After he recovered from his wounds to his leg and back he was sent to do office work in Albacete. Later in the conflict he was employed as a journalist for The Daily Worker . This involved him working with Geoffrey Cox, Sefton Delmer, Herbert Matthews, William Forrest and Claude Cockburn.

On 23rd September, Juan Negrin, head of the Republican government, announced at the League of Nations in Geneva that the International Brigades would be unilaterally withdrawn from Spain. That night the 15th Brigade and the British Battalion moved back across the River Ebro and began their journey out of the country.

Russell was convinced that if they had been properly armed they could have won the war. In an interview he gave in the book Heroic Voices of the Spanish Civil War (2009): "We could have won if the democracies, particularly the British government, had allowed the legally elected government of Spain to purchase arms internationally, as was the right of any government to do so, but they were prevented. The French tried to send arms but the British government bullied them. Through Chamberlain and Anthony Eden they made it clear that if the French became involved in any war as a result of supplying arms to Spain, the British government would not come to their assistance."

During the Second World War Russell was employed as an inspector in the Napiers aircraft factory where he became a shop steward. On 22nd June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union. That night Winston Churchill said: "We shall give whatever help we can to Russia." The Communist Party of Great Britain immediately announced full support for the war and brought back Harry Pollitt as general secretary. The ban was lifted on The Daily Worker and Russell returned as one of its reporters. In 1945 he flew with Lancaster bombers dropping food to people living in Europe.

Russell married Margaret Powell, a nurse he had met while serving with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. After the war he became diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Worker. In 1952 he covered show-trial of Czechoslovakian Communist Party general secretary Rudolf Slansky and 13 other party leaders. At the time he considered the evidence as genuine but according to Roger Bagley it was an experience which "left a deep scar."

In 1955 Russell became the Daily Worker correspondent in Moscow. During this period he became friendly with Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. According to Colin Chambers, "Russell found his attempts to report the experience of everyday life an irritant both to the Soviet authorities and his editor in London. The Soviet Communist party even asked for Russell to be withdrawn, but the British Communist party refused."

During the 20th Party Congress in February, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev launched an attack on the rule of Joseph Stalin. He condemned the Great Purge and accused Stalin of abusing his power. He announced a change in policy and gave orders for the Soviet Union's political prisoners to be released. Russell received a copy of this speech and asked permission to publish it in the Daily Worker. He argued that it would be better for the story to be published by a communist newspaper than in the capitalist press. This idea was rejected with the words: "Just because you are a friend does not mean you can look in our cupboard." As Colin Chambers points out: "Reuters duly broke the story, Russell missed a scoop, and his own version of the speech was cut to shreds by the Daily Worker."

James Friell (Gabriel), the political cartoonist on the Daily Worker, argued that the newspaper should play its part in condemning Stalinism. He argued the newspaper should take the same approach as the Daily Worker in the United States. The editor, John Gates also encouraged debate on this issue by devoting one page of the newspaper to their readers' views: "The readers thought plenty. The paper received an unprecedented flood of mail, and even more unprecedented, we decided to print all the letters, regardless of viewpoint - a step which the Daily Worker had never taken before. The full page of letters, in our modest eight pages, soon became its liveliest and most popular feature... Readers spoke out as never before, pouring out the anguish of many difficult years."

Gabriel drew a cartoon that showed two worried people reading the Nikita Khrushchev speech. Behind them loomed two symbolic figures labelled "humanity" and "justice". He added the caption: "Whatever road we take we must never leave them behind." As a fellow worker at the newspaper, Alison Macleod, pointed out in her book, The Death of Uncle Joe (1997): "This brought some furious letters from our readers. One of them called the cartoon the most disgusting example of the non-Marxist, anti-working class outbursts..." Macleod went on to point out that a large number of party members shared Friell's sentiments.

Khrushchev's de-Stalinzation policy encouraged people living in Eastern Europe to believe that he was willing to give them more independence from the Soviet Union. In Hungary the prime minister Imre Nagy removed state control of the mass media and encouraged public discussion on political and economic reform. Nagy also released anti-communists from prison and talked about holding free elections and withdrawing Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. Khrushchev became increasingly concerned about these developments and on 4th November 1956 he sent the Red Army into Hungary. During the Hungarian Uprisingan estimated 20,000 people were killed. Nagy was arrested and replaced by the Soviet loyalist, Janos Kadar.

Peter Fryer was in Budapest during the Hungarian Uprising. Fryer, who was critical of the actions of the Soviet Union, found his reports in the Daily Worker were censored. Fryer responded by having the material published in the New Statesman. As a result he was suspended from the party for "publishing in the capitalist press attacks on the Communist Party." The loyal Sam Russell was now sent to the country to report on the uprising.

James Friell condemned John R. Campbell, the editor of the newspaper for supporting the invasion. He told Campbell: "How could the Daily Worker keep talking about a counter-revolution when they have to call in Soviet troops? Can you defend the right of a government to exist with the help of Soviet troops? Gomulka said that a government which has lost the confidence of the people has no right to govern." When Campbell refused to publish a cartoon by Friell on the Hungarian Uprising he left the newspaper and the CPGB.

Over 7,000 members of the Communist Party of Great Britain resigned over what happened in Hungary. This included Peter Fryer, who was in Budapest at the time of the invasion. He later recalled: "The crisis within the British Communist Party, which is now officially admitted to exist, is merely part of the crisis within the entire world Communist movement. The central issue is the elimination of what has come to be known as Stalinism. Stalin is dead, but the men he trained in methods of odious political immorality still control the destinies of States and Communist Parties. The Soviet aggression in Hungary marked the obstinate re-emergence of Stalinism in Soviet policy, and undid much of the good work towards easing international tension that had been done in the preceding three years. By supporting this aggression the leaders of the British Party proved themselves unrepentant Stalinists, hostile in the main to the process of democratisation in Eastern Europe. They must be fought as such."

Unlike James Friell and Peter Fryer, Russell remained a member of the staff of the Daily Worker. This included covering the Vietnam War and the Cuban Missile Crisis for the newspaper. In 1962 he interviewed Che Guevara, but the editor removed Guevara's declaration that the Cubans would have fired the missiles if they had been in control of them. Russell was also in Chile when Salvador Allende was overthrown in 1973.

Russell worked for the Daily Worker and its successor, the Morning Star, until his retirement in 1984. After leaving the newspaper he became an enthusiastic member of the Labour Party. His wife Margaret Powell died in 1990.

Colin Chambers has argued: "Through his reporting, book reviews, articles and an unpublished autobiography, Russell sought to make amends for accepting Stalinism for as long as he did, but without losing the integrity of the ideals which had inspired him to fight in Spain. Inimitably cantankerous to the end, he never lost his sparkle, and remained a splendid raconteur."

In his last few years he was chairman of the International Brigade Memorial Trust. In 2009 he was awarded Spanish citizenship. According to Roger Bagley: "He (Sam Russell) made an emotional anti-fascist speech at the Spanish embassy in London in 2009 at a ceremony granting the eight last surviving British and Irish volunteers Spanish citizenship and passport. Some members of the embassy staff were reduced to tears as Lesser, speaking in fluent Spanish, delivered a searing attack on racism and fascism linking past struggles to the fight against the rise of the BNP today."

Sam Russell died on 2nd October 2010.

Primary Sources

(1) Sam Russell, The Real Band of Brothers (2009)

I grew up in Hackney, in the East End of London, where increasingly there was a presence of Mosley and the Blackshirts - but, even before then, some of the history of that time was passing by my front door.

This was a period of mass unemployment, of out-of-work miners from South Wales singing in the streets and begging. We were quite near Victoria Park, which was like a miniature Hyde Park in that Hyde Park had its Speaker's Corner, and in Victoria Park every Sunday there were similar groups of political people standing up and speaking. As a kid, I would stand there by the bandstand and listen to them. I'd got a scholarship at that time - I hadn't passed my 11+, but in the end I'd got to a secondary School in the east of London, at a place called George Green's. This was in the heart of Poplar, and the parents of most of the kids there were working in the docks or in the shipyards or ship-repair yards in one way or another. It was called George Green's because it was one of the ship-repair companies in the building there. The teachers at the school were also very left-wing in their politics, although they weren't signed-up members of the Communist Party or even of the Labour Party.

During the General Strike in 1926, Victoria Park was closed down and taken over by the military. The army came in with light tanks that were sent down in order to defend the docks against the strikers - so they said. But it was totally unnecessary.

In about 1934 I won another scholarship from my secondary school in London and went to University College, London, in Gower Street. I was just eighteen, and, like many people of my age at that time, I wasn't too certain what I wanted to study, but I decided to go in generally for history; but I got rather fed up with that and switched to, of all things, Egyptology.

(2) Sam Russell, The Real Band of Brothers (2009)

I'd only been abroad once, when I went to Paris a couple of years before, but I had a passport. I got in contact with the Communist Party and this chap who was organising it gave me f 10 to buy a ticket to Paris, and an address to go to when I got there. So I kitted myself out - didn't say a word to my parents about this, just to my younger brother who was sworn to secrecy - and off I went across the Channel from Newhaven to Dieppe. In those days when you crossed the Channel from Newhaven to Dieppe the train was rolled onto the ferry.

I went to Paris, met the contact there and hung around a bit. At that time in France there was a very strong movement in support of the Spanish Republic - the French, too, had formed their own 'Popular Front, and had an election in which the Popular Front won a majority with the Socialists and the Communists and part of the Radical Party, as it was called at the time.

(3) Sam Russell, Heroic Voices of the Spanish Civil War (2009)

I didn't have more than about three weeks' training near Albacete. That was in early November 1936, when we were told that we were going to Madrid. We were taken down in trucks to Albacete, put on trains there and went up to the front with the French Battalion. We didn't see really anything of Madrid right away, we arrived there during the night. We actually went into action on 6 or 7 November 1936. By the time we got out it was light and we marched through the streets. People gathered around and at first thought we were Russians, but they soon realized that we were not. There was a tremendous reception because the word went round. While we were getting out of the trains and forming up, the crowd gathered and cheered us. We didn't realize immediately how serious the military situation was and how close to Madrid the fascists had got. We were taken into University City, that was the first encounter.

(4) Sam Russell, The Real Band of Brothers (2009)

They decided to gather all the British volunteers who were then at Albacete in various stages of their training and form a company - that's 120-130 men. We were under the command of an Irish comrade who was later killed - a wonderful chap. Of the volunteers that came from the British Isles, a considerable number were Irish. Some of them had got some military experience in the fighting against the British armed forces during 1922 and that period of very stormy relations between Great Britain and the newly formed Irish Republic, and many of them had been in the IRA. If you look through the casualty list of that first fight - the battle for Lopera on the Cordoba Front, you will see, one after another, the names of Irish comrades who fell there.

As we advanced we came under very heavy fire and had to keep our heads down. I did my best, but, not far from me, John Cornford and Ralph Fox were killed. There were heavy casualties and I was wounded. I didn't know at the time where I'd been wounded - in which part of my body - except that when I tried to get up l couldn't. I just fell down - there was something wrong with my legs. As the day progressed, our people had to retreat and I was lying there unable to move - and there was no possibility of a stretcher-bearer coming for me. We were badly equipped, even with the Russian weapons, but particularly in respect of the medical equipment, which was very, very sparse. By that time we had a few doctors and nurses who had come as volunteers to Spain, but the medical equipment was very scarce. Interestingly, a very important part of the mass movement of support for the Spanish Republic throughout Great Britain focused specially on medical aid, including fully fitted - out ambulances and other medical equipment. But at the battle for Cordoba it was very difficult, and while I was lying there I always remember hearing them calling out, in Spanish, for stretcher-bearers to come. I lay there that night in what had become no man's land, because our people had had to withdraw.

It was a long time later that I was told that people started looking for me, and Jock Cunningham, who'd been with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and had become a great friend of mine during the Battle of Madrid, said he was going out and looking for me.

Apparently they said, "It's no use, Jock, he's a dead 'un, a goner, and if you go out you'll be a goner too."

lock, to his credit, said he was going anyway. He looked around and found me - then literally dragged me in, because he couldn't find a stretcher. I had got a bullet in my left leg, and also in in my back - because I had an early encounter with what in the Second World War came to be called "friendly fire".

(5) Sam Russell, The Real Band of Brothers (2009)

It was at that time we met up with the rest of the British volunteers who had arrived there by one means or another - there were just over thirty of us. We immediately ran into the problem - a core problem for the International Brigades - which was, quite simply, the language. Here you had people from different countries, different nationalities speaking their own languages, and as we British were one of the smallest groups, we were put into a French battalion and training began.

Among this first group were a number of students, paticularly from Cambridge: John Cornford (who was later killed on the Cordoba Front, where I was wounded) and Bernard Knox, who later became a professor of ancient Creek history in the USA. There were a number of people who had been in the British Army, too. This was not a conscript army - there was no conscription or military service in Britain at the time - instead, these were mostly from Scottish regiments, such as the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. One of these was a man called Jock Cunningham, who became a very good friend of mine - in fact, he saved my life during the battle for Cordoba after I was wounded - and there were a couple of others from the Black Watch, who certainly knew the way the British army worked.

(6) Sam Russell, The Real Band of Brothers (2009)

We underwent more training at Andujar, then went on trucks to the front. There was a very bitter battle at a town called Lopera and, personally, I was not in very good shape although I had survived Madrid, but we advanced there, as ordered.

They decided to gather all the British volunteers who were then at Albacete in various stages of their training and form a company - that's 120-130 men. We were under the command of an Irish comrade who was later killed - a wonderful chap. Of the volunteers that came from the British Isles, a considerable number were Irish. Some of them had got some military experience in the fighting against the British armed forces during 1922 and that period of very stormy relations between Great Britain and the newly formed Irish Republic, and many of them had been in the IRA. If you look through the casualty list of that first fight - the battle for Lopera on the Cordoba Front, you will see, one after another, the names of Irish comrades who fell there.

As we advanced we came under very heavy fire and had to keep- our heads down. I did my best, but, not far from me, John Cornford and Ralph Fox were killed. There were heavy casualties and I was wounded. I didn't know at the time where I'd been wounded - in which part of my body - except that when I tried to get up I couldn't. I just fell down - there was something wrong with my legs. As the day progressed, our people had to retreat and I was lying there unable to move - and there was no possibility of a stretcher-bearer coming for me. We were badly equipped, even with the Russian weapons, but particularly in respect of the medical equipment, which was very, very sparse. By that time we had a few doctors and nurses who had come as volunteers to Spain, but the medical equipment was very scarce. Interestingly, a very important part of the mass movement of support for the Spanish Republic throughout Great Britain focused specially on medical aid, including fully fitted-out ambulances and other medical equipment. But at the battle for Cordoba it was very difficult, and while I was lying there I always remember hearing them calling out, in Spanish, for stretcher-bearers to come. I lay there that night in what had become no man's land, because our people had had to withdraw.

It was a long time later that I was told that people started looking for me, and lock Cunningham, who'd been with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and had become a great friend of mine during the Battle of Madrid, said he was going out and looking for me.

Apparently they said, "ft's no use, lock, he's a dead 'un, a goner, and if you go out you'll be a goner too."

Jock, to his credit, said he was going anyway. He looked around and found me - then literally dragged me in, because he couldn't find a stretcher. I had got a bullet in my left leg, and also in my back - because I had an early encounter with what in the Second World War came to be called 'friendly fire'. Our French comrades, who were on our right flank to support our advance, were sending over crossfire. We had apparently advanced too quickly and when they saw us they opened fire.

I was dragged by lock and finally dropped on a stretcher and taken clear of where the fighting was still going on. Then we discovered another aspect of the shortages we'd been labouring under. First, there was the difficulty of finding a stretcher and then an ambulance or some way of getting the wounded clear of the fighting. I was put into an agricultural cart and, by God, it stank to high heaven - you could tell what it had been used for before. I finally got clear of the lines and we wounded were put into trucks - not ambulances - there was no such thing as an ambulance there. The walking wounded were sitting as best they could in the truck, stretchers were put where they could be fitted in and we were driven to a place, part of which is now a large town called Linares.

We were unloaded from these trucks at what we were told was a hospital. During the night large numbers of the town's population kept coming in, and, as we were being unloaded from the trucks, they were clapping and cheering us. But that was nothing compared to what happened the following morning. When it got light, the hospital was absolutely stormed by people coming up from the town. These people had brought everything they could think of - ordinary things like soap and toothbrushes and toothpaste and packets of pastries and bottles of wine. Everybody wanted to shake our hands and say thank you.

(7) Sam Russell, Heroic Voices of the Spanish Civil War (2009)

We could have won if the democracies, particularly the British government, had allowed the legally elected government of Spain to purchase arms internationally, as was the right of any government to do so, but they were prevented. The French tried to send arms but the British government bullied them. Through Chamberlain and Anthony Eden they made it clear that if the French became involved in any war as a result of supplying arms to Spain, the British government would not come to their assistance.

Spain has remained always in our minds and in our hearts. If the Republican government had been given its rights by international law to buy arms on the market we wouldn't have lost the war. The experience in Spain didn't change me politically. The change came for me when I was in the Soviet Union, with Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968) and Hungary (1956).

(8) Roger Bagley, The Morning Star (4th October 2010)

International Brigade veteran Sam Lesser made a huge contribution to the Daily Worker and Morning Star over nearly half a century writing under the name of Sam Russell.

One of the last surviving British fighters in the war against fascism in Spain, he became chair of the International Brigade Memorial Trust.

He made an emotional anti-fascist speech at the Spanish embassy in London in 2009 at a ceremony granting the eight last surviving British and Irish volunteers Spanish citizenship and passport. Some members of the embassy staff were reduced to tears as Lesser, speaking in fluent Spanish, delivered a searing attack on racism and fascism linking past struggles to the fight against the rise of the BNP today.

Along with a whole generation of Jewish anti-fascists, Lesser started his life in the Communist Party in 1935 as an ardent admirer of Joseph Stalin.

In the 1970s he became increasingly critical of the Soviet model of socialism and by the 1990s he had turned into a fervent admirer of Tony Blair seeing him as a great leader of a supposed new leap forward for social democracy.

He also supported the destructive leadership faction in the Communist Party of Great Britain which was hell-bent on attacking the Morning Star in the mid-1980s. He backed the short-lived Democratic Left project which quickly morphed into a feeble think tank....

Lesser struck up a friendship with Soviet spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean who had defected to Moscow from their top Establishment jobs. He attended jolly social evenings at Burgess's flat where he was entertained by the spy's gay Russian lover playing the balalaika. The gay lifestyle was fully supported by the KGB even though homosexuality was illegal in the Soviet Union. Lesser displeased the Soviet authorities by writing a piece for the Daily Worker revealing that Melinda Maclean had always known about her husband's spying activities.

During the tragic events in Hungary in 1956 Lesser was sent from Moscow to report on the situation following the Soviet military intervention and the bloody street fighting. He entered Budapest in a Soviet armoured car after fellow Daily Worker reporter Peter Fryer had rebelled against the paper's line and hailed a Hungarian "people's revolution" before taking refuge in the British embassy.

(9) Colin Chambers, The Guardian (12th October, 2010)

His mother thought he was heading to Egypt for an archaeological dig, but instead Sam Russell was on his way to Spain as one of the earliest British volunteers to fight fascism. Russell first saw action at the Madrid university campus in November 1936, when only a few of his unit survived. Despite a shrapnel head wound, he joined a new unit of the International Brigades, which was rushed south to the Córdoba front, where he was wounded again and was unable to resume fighting. His war did not end, however. Russell became a radio reporter for the Republicans and then the correspondent in Spain for the British communist paper the Daily Worker. Thus began his career as a prominent communist journalist...

In 1943, he had married Nell Jones, 20 years his senior and a Daily Worker switchboard operator. Nevertheless, he soon renewed his acquaintance with Margaret Powell, whom he had first met in Barcelona as a volunteer nurse working at the front. He divorced Nell in 1950 and married Margaret the same year.

As the paper's diplomatic correspondent, Russell covered "show" trials in central and eastern Europe, which he accepted as genuine. He began to have doubts later, and they hardened after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which he, like the British party, opposed. He was Moscow correspondent from 1955 to 1959, and those years – during which he became a close friend of Donald Maclean, the spy who left Britain in 1951 and who was also a communist critical of the Soviet system – only added to his disenchantment. Russell found his attempts to report the experience of everyday life an irritant both to the Soviet authorities and his editor in London. The Soviet Communist party even asked for Russell to be withdrawn, but the British Communist party refused.