SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
David Ivon Jones (1883-1924): the African from Aberystwyth
Although he was a legendary organiser in South Africa — where he was an early advocate of racial unity, and he was finally buried with honours in Moscow — it is in his native Wales that this hero needs recognition, writes ROBERT GRIFFITHS
WHEN the body was brought to Moscow on Saturday June 14 1924, it was received by deputations from the Soviet government, the Red Army, Russian factories, the Comintern, the Youth International and many of the world’s new-born communist parties.
The four Communist Party representatives from Britain carried a wreath on which was inscribed: “To the memory of a great South African fighter.”
Except that the dead man was not South African at all. He was a Welsh-speaking native of Aberystwyth in Cardiganshire, a former preacher in the town’s Unitarian chapel and an ex-correspondent for the West Wales Gazette.
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