‘The most important Indian fighter for independence outside of India’

Shapurji Dorabji Saklatvala, a member of the wealthy Tata family in India who became a Communist, represented Battersea North in London as a Labour MP from 1922-1923 and from 1924-1929. He was spied on by MI5 and corresponded with Gandhi. TOBY PORTER tells his story.

Shapurji Saklatvala was born March 28, 1874 in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, the son of a merchant.

He worked briefly as an iron and coal prospector for his uncle’s firm, Tata, India’s largest commercial and industrial empire, successfully unearthing iron ore and coal deposits.

But he began to suffer from malaria, which led to his moving to England in 1905 to convalesce and run Tata’s Manchester office.

On August 14, 1907 Saklatvala married an English woman, Sarah Elizabeth Marsh, whom he met when she was working as a hotel waitress while staying at Matlock, Derbyshire.

The couple had three sons and two daughters.

Mr Saklatvala was a committed socialist and joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in Manchester in 1909.

He was introduced to Battersea in 1919 by a pan-Africanist champion, John Archer, who became the first black mayor in London in 1913.

 

In the October 1922 general election, the Communist Party of Great Britain launched its first electoral campaign, putting forward candidates in six constituencies.

Mr Saklatvala ran in the Battersea North district of London, one of two Communists to receive the official endorsement of the Labour Party – which was in effect an umbrella organisation which included affiliated political parties like the ILP as well as representatives of various trade unions.

He won in North Battersea, receiving 11,311 votes – topping his nearest rival with a majority of more than 2,000. He spoke at rallies in Trafalgar Square and filled the square with the hunger marches for the unemployed.

His frequent visits to Ireland were to support Irish independence. In the main road in Dublin, O’Connell Street, he would be watched by more than 10,000 people.

The 1924 general election came in the wake of the so-called Zinoviev letter – a forged letter designed to discredit the Labour Party – and saw the Conservatives increase their vote by more than two million to win the election.

The Labour Party saw a net loss of 42 seats despite contesting more constituencies than ever. In Battersea North, Saklatvala ran without formal Labour Party endorsement for the first time, but still managed to win by a slimmer margin of 544 votes, the only one of eight communist candidates elected.

He was imprisoned in 1926 during the general strike for a speech he gave in support of the striking miners and spent two months in Wormwood Scrubs Prison – he was arrested for sedition, refused to be bound over to keep the peace, so was jailed.

He stood – unsuccessfully – as a Communist only once, in 1929.

By that time, the Labour Party had distanced itself from Communists like Saklatvala. He ran again in 1930 in a by-election in Glasgow Shettleston without success, and mounted a final losing campaign in the 1931 general election in Battersea.

Since MI5 papers, including files on Shapurji Saklatvala, were opened to the public in 2000, fresh information emerged about just how seriously the British state regarded him as a threat to the status quo, and about his deep involvement with anti-colonial politics.

After one visit to India, the British authorities made sure Mr Saklatvala never again visited the country of his birth, for fear he would stir up trouble for the Raj.

He died, from a heart attack, on January 16, 1936 at his home, in Highgate.

His funeral procession was reported to have been more than a mile long. Condolences came from all over the world. After a funeral service at Golders Green Crematorium, his ashes were buried at Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, where the British Parsi community owns a large plot of land, next to his parents and JN Tata – founder of the Tata Group.

Biographer Marc Wadsworth said: “He was the most important Indian fighter for independence outside of India in the 20th century.

“Saklatvala was ahead of his time in terms of extra parliamentary action, supporting the hunger marches, supporting the unemployed, supporting the Irish struggle, anti-colonial struggles throughout the world.

“He understood that you couldn’t just fight for Indian independence – it was interconnected with the causes of the oppressed throughout the world. And that’s what he championed.”

He made it clear his biography of Saklatvala was not a hagiography. “He was wrong in his dispute with Gandhi” over how to achieve Indian independence.

“As Saklatvala repeatedly charged, Labour in power frequently displayed attitudes and practices towards empire, colonialism and, frankly, in the racist immigration laws it brought in, that differed little from those of the Conservatives.

“Saklatvala’s principled, internationalist and socialist critique of empire was never shared by more than a minority of members of the Labour party, with the exception… of small groups on the left.”

Wadsworth’s biography (£14.99) published by Peepal Tree Press, which specialises in hidden black history.