Indian Communists and Trade Unionists on Trial: The Meerut Conspiracy, 1929–1933 - Key Data

The Meerut Conspiracy Case was a controversial legal saga that played out in British India between 1929 and early 1933. It began with the arrest and subsequent trial of twenty-nine trade unionists, including three Englishmen. It was alleged that they had attempted “to deprive the King Emperor of the sovereignty of British India”. They were charged under Section 121A of the Indian Penal Code. Containing over 10,000 images, this collection includes petitions and resolutions in support of the Meerut prisoners and the wider Indian labour movement. It includes papers from Indian police intelligence files, such as surveillance reports, alongside writings by the defendants, including Philip Spratt and Lester Hutchinson, as well as the papers of William Gillies and Benjamin Francis Bradley.

The case was symptomatic of the British government’s fear of the spread of communist and socialist ideas. There was a widespread belief that Marxist ideology, propagated amongst workers by trade unionists and the Communist Party of India (CPI), would undermine British rule. Ultimately, twenty-seven trade union leaders were convicted. Rather than curbing communist activism, however, the trial gave the defendants a powerful public platform, helping to strengthen the CPI’s position within Indian politics.

Drawn from the holdings of the Labour History Archive & Study Centre and the Working Class Movement Library, this collection reveals how the British left responded to one of colonial India’s most significant political trials.