Indian Communists and Trade Unionists on Trial: The Meerut Conspiracy, 1929-1933 - Volumes
Volumes
4 volumes in Indian Communists and Trade Unionists on Trial: The Meerut Conspiracy, 1929-1933
Selected India Office Records
The following documents, drawn chiefly from the IOR/L/PJ/12 series held at the British Library, illustrate the establishment's reaction to both the Meerut trial as well as its general awareness, and indeed perceived fear, of the growing influence of the Communist International (Comintern) in India. Many papers here, extracted from the Indian Police Intelligence files, comprise surveillance reports and concentrate on many organisations and individuals with communist associations, including the three... Read more →
Ben Bradley papers
Benjamin Francis Bradley (1898-1957) was a communist metalworker, born in Walthamstow, who was sent to India to promote militant trade unionism in 1927 and sentenced in the Meerut Conspiracy Trial five years later. Bradley's papers are an indispensable source for the episode and include extensive prison correspondence, documents from the Meerut trial and records of the international campaigns of solidarity with the defendants. They also contain his notes for a... Read more →
Selected files from the William Gillies papers
William Gillies (1885-1958) was the first International Secretary of the Labour Party between 1920 and 1944. These selected files, housed at the Labour History Archive & Study Centre, Manchester, offer a unique window into the national, and largely negative, reaction to the arrest and sentencing of the Meerut prisoners. Split across two documents, the first comprises the multitudinous petitions and resolutions passed by national and regional bodies in support of... Read more →
Miscellaneous books and pamphlets relating to the trial
The material here offers analytical and autobiographical accounts of some of the chief accused in the Meerut trial, namely Philip Spratt and Lester Hutchinson. There are also a plethora of pamphlets and other material in support of the prisoners from following arrest in 1929 to conviction in 1933. Drawn from both the Labour History Archive & Study Centre and Working Class Movement Library, these documents provide a comprehensive window into... Read more →
