Allen Hutt papers

Catalogue record

Notes

Series CP/IND/HUTT: Allen Hutt (1901-73) was a Cambridge-educated communist who joined the CPGB in 1922 having previously been national secretary of the communist-dominated University Socialist Federation. Through a paternal lineage of master printers, Hutt took pride in a family involvement in the publishing industry dating from the seventeenth century. Translating this into a left-wing context, Hutt worked variously for the Daily herald, whose staff he joined in 1923, the communist Workers' weekly; the Soviet news agency TASS; Palme Dutt's Labour monthly; and Trade Union Unity, a short-lived venture of TUC 'lefts' like A. A. Purcell. His trade union contacts were reflected in his first book Communism and Coal (1928), a collaboration with Arthur Horner, and his voluminous correspondence with the Fife miners' leader David Proudfoot. After a spell at the International Lenin School and two years as chief sub-editor at the newly launched Daily Worker (1930–32), Hutt produced a series of books on British working-class politics, the best of them, The condition of the working class in Britain (1933), revealing a flair for the investigative side of journalism as well as its technical aspects. It was nevertheless to the latter that Hutt owed a reputation that extended well beyond the left. In 1936 he joined the co-operative-owned Reynolds news with a special brief for the paper's redesign and six years later rejoined the Daily Worker following its temporary wartime ban. These were halcyon days for British communists, whose optimism for the post-war world was focused on the 'new' Daily Worker that would match the best that Fleet Street had to offer. Hutt as chief sub-editor made perhaps the outstanding contribution to such a goal, and earned the respect both of his colleagues and of his profession. These activities are well documented in Hutt's papers, which include an important personal correspondence going back to the 1920s. For a quarter of a century Hutt also sat on the executive of the National Union of Journalists, edited its monthly paper and in 1967 was made its president. He remained with the Daily worker until his retirement in 1966: the year in which, to his dismay and contempt, the paper changed its name to the Morning star.