Harry Thompson (radical lawyer)

William Henry Thompson (1885–1947), known as Harry or W. H. Thompson, was an English radical lawyer closely involved with trade unions, in the later part of his life associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He was married to Joan Beauchamp, a prominent suffragette.[1][2]

Early life

He was the son of William Henry Thompson (c.1830–1904), a warehouse owner who ran a wholesale grocery business in Preston, Lancashire and Methodist, and his wife Martha née Thompson (died 1920); he was the younger son in a family of five girls and four boys. His maternal grandfather John Thompson was a Cumbrian, who prospered in Preston and was also a radical.[3][4] His sister Constance Sumner Thompson was a schoolmistress and mother of A. J. P. Taylor.[2][5] According to Taylor, Harry was the brightest child in a family of six, but a "clever-clogs".[4] Margaret Cole described him as "a tall handsome athletic fellow, excelling in all games".[6]

Harry Thompson was educated at Preston Grammar School. He was then articled in 1902 to William Bramwell & Co., Preston solicitors, through the support of Percy Taylor, Constance's husband and a close friend of George Lansbury. He was there for five years, and qualified as a solicitor in 1909.[7] He set up on his own at Longton, Staffordshire.[8]

Coming into contact there with John Ward, Thompson from an early point had trade union work and close links.[8][1][9] He practised in north Staffordshire.[10]

World War I

During World War I Thompson was from 1916 a conscientious objector, "absolutist" and on a principle of individual liberty.[11] He was imprisoned and spent some time in Wakefield Gaol.[1]

Inter-war period

In April 1919 Thompson was released from prison.[12] Thompson had numerous contacts among conscientious objectors. They included Henry Sara, whom he knew from Wakefield Gaol.[13][14] His work in support of conscientious objectors and their families also gained him recognition from Quakers and pacifists.[15] He attended a gathering at Old Jordans where he met up with some of those contacts: they included Joan Beauchamp, James Scott Duckers, Francis Meynell and C. H. Norman.[16] Joan Beauchamp, whom he married in 1921, had acted as parliamentary secretary to the Non-Conscription Fellowship, and had written to him while he was in prison.[17]

Based on advice, Thompson moved his law practice to London. He found work there, and became a leading left-wing lawyer.[18]

Scott Duckers & Thompson

Initially Thompson was in partnership with James Scott Duckers (1883–1941), another conscientious objector who had been imprisoned at Wakefield.[19] The partnership began on 1 September 1919.[20] In 1915 Duckers had represented C. H. (Clarence Henry) Norman, and the Stop the War Committee, in a case arising from a police raid on an Independent Labour Party (ILP) office in Salford, with Holford Knight representing the ILP, and Harold Morris representing Clifford Allen.[21][22] The formation of the partnership was announced in September 1919, with Thompson described as previously at Stoke-on-Trent.[23][24] The bulk of its work was conveyancing.[25]

Scott Duckers & Thompson defended James Winstone in a September 1919 libel action brought by Sir Eric Geddes.[26] In 1920 Duckers was retained to defend John Frederick Hedley of the Socialist Labour Party, charged under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914.[27][28]

1921 cases

In January 1921, Thompson defended Harry Webb, a CPGB organiser in Sheffield.[29] The firm defended a libel action in April 1921, brought in the wake of the Black Friday crisis by J. H. Thomas against the printers of The Communist, the National Labour Press, and its editor, Francis Meynell.[30] Duckers in May 1921 appeared on behalf of Albert Rose, manager of the National Labour Press, in a case concerning literature related to the 3rd World Congress of the Comintern, printed for Albert Inkpin of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).[31] Thompson had been asked to represent Inkpin, to avoid possible conflicts of his interests with the printers', early in May.[32] Shortly after that he was defended by Henry Slesser.[33]

Thompson was solicitor to Poplar Borough Council, and came to prominence in a fiscal case involving councillors that arose from the Poplar Rates Rebellion of 1921.[1] In autumn of that year, as the protest began to spread through London boroughs, Thompson advised a group of imprisoned Poplar councillors in negotiations with a government minister, Alfred Mond, and successfully applied for a court order to have councillors from Poplar and Holloway released.[34]

End of the partnership

Duckers and Thompson differed on party politics, however and went their own ways, a notice appearing that the partnership was dissolved from 31 August 1921.[19][35][36] Duckers had at one point been private secretary to Herbert Samuel.[37] He gave his views on trade unions at a Law Society conference in 1920.[38] He was a Liberal Party candidate, standing in the 1924 Westminster Abbey by-election.[39] Thompson was then a Guild Socialist.[40]

1921 to 1930

Thompson became a specialist in workers' compensation cases, for trades unions, particularly acting for the National Federation of Building Trade Operatives.[41] In medico-legal cases he worked often with Thomas Morison Legge.[42] The firm he founded after the split from Duckers is now known as Thompsons Solicitors. Duckers remained at 2 New Court off Carey Street, off Chancery Lane, while Thompson moved away.[36]

During this decade, Thompson was a member of the ILP. He did not join the CPGB personally, but the Central London branch of the ILP to which he belonged affiliated to the CPGB on its foundation in 1921.[43] He left the CPGB after about two years, never to rejoin, his strong temperance views being incompatible with the CPGB attitude to alcohol.[44] He continued in the long term as a legal adviser to it.[45] He was a director of the Labour Publishing Co., effectively an arm of the Labour Research Department where he was on the Executive Committee from 1921 to 1926.[46] It was with Robert Page Arnot, Walter Baker, H. N. Brailsford, G. D. H. Cole, Fred Hall of the Co-operative College, Henry Devenish Harben, W. H. Hutchinson, Bernard Langdon-Davies and George Lansbury.[47]

Thompson was also legal counsel to Ramsay MacDonald. He gave advice to MacDonald, then Prime Minister, in 1924 on the handling of a gift of money and a car from Alexander Grant of McVitie's biscuits. The detailed advice was not taken. MacDonald then made Grant a baronet later that year, and found he was the target of embarrassing commentary. He felt constrained to return the gifts.[48]

In 1925, 12 of the CPGB leaders were put on trial for seditious libel and incitement to mutiny. Thompson acted as their solicitor.[2][49] The case, which was framed as conspiracy, came before Rigby Swift. Five of the defendants—William Gallacher, Wal Hannington, Albert Inkpin, Harry Pollitt, and William Rust—were imprisoned for 12 months, with others receiving shorter sentences.[50] (Thompson had a shorthand record taken of the trial. The other seven accused were Robert Page Arnot, Thomas Bell, John Ross Campbell, Ernest Walter Cant, Arthur McManus, John Thomas Murphy, and Thomas Henry Wintringham.)[51]

During the General Strike 1926, Shapurji Saklatvala was arrested on a sedition charge. Thompson defended him, Travers Humphreys prosecuting.[52][53] In the Meerut Conspiracy Case of 1929, Thompson was retained by Benjamin Francis Bradley, Lester Hutchinson and Philip Spratt.[54]

Civil liberties

In the aftermath of a police raid on the offices of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement (NUWM) in 1932, Thompson visited Wal Hannington in Pentonville Prison.[55] It led to an important test case, Elias v Pasmore, a victory on the police seizure of documents for the NUWM, which received damages in the absence of a search warrant, but a double-edged one in terms of the precedents set.[56]

In the 1930s Thompson became a significant figure of the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) as its chairman.[57] In January 1935 he defended Roland Park and Ivan Seruya in Jarrow Police Court, on the charge of showing an "inflammable" film in the Miner's Hall, Boldon, the successful defence being funded by the NCCL and the British Institute of Adult Education, the secretary of which from 1934 was William Emrys Williams.[58][59] The Home Office fire expert Lieutenant-Colonel Simmons testified that the film stock of commercial films generally was flammable.[58][60] Seruya was a Londoner, a student at the Regent Street Polytechnic, a CPGB member involved in the Young Communist League and the Friends of the Soviet Union.[61][62] He was under MI5 surveillance by 1933. He took part in the Workers' Theatre Movement, Kino as projectionist, and International Sound Films.[62][60][63][64]

The NCCL was the target of a campaign by Hugh Trenchard and Sir Philip Game, successive Metropolitan Police Commissioners, that sought to represent it as a communist front, and discredit its work.[65] The view of MI5 and Special Branch shifted from an assumption that Ronald Kidd, founder of the NCCL with Sylvia Crowther-Smith, was involved with the CPGB, to attention to a group of lawyers of left-wing views around the organisation, linked to the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. Those included Geoffrey Bing, Dudley Collard, Neil Lawson and John Platts-Mills. Its General Purposes Committee included, as well as Kidd, Crowther-Smith and Thompson, some of those: Bing, Collard and Lawson. There were also on that committee Bruce Binford Hole, D. N. Pritt and, for a time, John Strachey.[66]

Platts-Mills described in his memoirs the conduct of business on the NCCL committee as preceded by a meeting involving such lawyers. He stated that Thompson, after attending some of those meetings, put an end to them, out of concern for the NCCL's reputation.[67][68]

1940s

Shortly before the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Thompson moved residence to Naphill, Buckinghamshire.[69] John Platts-Mills stayed with him, during his time in the Royal Air Force based at Uxbridge.[70] In The Blitz, Chancery Lane suffered bomb damage in summer 1940. John Horner of the Fire Brigades Union made space available to W. H. Thompson & Co. in the union's head office.[71] Thompson also transferred his main law office, from London to High Wycombe.[70]

Thompson's health deteriorated, ahead of his death on 4 August 1947.[72] In 1946, Henry Schramek became sole partner of W. H. Thompson & Co. He was a CPGB member with close connections to the Fire Brigades Union.[73] That year, Owen Parsons (1913/4–1986), who had joined the firm in 1936 and qualified as a solicitor in 1939, left on bad terms, taking some of the trade union business as he set up on his own account. He was a Haldane Society member trained by Thompson, and had been working at High Wycombe in the war years.[74][75] O H Parsons LLP continues in the same fields of work.[76]

Works
  • Workmen's Compensation: an outline of the Acts (1922), Labour Publishing Co.[77]
  • The Trade Union Bill (1927), pamphlet, LRD White Paper Number 35, foreword by George Hicks, London: Labour Research Department[78]
  • Civil Liberties (1938), Left Book Club. It has been called the first treatment of civil liberties in the United Kingdom.[79][80]
  • Workmen's compensation up to date (1944)[81]
  • "Trade Unions and the Law Today",[82] chapter 6 in British Trade Unionism To-Day (1945), edited by G. D. H. Cole

Family

Thompson knew Joan Beauchamp through the No-Conscription Fellowship. They married, and had two sons, Robin and Brian.[83] The sons both joined the Thompsons firm of solicitors in 1947, the year of their father's death, during which the NUPBPW, a printing union, retained Thompsons, after a court case in which W. A. Morrison was defending a refusal to print material for a firm supporting Oswald Mosley.[84][85]

At a later point the brothers separated the firm into two partnerships, in 1974. They merged again in 1996.[86]

Notes
  1. Pilch, Tony (2007). Trades Unions and Globalisation. Smith Institute. p. 86. ISBN 978-1-905370-14-6.
  2. McIlroy, John; Morgan, Kevin; Campbell, Alan (2001). Party People, Communist Lives: Explorations in Biography. Lawrence & Wishart. p. 247. ISBN 978-0-85315-936-0.
  3. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. pp. 17 and 20. ISBN 9780850366389.
  4. Burk, Kathleen (1 January 2000). Troublemaker: The Life and History of A. J. P. Taylor. Yale University Press. pp. 5–6. ISBN 978-0-300-09453-4.
  5. Thompson, A. F. "Taylor, Alan John Percivale (1906–1990)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39823. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. Cole, Margaret (1949). Growing Up Into Revolution. Longmans, Green. p. 67.
  7. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. pp. 20–21. ISBN 9780850366389.
  8. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. p. 25. ISBN 9780850366389.
  9. Barker, Kit; Fairweather, Karen; Grantham, Ross (26 January 2017). Private Law in the 21st Century. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 505 note 12. ISBN 978-1-5099-0858-5.
  10. "Wakefield Gaol Farce". Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 16 September 1918. p. 4.
  11. Burk, Kathleen (1 January 2000). Troublemaker: The Life and History of A. J. P. Taylor. Yale University Press. p. 19. ISBN 978-0-300-09453-4.
  12. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. p. 35. ISBN 9780850366389.
  13. Burk, Kathleen (1 January 2000). Troublemaker: The Life and History of A. J. P. Taylor. Yale University Press. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-300-09453-4.
  14. Gildart, K.; Howell, D.; Kirk, N. (29 April 2016). Dictionary of Labour Biography. Vol. XI. Springer. p. 242. ISBN 978-0-230-50018-1.
  15. Bailey, Victor (1992). Forged in Fire: The History of the Fire Brigades Union. Lawrence & Wishart. p. 320. ISBN 978-0-85315-749-6.
  16. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. pp. 37 and 40. ISBN 9780850366389.
  17. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. p. 43. ISBN 9780850366389.
  18. Burk, Kathleen (1 January 2000). Troublemaker: The Life and History of A. J. P. Taylor. Yale University Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-300-09453-4.
  19. Wrigley, C. J. (25 August 2006). A. J. P. Taylor: Radical Historian of Europe. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-86064-286-9.
  20. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. p. 55. ISBN 9780850366389.
  21. "Police Raid on I.L.P. Offices". Dundee Courier. 10 December 1915. p. 6.
  22. "I.L.P. Police Raid". Westerham Herald. 18 September 1915. p. 7.
  23. "Partnership Made In Gaol". Daily News (London). 8 September 1919. p. 3.
  24. "Personal and Social". Kensington Post. 12 September 1919. p. 4.
  25. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. p. 59. ISBN 9780850366389.
  26. "Libel Action by Sir Eric Geddes". Westminster Gazette. 17 September 1919. p. 12.
  27. "Appeal to All S.L.P. Branches". Socialist (Edinburgh). 26 February 1920. p. 4.
  28. "Defence of the Realm: College Square Speeches". Penistone, Stocksbridge and Hoyland Express. 21 February 1920. p. 7.
  29. "First Division for Political Prisoners". Woman's Dreadnought. 26 February 1921. pp. 4 and 7.
  30. "Another Libel Suit". Northern Whig. 26 April 1921. p. 5.
  31. "Sedition Charges". Westminster Gazette. 19 May 1921. p. 2.
  32. "Communist Secretary Charged". The Scotsman. 10 May 1921. p. 3.
  33. "Inkpin Again In Court". Daily Herald. 12 May 1921. p. 1.
  34. Shepherd, John (19 September 2002). George Lansbury: At the Heart of Old Labour. OUP Oxford. p. 201. ISBN 978-0-19-154205-3.
  35. "James Scott Duckers". menwhosaidno.org.
  36. Pollock, Sir Frederick (1921). The Weekly Notes. Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales. p. 283.
  37. "L.C.C. Election". Westminster Gazette. 3 March 1913. p. 11.
  38. "The Lawyers In Conference". Liverpool Daily Post. 7 October 1920. p. 5.
  39. "'Fetters and Roses' Dinner" (PDF). www.parliament.uk. House of Commons Library.
  40. Briggs, Asa; Saville, John (18 June 1971). Essays in Labour History 1886–1923. Springer. p. 322 note 159. ISBN 978-1-349-00755-4.
  41. Bartrip, Peter W. J. (1987). Workmen's Compensation in Twentieth Century Britain: Law, History, and Social Policy. Avebury. p. 127. ISBN 978-0-566-05485-3.
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  43. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. pp. 55–56. ISBN 9780850366389.
  44. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. p. 61. ISBN 9780850366389.
  45. Moores, Chris (16 February 2017). Civil Liberties and Human Rights in Twentieth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-1-107-08861-0.
  46. "Labour Research Department Archive Part 1 – Institutional Papers" (PDF). student.londonmet.ac.uk. p. 515.
  47. Francis, Pat (1984). "The Labour Publishing Company 1920-9". History Workshop. 18 (18): 115–123. doi:10.1093/hwj/18.1.115. JSTOR 4288591.
  48. Marquand, David (1997). Ramsay MacDonald. Richard Cohen. pp. 357–360. ISBN 978-1-86066-113-6.
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  50. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. pp. 71–72. ISBN 9780850366389.
  51. "Guide to the listing of archives, rylands/gb133rmd". archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk.
  52. Squires, Mike. "Saklatvala, Shapurji (1874–1936)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/35909. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  53. Gleanings and Memoranda. Vol. lxi. 1926. p. 665.
  54. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. pp. 103–104. ISBN 9780850366389.
  55. Ewing, Keith D.; Gearty, C. A. (2001). The Struggle for Civil Liberties: Political Freedom and the Rule of Law in Britain, 1914-1945. Oxford University Press. p. 229. ISBN 978-0-19-876251-5.
  56. Ewing, Keith D.; Gearty, C. A. (2001). The Struggle for Civil Liberties: Political Freedom and the Rule of Law in Britain, 1914-1945. Oxford University Press. p. 232. ISBN 978-0-19-876251-5.
  57. Moores, Chris (16 February 2017). Civil Liberties and Human Rights in Twentieth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-107-08861-0.
  58. Lilly, Mark (1 July 1984). National Council for Civil Liberties: The First Fifty Years. Springer. pp. 22–23. ISBN 978-1-349-17483-6.
  59. Hutchinson, E. M. "Williams, Sir William Emrys (1896–1977)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31838. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  60. Hogenkamp, Bert (18 January 2000). Deadly Parallels. Lawrence & Wishart, Limited. p. 88. ISBN 978-0-85315-912-4.
  61. Beasley, Rebecca; Bullock, Philip Ross (26 September 2013). Russia in Britain, 1880-1940: From Melodrama to Modernism. OUP Oxford. p. 245. ISBN 978-0-19-966086-5.
  62. Macpherson, Don; Willemen, Paul (1980). Traditions of Independence: British Cinema in the Thirties. BFI Pub. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-85170-093-9.
  63. Beasley, Rebecca; Bullock, Philip Ross (26 September 2013). Russia in Britain, 1880-1940: From Melodrama to Modernism. OUP Oxford. p. 250. ISBN 978-0-19-966086-5.
  64. Ryan, Trevor (1986). "Labour and the Media in Britain 1929-1939" (PDF). etheses.whiterose.ac.uk. University of Leeds. p. 340.
  65. Clark, Janet (3 October 2017). The National Council for Civil Liberties and the policing of interwar politics: At liberty to protest. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-1-5261-2958-1.
  66. Moores, Chris (16 February 2017). Civil Liberties and Human Rights in Twentieth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press. pp. 52–53. ISBN 978-1-107-08861-0.
  67. Platts-Mills, John (2001). Muck, Silk and Socialism : recollections of a left-wing Queen's Counsel. Paper. p. 92. ISBN 0-9539949-0-2.
  68. "The Departments of the Communist Party of Great Britain: A Detailed Guide". British Online Archives.
  69. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. p. 92. ISBN 9780850366389.
  70. Platts-Mills, John (2001). Muck, Silk and Socialism : recollections of a left-wing Queen's Counsel. Paper. p. 132. ISBN 0-9539949-0-2.
  71. Bailey, Victor, ed. (1992). Forged in Fire: The History of the Fire Brigades Union. Lawrence & Wishart. p. 458. ISBN 978-0-85315-749-6.
  72. Bailey, Victor, ed. (1992). Forged in Fire: The History of the Fire Brigades Union. Lawrence & Wishart. p. 459. ISBN 978-0-85315-749-6.
  73. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. p. 162. ISBN 9780850366389.
  74. Allen, Steve (2012). Thompsons : a personal history of the firm and its founder. London. pp. 85 and 89. ISBN 9780850366389.
  75. Williams, John L. (Winter 1986). Socialist Lawyer (PDF) (1): 2 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/562e7d33e4b0da14ad6d202f/t/566dca18df40f3a73186cb08/1450035736495/SocialistLawyer01.pdf. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  76. "The leading law firm in Slough, UK. Get the compensation you deserve". ohparsons.co.uk. 26 April 2021. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  77. Bain, G. S.; Woolven, G. B.; Woolven, Gillian B. (29 March 1979). A Bibliography of Industrial Relations. CUP Archive. p. 549. ISBN 978-0-521-21547-3.
  78. "Trade Disputes And Trade Unions Bill Volume 205: debated on Monday 2 May 1927". hansard.parliament.uk.
  79. Moores, Chris (16 February 2017). Civil Liberties and Human Rights in Twentieth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-1-107-08861-0.
  80. Ewing, Keith D.; Gearty, C. A. (2001). The Struggle for Civil Liberties: Political Freedom and the Rule of Law in Britain, 1914-1945. Oxford University Press. p. 229 note 57. ISBN 978-0-19-876251-5.
  81. Statistics, United States Bureau of Labor (1945). Monthly Labor Review. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 1328.
  82. Cole, G. D. H. (7 December 2018). British Trade Unionism To-Day. Routledge. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-429-81122-7.
  83. "Joan Beauchamp". menwhosaidno.org.
  84. Bain, Peter; Gennard, John (8 August 2005). A History of the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades. Routledge. p. 251. ISBN 978-1-134-79090-6.
  85. Bundock, Clement J. (1959). The Story of the National Union of Printing , Bookbinding and Paper Workers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 494–497.
  86. "Working for the union - following a recent merger, Thompsons is the largest trade union and personal injury firm in the country". Law Society Gazette. 15 May 1996.
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