Fred
Copeman
was
born in Wangford Union Workhouse
in Suffolk, in 1907. His mother and his brother George were also in
the workhouse. At the age of nine Copeman was employed on the workhouse
farm but eventually he was transferred to a children's home in Beccles.
When Copeman was
14 years old he joined the Navy. Over the next few years he served
on the Ganges before moving to
the battleship Valiant, where
he became the captain's runner. This was followed by service on the
ships Stuart, Emperor
of India and the Royal Oak.
In September 1931
the National Government led by Ramsay
MacDonald announced
a reduction in pay for sailors serving in the Royal
Navy.
The actual reductions were Admiral (7 per cent), Lieutenant Commander
(3.7 per cent), Chief Petty Officer (11.8 per cent) and Able Seaman
(23 per cent).
Copeman thought
this was unfair and helped organize what became known as the Invergordon
Mutiny. Copeman was a member of the strike committee that persuaded
the sailors on 15 ships of the Atlantic Fleet not to obey orders until
the pay cuts were reviewed. The strike lasted for two days and was
called off when the wage cuts were withdrawn. As a leader of the revolt,
Copeman was victimized, and was forced to leave the Royal
Navy.
In November 1931
Copeman joined the Transport
and General Workers Union and
obtained work as a rigger in the London docks. He also became a member
of the Communist Party and was active
in the National Unemployed Workers' Movement. Later he joined the
Constructional Engineering Union and became President of the Greenwich
Branch.
On the outbreak
of the Spanish Civil
War Copeman decided to join the International
Brigades in defence of the Popular
Front government. On 26th November, 1936, Copeman took
to boat train to France. He was wounded at
Jarama
but he recovered and later became commander of the British
Battalion.
Copeman taken
ill just before the offensive at Teruel
in December 1937. He was suffering from a gangrenous appendix and
a splinter from a bullet that had entered the lining of the stomach.
After the operation he was sent back to England to recover.
Soon after arriving back
in England he was elected to the Executive Committee of the Communist
Party. In November
1938 Copeman was a member of an official delegation to Germany,
Poland
and the Soviet Union. He was disillusioned
by the level of inequality in the Soviet Union and on his return he
ceased to be a member of the Communist
Party.
In the Second
World War Copeman was placed in charge of public shelters in Westminster.
He worked closed with Herbert
Morrison
and in November 1945 was
awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE). That year also saw
him elected as Labour Party councillor in
Lewisham.
Copeman's
autobiography, Reason in Revolt,
was published in 1948. Fred
Copeman,
who worked as a foreman in at the Ford Motor Company in Dagenham,
died in 1983.
Brigade Commanders
of the International
Brigades: Oliver Law (United
States ),
Fort (France), Fred Copeman (Britain),
Johnson (United States ) and Josip
Tito (Yugoslavia).
(1)
Fred Copeman, Reason in Revolt (1948)
This life of mine started in the year 1907
at the Wangford Union, a Workhouse near Beccles, Suffolk. I can still
vaguely remember the cold uncharitableness of the place and its inhuman
poverty. Most of the two or three hundred
inmates were very old, and many were treated as hospital patients.
Looking back through memory's years, I see an
atmosphere of hopelessness which gave me, surrounded as I was by the
old, the infirm and even the insane, the feeling
that all had come here to die. Life was a continuous repetition of
work, sleep and funerals. I could never make out why so many people
had to die.
All the ground floors,
with the exception of the Master's quarters, were of stone. The upper
walls and ceilings were a dirty cream, the lower part a monotonous
battleship grey. The dining hall to me was a huge place. It had lines
of well scrubbed tables and stools on the stone floor. There was one
small, round, closed-in iron stove, with a long chimney reaching to
the ceiling. The dormitories were on the first and second floors,
with the infirm people in two wings, one for men and the other for
women. There were buildings attached to either wing for the male and
female tramps, who appeared to have a life of their own organised
separately from the Workhouse itself. The tramps, curiously enough,
were the envy of the inmates because of their freedom to leave at
will.
My mother was a little
old lady, thin and frail, and almost totally deaf. She seemed unhappy.
She always seemed to be discussing what she would do when her ship
came home. All the inmates had this habit and talked constantly of
what they would do when they got out. Very few of them ever left,
however.
I would often meet Mother,
scrubbing the stone passages which, to me, were miles long. It seemed
that she did all the work. She was perpetually on her knees, and her
hands were rough and sore from being so much in cold and dirty water.
Talk between us was difficult, and for that reason she seldom showed
her feelings. Even at that age I felt pity for her, coupled with hatred
for those who were better off. I compared her with the Master, the
cooks or the women who worked in his quarters. They appeared well
off in comparison.
Our Sundays were never
the happy time they might have been, sitting at the table in the bare
dining hall separated from the others, because her deafness made us
shout, causing much noise. This drew attention to us, making us feel
we were the joke of the crowd. George often cried. How I hated all
of them for it. Looking back, I realise that Mother had a real deep
love for us. Though she never displayed it openly, I sensed it all
the same. Often I
saw her crying, but could not get to know the reason. I never knew
a father, and if he existed she seldom mentioned him.
(2)
The cook at the Wangford Union workhouse was a socialist
and she helped to influence Fred Copeman's political opinions. He
wrote about it in his autobiography, Reason in Revolt (1948)
Very early in life I began to see and rebel
against the inequalities and injustices in human society. I saw the
difference between the life of the Master and that of the inmates;
to me, a lad of ten, the lavish meals served to him and his family
in their private dining-room, the ease and comfort of their surroundings,
was a contrast to the poor food, scanty and badly cooked, the stone
floors, drab, bare walls and corridors, and the plain hard furniture
and tiny metal beds considered suitable for the inmates.
(3)
Speech made by Fred Copeman at a meeting of sailors in September 1931.
So long as we are agreed that the cuts in
their present form are unjust, there remains the problem of what to
do about it.
It seems to me that it's time we expressed our opinions in a more
organised way, and I propose that you return to your ships and see
that the Port Watch act with us. It will be foolish for us to do anything
here without the other half of the men knowing what it is all about.
Sleeping in the canteen is daft, and to try to march down to Glasgow
is even madder. We are sailors, not soldiers, and our strength is
in the Fleet itself. Whatever we do, everybody must be in it. There
must be no question of splitting one section from another. The Marines
must enter this fight with us at the beginning.
(4)
Statement issued by the Invergordon
strike committee in September 1931.
The loyal subjects of His Majesty the King,
do hereby present to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty our
earnest representations to them to revise the drastic cuts in pay
that have been inflicted upon the lowest paid men of the lower deck.
It is evident to all concerned that these cuts are the forerunner
of tragedy, poverty, and immorality amongst the families of the men
of the lower deck. The men are quite willing to accept a cut, which
they, the men, think within reason, and unless this is done, we must
remain as one unit refusing to serve under the new rates of pay.
(5)
Fred Copeman, Reason in Revolt (1948)
The Communist party headquarters at King Street
made all arrangements. This was on 26th November, 1936. A party of
us took the normal boat train to France, arrived in Paris in the evening,
and left later the same night for Perpignan, a town in the south-west
comer of France. It is interesting to note that Shapayev, now known
as Tito, was in charge of this place at that time. The following day
we arrived at this small town, which had become the focal point of
all those wishing to serve the Republican Government. I found myself
one of some three hundred volunteers from Britain.
In the late evening of
the third day we travelled in lorries over the Pyrenees, and early
the next morning reached Figueras, the rallying point for all volunteers,
just inside the Spanish border. When we arrived there were already
five or six hundred people there - a moving population - people coming
and going every day. We stayed a day
ourselves.
At Figueras I was elected
to take charge of the British contingent, now some four hundred strong.
The plan was to go through Barcelona to Albacete, General Franco's
home town, which had become the headquarters of the International
Brigade. It was a journey of some two hundred and fifty miles. No
sign of fighting was seen on the roads. The Spanish villages, with
their small clusters of single-storey buildings around the church,
looked peaceful in comparison to the news which at that time was going
out to the world from Spain.
(6)
Fred Copeman was wounded at the offensive at Jarma. He wrote about
it in his autobiography, Reason in Revolt (1948)
Stretcher bearers were going back now in long
lines. Kit Conway had got one in the stomach and was obviously not
going to live long. Ken Stalker, the Commander of No. 2 Section had
been wounded. In fact, most of the leadership had gone. I decided
to find out where this machine-gun that was making it hot for us was
stationed. Turning round to look for its exact location, I felt a
burning in my hand, and looking down saw that the inside of my watch
had gone. There were two holes in my sleeve, and a piece of bullet
protruded from my hand. Within seconds the burning became almost intolerable.
I grasped hold of the bullet
and pulled. It must have been well embedded, it wouldn't move. I cursed
everybody and everything I could think of, but the wound was not bleeding
so I decided to wrap it up in the field dressing and go back later.
I turned to the hill,
and almost immediately received one in the head. It was a curious
feeling, rather like receiving
morphia. Everything went warm and I felt sleepy. All that I looked
at had a red tinge about it, and yet I could still see to move around.
By this tune the pain in the hand had gone, and I almost forgot that
the bullet was there.
The casualties were continuing
to come back now very thick. Only a couple of dozen men with Sam Wilde
were left on the white house hill. I suddenly realised that the pinkness
was from blood running from my eye. I started back with Danny Gibson
towards the dressing station. I was convinced that half my head had
disappeared, when in actual fact the wound was not too bad. Danny's
was pretty awful. Blood was pouring out of him. By now we were on
all fours crawling. Somebody passed on a stretcher and was immediately
killed from a hail of bullets that spattered around us. I woke up
in a front-line dressing station somewhere near Marata.
It was here I met Kit Conway,
who was obviously dying. The simple sincerity of people like Kit makes
the struggle for social justice the inspiring thing it is. Kit was
in terrible agony, and yet his one concern was that he may have been
responsible for the slaughter that had taken place. Six hundred and
thirty men had entered the line and there were
not more than eighty left unwounded, and the percentage of killed
was very high. It was hard to convince him that
our fighting had taken place in the toughest, bloodiest battle of
the whole Spanish campaign, and that it had been decisive in the defence
of the Madrid-Valencia road.
(7)
Laurie
Lee, A
Moment of War (1991)
Franco had held Teruel for three years, a vulnerable
line towards the coast, and when the Republicans recaptured it that
Christmas it was thought that fortune had changed at last, that the
days of retreat were over.
The worst was only beginning.
The occupation of Teruel had been by Spanish troops only. No International
Brigades were called on. Then Franco began his counterattack with
an artillery barrage so heavy, they said, that it clipped off the
tops of the hills and completely altered the landscape. Protected
by the Condor Legion, and two Generals in a twelve-carriage train,
the Army Corps of Castile and Galicia began to advance and the Republicans
had to give up their brief-held prize.
As the weather worsened,
the International Brigades were at last brought in. Fred Copeman,
who commanded the British battalion, fell ill, and Bill Alexander
took over. The 'Major Attlee' company received its christening, and
thirteen men were killed the first day. Slowly the Republicans retreated
outside the city, when the very war itself was halted by a four day
blizzard, the worst in generations, during which men and their weapons
froze together.
(8)
Fred
Copeman, letter
in the The Manchester Guardian
(26th October 1938)
Nearly a thousand survivors of the British battalion of
the International Brigade will shortly be returning to this country
in accordance with the decision of the Spanish Government to evacuate
all foreign volunteers of whatever category serving in the Republican
Army. The story of the International Column, as it was then called,
dates back to November, 1936, when the arrival of the first contingent
of volunteers from all parts of the globe coincided with a stiffening
of the defence
of Madrid and the halt of Fascism at the very gates of the city. The
British battalion was founded as a separate unit in the following
February and underwent its baptism of fire in the valley of Jarama,
when it took a prominent part in repelling the Fascist onslaught on
the Madrid-Valencia road, thus preserving essential communications
between Madrid and the rest of Republican Spain. From that day, February
12, 1937, until the latest Ebro offensive the British battalion has
blazed a path of glory. Many of this band of heroic Britons have fallen
in the struggle for the freedom of Spain and for democracy the world
over. They will never rise again, but the cause of liberty and justice
which moved them to offer their services to the Spanish people will
live for ever.
Those who have survived
and who will be returning home shortly will come back with their heads
held high. They have
done something to redeem the honour of the British people, as a people
that loves freedom and fair play. Many will be
disabled, others wounded, and all will have a tale to tell of dangers
braved and hardships undergone. Shell-fire and aerial bombardment
were only a part of the tests which these men have faced. Beneath
the burning Spanish sun, in the snow of Teruel, without food for days
at a time in periods of heavy action, undergoing operations for the
extraction of shrapnel often without anaesthetic, spending sleepless
nights in digging trenches, dirty, lousy, weary, and hungry, these
men have kept alive that fierce spirit of determination that democracy
shall triumph over Fascism. They have known all the exigencies and
perils of war plus extremes of privation and want, some of them due
the policy of non-intervention which prevents the Spanish people from
obtaining adequate food and medical supplies.
It is our duty to see that
when they come home they shall have clothes, food, and other necessities
to tide them over
the period until they are able to obtain work. It is doubly our duty
because these men, who have been steeled in the heat
and fires of battle, have a leading role to play in the struggles
that lie ahead of democracy in this country. We appeal, therefore,
to your readers to help us immediately in collecting 3000 pairs of
boots, overcoats, and suits. They can be sent direct to me, or if
money is sent we can buy them at wholesale prices.
(9)
Fred Copeman, visited the Soviet Union in
November 1938. He wrote about his experiences in his autobiography,
Reason in Revolt (1948)
Our visit to the Stalin Auto Plant gave me
a shock. We passed through an avenue, banked on either side with scrap
metal - it looked like the walls of a canyon. This was made up, the
interpreter told us, of the cars which had been unable
to start when they left the belt. They were picked up by a crane and
dumped on to this scrap heap. As this had been
going on for some years there was enough scrap to keep the place going
for some time. The factory itself was a colossal organisation after
the style of Ford's at Dagenham, producing tractors, lorries and cars,
on the moving belt system. It was on reaching the large workshop with
the hundreds of engineers, each at his own lathe, that I received
a most unpleasant surprise. I was well aware of the Stakhanovite Movement,
which is the Russian equivalent of our piece-
work system. I remembered, and had taken part in, the protest against
"Bedaux" and was therefore quite shocked when the interpreter
started to explain the meaning of the hundreds of small red flags,
each attached to a wire on every lathe.
Here and there a flag
would be at the top of the mast, but in the main they all remained
at the same level. As a trade unionist I needed no more explanation.
The mass of workers were deciding just how fast they intended to go,
and
the efforts of the Stakhanovites were being treated in exactly the
same way as those of our own speed merchants in any
British factory - with mistrust and resentment. I noticed the glances
of the majority of the engineers when our deputation was taken over
to one of these speed boys. I had understood that communism won the
goodwill of the workers because of the righteousness of its case.
Here a system of coercion was being used, and it looked as though
the mass of the workers had little time for it.
(10)
Fred Copeman, Reason in Revolt (1948)
My general impression
of the standard of life of the Russian people was that it was far
below that of even the lowest-paid workers in Great Britain. It is
true there was no unemployment and that many things were being done
for the Russian workers which were outside present possibilities for
the British worker. Yet somewhere, something very important was missing.
Everything seemed to be organised from the top. Our own accommodation
and meals were lavish compared with those of the ordinary people.
A visit to the Soviet, which I had hoped would give
me renewed inspiration, was making me, if anything, cynical,
and certainly doubtful of the final success of the Party's tremendous
economic experiment.
I have always had a rather
extreme attitude to this question
of sharing the riches of the world, and have found it hard
to accept a principle which lets some live lavishly while others
starve. I realised that there could never be complete equality,
but had always hoped that extremes of squalor and luxury
side by side would not be possible under Communist rule.
My own refusal to wear an officer's uniform during the
Spanish War after all others had accepted it, was a natural
expression of the deep-rooted feelings I had about this
question.
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