Tom Mann for the Defense of Chen Du Siu

(Autumn 1933)


From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 50, 4 November 1933, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.


On Sept. 7th, 1933, the organ of our British comrades, the Red Flag, addressed an open letter to Tom Mann, old trade union militant and veteran of many labor struggles in the British Empire, asking him his stand on the imprisonment of comrade Chen Du Siu, founder of the Chinese Communist Party and secretary of the Chinese section of the Left Opposition until his incarceration. The Stalinists have cynically ignored comrade Chen Du Siu, criminally abandoning him to the hangmen of the Kuo Min Tang and covering this stalwart revolutionary with abuse and infamy. The following letter speaks for the class loyalty of Tom Mann, his undivided devotion to the proletariat as a whole and not in the interests of any faction in it. – Ed.



Dear Comrade,

I have read the letter addressed to me which appears in the Red Flag. When in China in 1927 I attended the opening of the Chinese Communist Party Congress at Hankow, and I considered comrade Chen Du Siu and his colleagues a capable and courageous body of comrades. When the arrests and imprisonments followed I have on many occasions at public gatherings emphatically protested against the imprisonment and demanded the release of all class war prisoners.

If my signature is of any value by way of protest or demand I am ready to append same, and I count it my duty to continue to develop opinion till it shall be equal to demanding and securing the release of our comrade.

(signed TOM MANN)


Last updated on 4 January 2016