ANDREW WHITEHEAD
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Political Voices:
Mick Mindel

Political Voices: Mick Mindel 
​


Mick Mindel (1909-1994) was for many years a leading trade unionist in the garment industry in the East End of London. He was a member of (or sympathiser with) the Communist Party from the late 1920s until the 1950s. His life story and political activism is recounted in Jonathan Freedland's Jacob's Gift (2005). I got to know Mick and his wife Sylvia quite well and visited them several times at their home in Stoke Newington High Street. I am posting here all three of my long interviews with Mick.

I first interviewed Mick on 13 March 1988. That conversation lasted more than two hours. The YouTube post includes the first hour or so of the interview. The full interview is posted above.as audio files. A transcript is pasted below. The conversation was wide-ranging including his family's history in Eastern Europe, growing up in Rothschild Buildings in Spitalfields, his father Bundist sympathies, and anacrhist activity and cultural endeavour in the Jewish East End before the First World War, including the Workers' Circle and the Yiddish political press. He talks about the growth of the Communist movement in the East End, its organisation, the 'Battle' of Cable Street in 1936 and Phil Piratin's election as a Communist MP in 1945. He also reflects on the organisation of the tailoring trades in the East End and his prominent role in the tailoring trades unions and in advocating amalgamation into an industry-wide union.

I interviewed Mick Mindel on two other occasions. The audio of both of these is posted below - the interviews have not been transcribed. We talked on 14 December 1992 about Mick's activism in the United Ladies' Tailors trade union and his expulsion in 1936 and bounce back and his friendship and political collaboration with Sara Wesker, as well as local Communist Party activity, attitudes and social mores.

In our final conversation on 20 December 1992, Mick covered more about his family's history and his parents' reaction to the 1917 Russian Revolution ('I have very vivid memories, bcause meetings were held in our house ... great excitement ... the problem of anti-semitism is solved, the future is ours'), visiting Germany in 1932-3, trade union activity and his gradual disillusionment with Communism after the Second World War.


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  • Home
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    • London Fictions >
      • Alexander Baron
      • A walk round Baron's manor
      • John Sommerfield >
        • John Sommerfield Archive
        • John Sommerfield's Spanish notebook
        • John Sommerfield, 'More Room for Us'
      • Lynne Reid Banks
      • "Against the Tyranny of Kings and Princes": radicalism in George Gissing's 'Workers in the Dawn'
      • 'Beyond Boundary Passage'
      • 'London' by Dorf Bonarjee
    • A Mission in Kashmir >
      • Full text: A Mission in Kashmir
      • 'The People's Militia: Communists and Kashmiri nationalism in the 1940s'
      • The Rise and Fall of New Kashmir
      • The Making of the 'New Kashmir' manifesto
      • 'For the Conversion of Kashmir'
      • 'I shall paint my nails with the blood of those that covet me'
      • Freda Bedi looking 'From a Woman's Window' on Kashmir
      • Kashmir 1947: Testimonies of a Contested History
      • Kashmir @ 70
      • Kashmir 47 Images
      • Kashmir 47 on film
      • Kashmir 47 in fiction
      • Father Shanks's Kashmir 'Diary'
      • Krishna Misri: 1947, a year of change
      • Shanti Ambardar: Kashmir 1947
    • The O'Brienites >
      • Martin Boon
      • Dan Chatterton
      • George E. Harris
      • John Radford and the Kansas colony
      • Edward Truelove
      • 'New World'
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      • Popular Politics and Social Structure in Clerkenwell >
        • The Residents of Clerkenwell
        • The Occupational Structure of Clerkenwell
        • Clerkenwell and Reform
        • Fenians, Reformers and the Clerkenwell "Outrage"
        • Clerkenwell: Socialism Finds a Niche
        • Clerkenwell: Not Forgetting the Anarchists
      • Red London: radicals and socialists in late-Victorian Clerkenwell
      • Patriotic Club
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      • Political Voices: Mick Mindel
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      • Political Voices: Ralph Russell
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      • Political Voices: Dorothy Thompson
      • Political Voices: E.P. Thompson
      • Political Voices: Tom Wilson
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      • The Land Song
      • Harry Pollitt on disc
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      • New Left: Headopoly
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    • 'What's Left of Communism?'
    • 'India: a people partitioned'
    • India's Minorities
    • Documentaries and Features
    • From Our Own Correspondent >
      • FOOC: Working at Westminster 1990
      • FOOC: Ulster's Talking Shop 1991
      • FOOC: House Rules at Westminster 1992
      • FOOC: India's Red Fort State
      • FOOC: Keeping Kosher in Cuba
      • FOOC: Italy's Gourmand Communists 1992
      • FOOC: Scoundrel Politicians - 1993
      • FOOC: Kashmir's New Puritans 1993
      • FOOC: The Rajah of Bihar 1993
      • FOOC: Bringing the Gospel to Mizoram 1993
      • FOOC: Netaji, India's Lost Leader 1994
      • FOOC: A Self-Respect Wedding 1994
      • FOOC: The Miseries of Manipur 1994
      • FOOC: Village Bangladesh 1994
      • FOOC: Calcutta's Communists Discover Capitalism 1995
      • FOOC: Localism in Ladakh 1995
      • FOOC: Bhutan, not quite Paradise
      • FOOC: Crime and Indian Politics 1995
      • FOOC: Sonia Gandhi 1995
      • FOOC: Sri Lanka's Missing Leaders 1995
      • FOOC: India Votes 1996
      • FOOC: Communism Revisited 1996
      • FOOC: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan 1996
      • FOOC: Kerala's Jewish Community 1996
      • FOOC: India's Corruption Scandals 1996
      • FOOC: The Maldives Crowded Capital 1996
      • FOOC: India's Polluted Capital 1996
      • FOOC: Jinnah, Pakistan's Quaid 1997
      • FOOC: Mauritius, an Indian Ocean melting pot
      • FOOC: The Hijras Blessing 1998
      • FOOC: Massacre at Baramulla 2003
      • FOOC: An Old Photo from Kashmir 2007
      • FOOC: Prosperity Driven from Detroit 2008
      • FOOC: An Atheist in MLK's Atlanta2013
      • FOOC: San Francisco's City Lights 2014
      • FOOC: Kashmir Revisited 2014
      • FOOC: By Ferry in Burma 2014
      • FOOC: Toyah's Grave 2017
      • FOOC: The Tibetan Colony in Kashmir 2017
      • FOOC: Stars of Tamil Politics 2018
      • FOOC: Koreans in Chennai 2018
      • FOOC: Epitaph to Empire 2019
      • FOOC: Armenians in India 2019
      • FOOC: Lahore's Bradlaugh Hall 2020
    • What's your favourite political song?
    • London Snapshots
  • Writing
    • Bibliography
    • Tramping Artisans
    • Working Class Housing in Jericho, Oxford
    • New Statesman
    • The Freethinker
    • Outlook
    • Asian Age
    • Indian Express
    • miscellaneous writing
  • Gallery
  • Contact