William Rust 1903 -1949
As you can see from the chart above, William Rust was Mary Alice Willis’s second cousin on her mother’s side of the family. They were both great-grandchildren of Charles Treavish and his wife Mary. William and Mary Alice were similar ages and were both born and brought up in South London, only a few miles apart. I guess that it’s possible that they might have met as children.
William Rust was born on the 24th of April 1903 and was baptised at St Luke’s Church, Peckham on the 15th of May 1903. He was the second child of Frederick and Eliza Rust. Frederick was a bookbinder.
The early 1900s were a time of great change for Britain and the western world. Queen Victoria died in 1901 and the First World War was fought between 1914 and 1918. In 1917 the Russian Revolution led to the execution of Tsar Nicholas and the rise of the Bolsheviks. Vladimir Lenin became leader of Soviet Russia and then the Soviet Union from 1917 until his death in 1924. A period of instability followed until Joseph Stalin achieved undisputed leadership by around 1929. The Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936 and this was followed by the Second World War, fought between 1939 and 1945. From 1947 the Cold War was taking hold.
William Rust was too young to have fought in the First World War. He left school at the age of 14 in 1917. One of his first jobs was at Hulton’s Press Agency. He was sacked from that job after leaking the news that a prominent trade unionist was selling information to the agency. Later on he worked for a short time for Sylvia Pankhurst’s paper, Worker’s Dreadnought. Sylvia was a daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst and was a political activist and suffragist. At the time of the 1921 census William was working as a clerk for the Sheet Metal Workers Union.
In 1919, Lenin had established the Communist International (known as Comintern) in Moscow, with the purpose of promoting world communism. It would be the Soviet means of control over international communist parties. The Communist Party of Great Britain was formed under its auspices in the summer of 1920 and William Rust was one of the first to join. The Young Communist League (the youth wing) was formed in 1921 under the leadership of William (Bill) Rust and Dave Springhall.
“Rust was described by a colleague in 1928 as ‘round and pink and cold as ice’ He was tall, plump and just 25. Few people saw him smile and no one seems to know what made him tick ……….. Together they turned the Young Communist League into a Comintern watchdog, looking over Inkpin’s shoulder and ensuring there was no shilly-shallying. It was to be the new line, all the new line and nothing but the new line or Bill Rust would know the reason why” - from ENEMY WITHIN The Rise and Fall of the British Communist Party by Francis Beckett.
In 1921 Bill Rust and Clara Gilbert Cole formed Camberwell Organized Unemployed. An attempt to overturn the eviction of people living in cottages in Ormside Street, Camberwell resulted in his arrest and he was sent to prison for 28 days.
In 1923 Bill joined the executive of the Communist Party of Great Britain as a representative of the Young Communist League.
In 1924 William Charles Rust married Kathleen O’Donoghue (known as Kay) in a Registry Office in Camberwell. In the same year he attended the 5th Congress of the Comintern in Moscow.
William and Kathleen’s daughter, Kathleen Rosa Rust, was born on the 26th of April 1925. On the 25th of August 1925 Bill was arrested along with eleven other activists. As members of the British Communist Party they were charged with violation of the Mutiny Act 1797. It was believed that the arrests were an attempt by the Government to weaken the labour movement in preparation for the impending General Strike. Bill was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment as he already had a previous conviction. Others were sentenced to 6 months. On the 12th of February 1926 an article appeared in The Workers’ Weekly. It was written by Kathleen Rust and described a visit to her husband in Wandsworth Prison under the heading “A VISIT TO PRISON - Elaborate Ceremony, Polite Warders - and a huge key - SUSPICIOUS OF CHINESE”
In 1928 Bill attended another Comintern Congress where he denounced the leadership of the British Communist Party. Comintern demanded changes and Harry Pollitt became the new leader of the party.
In 1928, according to Francis Beckett’s book “Stalin’s British Victims”, William Rust became the British Communist Party’s representative at Comintern and headed to Moscow with his wife and daughter. During that time he and his wife, Kathleen, separated and Bill became involved with a Russian by the name of Tamara Kravets, who accompanied him back to Britain. When Bill returned to Britain, Kathleen and Rosa remained in Moscow.
In October 1929 Bill attended a sitting of the Communist Youth Congress in Paris. He was arrested at the close of the meeting and the authorities declared that he would be expelled from the country as soon as an expulsion order had been signed by the Minister of the Interior.
The Daily Worker newspaper launched on the 1st of January 1930 on a shoestring budget. William Rust was appointed editor, although he had little experience in the newspaper industry apart from his short time at the Hulton Press. He had also edited “The Young Worker” for the Young Communist League and had written a number of articles and pamphlets. In his words, “I was pitchforked into the job. It was my reward, I suppose, for my somewhat persistent advocacy of the importance of a Communist daily in Britain”. Initially, there was a staff of 8 men and 1 woman, none of whom had experience of working on a daily paper.
The first year was spent overcoming problems, not least of which was the newspaper wholesalers refusing to distribute the paper to the newsagents. A distribution system had to be devised. Established newspapers reacted to the new paper with fury and attacked it through their columns. Financial restraints meant that an edition consisted of only a few pages. On the 4th of January 1930 an article titled “by Candlelight in an Old Grimy Warehouse” recounted the story of the first issue, “Working by candlelight and with freezing feet we got out the first working-class daily in Britain.” “Although the office is cold, the Daily Worker and the workers around us are afire with the invincible revolutionary spirit of the working class”.
Lawsuits abounded but the paper struggled on. Among its targets was a campaign against the rise of fascism and Oswald Mosley. Bill remained editor of the paper until 1932, when he returned to Moscow to work for Comintern (The Story of the Daily Worker by William Rust). It seems that he remained in close touch with what was going on at the paper and returned to the editorship from 1939 until 1948. “He (William Rust) was a fine editor: a cynical boss who thumped the table in his furious rages, he nonetheless inspired journalists' best work. A tall and by now heavily built man, Rust was one of the Party's most able people, and one of the least likeable.” - ENEMY WITHIN The Rise and Fall of the British Communist Party by Francis Beckett.
Upon his return to Britain, Bill spent time as Party Organiser in Lancashire and then as National Organiser at Party Centre.
Meanwhile, back at the Daily Worker, 1933 saw an arson attack on the Reichstag (Parliament) building in Berlin. Hitler had been sworn in as Chancellor of Germany a few weeks before and a group of Communists were blamed for the attack, leading to a suspension of civil liberties and a tightening of the Nazi control over the Germany. So far as Bill Rust and the British Communist party were concerned, the arsonists had been the Nazi party itself in order to rig the election, which took place shortly afterwards.
In 1936, in Britain, there was the Battle of Cable Street. A proposed march by Oswald Mosley and his supporters was thwarted by a counter-protest. The Daily Worker had urged its readers to take part in the counter-protest.
July 1936 saw the start of the Spanish Civil War, a military uprising against the Republican government of the time. The uprising was led by General Francisco Franco. The Republican government eventually surrendered in 1939 and General Franco became the dictator leader of Spain until his death in 1975. Germany and Italy, fascist countries led by Hitler and Mussolini, sent troops and arms to assist the fascist rebels. France and Britain declined to assist the government of Spain. Anti-fascists began travelling to Spain to help in the struggle against the rebels. Russia sent aid to the Government forces and Comintern organised the formation of the International Brigades for foreign volunteers, including the British Battalion of the 15th Brigade.
Bill Rust travelled to Spain in November 1937, ostensibly as correspondent for the Daily Worker, but also as a senior Commissar for Comintern. He had an office in Barcelona and when the fighting was close by he would visit the front lines every day. He carried a handgun. Bill stayed in Spain until June 1938. The International Brigades were disbanded in September 1938. On his return to Britain he wrote a detailed, if rather skewed, account of the civil war from the point of view of the British Battalion. It’s very readable and mentions many of those who took part in the fighting, acknowledging the part they played in the struggle. - BRITONS IN SPAIN, THE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH BATTALION OF THE XVTH INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE by William Rust.
In the 1939 census, Bill and Tamara were shown living in Wandsworth with Bill’s younger sister. They were described as married and Bill’s occupation was commercial clerk. They didn’t actually marry until 1948. Bill’s first wife, Kathleen, was to be found in Hornsey, working as a shorthand typist for a solicitor. She had reverted to her maiden name of O’Donoghue. There’s no sign of their daughter, Kathleen Rosa Rust, who was known by her middle name, Rosa Rust. She wasn’t in the country. There’s more to come about that in my next story.
When Britain and France declared war on Germany after the invasion of Poland in 1939, Harry Pollitt, leader of the British Communist Party, supported the war. Unfortunately Russia was not in favour of the war at the time. Pollitt was forced to resign and the leadership of the Party was reorganised. Bill Rust was reappointed to the editorship of the Daily Worker and articles appeared opposing the war. On the 21st of January 1941 the Daily Worker was suspended by the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, for undermining the war effort. On the 22nd of June 1941 Germany invaded Russia, and Russia then became Britain’s ally. Harry Pollitt was reinstated as leader of the party. Publication of the newspaper recommenced on the 26th of August 1942 and the Daily Worker became an enthusiastic supporter of the war.
William Rust stood as the Communist candidate for South Hackney in the 1945 General Election. The Labour candidate, Herbert Butler, won the seat with 10,432 votes, the Liberal candidate came second with 4,901 votes and Bill came a close third with 4,891 votes. He was adopted as the Communist candidate for South Hackney again in 1948.
By the end of the Second World War, support for the Communist Party was high and by 1948 the Daily Worker had its highest ever circulation figures at 120,000. Comintern had been dissolved by Stalin in 1943 and there was less Soviet influence over what should be published in the paper. Bill was on a mission to turn the Daily Worker into a paper which could compete with the National Dailies. He was permitted (formerly forbidden) to print racing tips and to make the paper more interesting and “fun”. Presumably, the fun was less easy to achieve as the Cold War began to ramp up from about 1947 onwards. He was known to loathe journalists and when it was pointed out that he worked with them every day he responded, “They’re not journalists. They’re Communists” (Francis Beckett).
William Rust and Tamara Kravets were married in 1948. According to Francis Beckett in “Stalin’s British Victims”, the Communist Party was keen to give an appearance of respectability, so the fact that he had a previous wife and daughter was to be kept under the radar. Tamara had her own secrets - her architect father left the USSR on a trip to Germany in 1927 and refused to return to his home country.
On the 3rd of February 1949 Bill attended meetings during the daytime and was due to appear before the Central London branch of the National Union of Journalists in the evening to defend an article he had written headlined “Fleet Street dungheap”. He was also due to meet his daughter Rosa, who wanted to introduce him to her husband-to-be. During one of the meetings he said that he felt ill and then collapsed. He was dead on arrival at Charing Cross Hospital at the age of 45. He is described as having had either a massive stroke or a massive heart attack.
Bill’s funeral was planned by the Communist Party. There was to be a procession through the streets. Kathleen and Rosa were asked not to attend as Bill had recently married Tamara. Kathleen complained loudly and party leader Harry Pollitt reversed the decision. According to Francis Beckett, in his book mentioned above, Kathleen and Rosa walked in front of the coffin and 5,000 people lined the streets.
In 1954 the widowed Tamara Rust became the third wife of Wogan Philipps, 2nd Baron Milford. He was the only member of the British Communist Party to sit in the House of Lords. Philipps died in 1993, Tamara died in 2008.
I’ll write some more about Kathleen and Rosa Rust in my next story.
Sources
Books
Stalin’s British Victims by Francis Beckett
Enemy Within. The Rise and Fall of the British Communist Party by Francis Beckett
Britons in Spain, the History of the British Battalion of the XVth International Brigade by William Rust
The Story of the Daily Worker by William Rust
Internet
Wikipedia
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
William Rust https://spartacus-educational.com/TUrust.htm
Tamara Rust https://grahamstevenson.me.uk/2010/01/05/phillips-tamara-rust
Timeline
1903 Born 24 April 1903
1911 Census
1917 left school aged 14
1917 Russian Revolution
1917 Hulton’s Press Agency (sacked)
Worker’s Dreadnought (Sylvia Pankhurst)
1917 - 1924 Vladimir Lenin leader of Soviet Russia and Soviet Union
1919 First Congress of Communist International (Comintern). The Communist International, or Comintern, was an organization founded in Moscow in 1919 with the goal of promoting world communism. Established by Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Communist Party, it aimed to spread the Russian Revolution globally and serve as an instrument of Soviet control over international communist parties. The Comintern existed until 1943, when it was dissolved by Joseph Stalin.
1920 Formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain
1921 Census
1921 Formed Camberwell Organized Unemployed with Clara Gilbert
Cole. Arrested for attempting to overturn the eviction of people living in cottages in Ormside Street, Camberwell. Imprisoned for 28 days.1921 Formation of the Young Communist League
1923 Joined the executive of the CPGB as a representative of the Young Communist League.
1924 Married Kathleen O'Donoghue
1924 Attended the 5th Congress of the Comintern, held in Moscow
1924 Death of Lenin following ill health, during which time Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev were a triumvirate.
1924 Stalin gradually ousted Trotsky and became sole leader over a period of years.
1925 26th April. Birth of Rosa Rust
1925 25 August. Arrested with 11 other activists for being a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and charged with violation of the Mutiny Act 1797. Sentenced to 12 months imprisonment. (letter printed to young communists paper by Kathleen Rust)
1928 Denounced CPGB leadership at the Comintern Congress
1928 Move to Moscow
1929 Arrested in Paris and deported.
1930 Editor of the Daily Worker
1932 CPGB’s representative in Moscow.
Party Organiser in Lancashire
National Organiser at Party Centre1933 Reichtag fire
1936 Battle of Cable Street (Oswald Moseley march)
1937-1938 The Daily Worker’s correspondent in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. The British senior Commissar and a Comintern representative with an office in Barcelona.
1939 Census
1939-1941 Opposed WW2 until Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22nd of June 1941. Rust Took over editorship of the Daily Worker again. Speaker at meetings.
1940 Trotsky assassinated
1941 21st January. Daily Worker suspended by Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, for undermining the war effort. Reinstated 26th August 1942.
1948 Married Tamara R Kravets
1949 3rd of February. Suffered a massive heart attack/stroke during/before meeting. Pronounced dead at Charing Cross hospital
