Name J. Murphy | Died 1965 | |
 | ||
John Thomas Murphy (9 December 1888–13 May 1965), known as J. T. Murphy or Jack Murphy, was a British trade union organiser and Communist.
Contents
Early years
J.T. Murphy, best known by his nickname of "Jack," was born in 1888 and was born in Wincobank near Sheffield and became a metal-worker. He became active in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and was active in the Sheffield wing of the Shops' Stewards Movement, which emerged in engineering factories during the First World War.
Political career
Murphy joined the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) in 1916 and stood as a candidate in the 1918 General Election for the Gorton constituency in Manchester. He then participated in the communist unity discussions, and as a result split from the SLP, joining the Communist Party of Great Britain at its formation in 1920. He attended the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern as delegate for the Shop Steartds Movement. He was a member of the Central Committee until he was expelled from the party in 1932. He was active in the National Minority Movement, a Communist-led united front within the trade unions, from its formation in 1924. In 1925 Murphy was one of twelve CPGB officials imprisoned for seditious libel and incitement to mutiny.
After 1932
Murphy was expelled from the CPGB in 1932. He soon joined the Labour Party and was elected to the executive of their executive in Islington. Then in April 1933 he joined the Socialist League and later that year became secretary of the organisation.
Murphy resigned from the Socialist League in 1936, opposing its call for the CPGB to be permitted to affiliate to the Labour Party. He became a founder of and full-time organiser for the People's Front Propaganda Committee, which aimed to unite members of all parties against fascism and the British government's indifference to or appeasement of it. He spoke in favour of this policy at Labour's 1939 conference, but was heavily defeated, and the committee soon dissolved. World War II broke out shortly afterwards, and Murphy returned to work as a turner, also becoming a shop steward again for the AEU. He argued in favour of the Hitler-Stalin pact on the grounds that, he believed, Stalin had no choice in order to buy time. Later in the war, he lectured to troops on political matters, and wrote three books supporting Stalin and the Soviet Union.
After the war, Murphy stopped all formal political activity, spending much of his time writing company histories, including one of Marks and Spencer and one of Sainsbury's. Following Stalin's death, he renounced Marxism and, later, wrote an article detailing his thoughts on the subject for the New Reasoner.