Thomas A. Jackson

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This article is about British Communist T.A. Jackson. For other uses, see Thomas Jackson (disambiguation).

Thomas A. Jackson
Tommy Jackson at the 1905 SPGB Conference.
Born
Thomas Alfred Jackson

(1879-08-21)21 August 1879
Clerkenwell, London, England
Died18 August 1955(1955-08-18) (aged 75)
Clare, Suffolk, England
NationalityBritish
Other namesTommy
CitizenshipUnited Kingdom
Known forFounding member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
Founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain
Secretary for the League of Militant Atheists.
Notable workThe Jubilee- and How (1955)

Thomas Alfred Jackson (21 August 1879 – 18 August 1955) was a founding member of the

functionary
and a freelance lecturer.

Biography

Early years

Jackson was born in

board school at which he was a pupil between the ages of seven and thirteen and a half.[1]
Jackson was apprenticed in the printing trade as a compositor after leaving school, but soon after becoming a journeyman compositor became a full-time speaker and orator, and later a writer.

Political career

Jackson dated his political conversion to socialism to 1900, after he read a copy of

Impossibilist faction in 1904.[1] Briefly General Secretary in 1906, he was a very active speaker but, perhaps oddly given his later career, wrote only two brief items for the Socialist Standard. He resigned on 9 March 1909 to become paid speaker for the Independent Labour Party in Bristol and South Wales, initially spending three months in Bristol before moving to Newport, where he stayed until the summer of 1911.[1]

He left the ILP in 1911, then becoming a speaker for the

Great Northern Coalfield to teach classes on Marxism.[1]

In 1920, Jackson was a founding member of the

Daily Worker and writing several CPGB pamphlets. In the 1940s, he returned to his roots, working as a lecturer on Communist theory for the Party's Education Department, travelling across the country for eight or nine months of the year.[1]

A

A.L. Morton. Kate died in January 1927, having been committed to Claybury Hospital due to declining mental health.[1] Jackson married a second time later that year, to Lydia Packman: she died unexpectedly in 1943 following a minor operation. Before 1914 he was notable in the North and Wales, and for his flowing locks according to his obituary. His Manchester Guardian obituary said he was a "Marxist scholar of weight", and that Solo Trumpet was a "racy autobiography". Historian Stuart Macintyre has described Jackson's book Dialectics: The Logic of Marxism and its Critics as "perhaps... the most considerable literary achievement of Jackson's generation of working-class intellectuals".[1]

In the early 1930s, he was secretary of the League of Militant Atheists.

Jackson's 1935 pamphlet The Jubilee- and How was a critique of the British monarchy, arguing the Silver Jubilee of George V was inappropriate at a time of widespread unemployment.[3]

Death and legacy

Tommy Jackson died at Clare, Suffolk on 18 August 1955, just three days shy of his 76th birthday.

Bibliography

as T. A. Jackson, published by
Lawrence and Wishart
.

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Morton, Vivien; Macintyre, Stuart (1979). T.A. Jackson: A centenary appreciation (PDF). Our History. London: Communist Party Historians Group. Retrieved 27 December 2016.
  2. Lawrence and Wishart
    . p. 298.
  3. ISBN 1861890494
    (p.223).

Sources consulted

External links

Media offices
Preceded by Editor of The Communist
1922–1923 		Succeeded by
Publication closed
Rajani Palme Dutt as editor of Workers' Weekly
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