Thomas Henry Wintringham (15 May 1898 – 16 August 1949) was a British soldier, military historian, journalist, poet,
Marxist, politician and author. He was an important figure in the formation of the
Home Guard during the
Second World War and was one of the founders of the
Common Wealth Party.
On returning from Spain, Wintringham began to call for an armed civilian guard to repel any fascist invasion, and as early as 1938 he had begun campaigning for what would become the Home Guard. He taught the troops tactics of
guerrilla warfare, including a movement known as the 'Monkey Crawl'. They were also taught how to deal with dive bombers.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Wintringham applied for an army officer's commission but was rejected. When the Communist Party promulgated its policy of staying out of the war due to the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, he strongly condemned their policies. Because of the
appeasement policies of prime minister
Neville Chamberlain, he also regarded the
Tories as Nazi sympathizers and wrote that they should be removed from office. He wrote for
Picture Post, the
Daily Mirror, and wrote columns for
Tribune and the
New Statesman.
LDV ..
Publications ..
In
May 1940, after the escape from
Dunkirk, Wintringham began to write in support of the
Local Defence Volunteers, the forerunner of the Home Guard. On
10 July, he opened the private
Home Guard training school at Osterley Park, London.
Wintringham's training methods were mainly based on his experience in Spain. He even had veterans who had fought alongside him in Spain who trained volunteers in
anti-tank warfare and
demolitions. He also taught
street fighting and
guerrilla warfare. He wrote many articles in Picture Post and the Daily Mirror propagating his views about the Home Guard with the motto "a people's war for a people's peace".
The British Army still did not dare trust Wintringham because of his communist past. After September 1940, the army began to take charge of the Home Guard training in Osterley and Wintringham and his comrades were gradually sidelined. Wintringham resigned in April 1941. Ironically, despite his activities in support of the Home Guard, Wintringham was never allowed to join the organisation itself because of a policy barring membership to Communists and Fascists.
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"Financed by
Edward Hulton, proprietor of Picture Post, the magazine to which he contributed regularly throughout the 1940s, Wintringham set up the 'Home Guard Training School' in Osterley Park, west London. Inspired by the militias that held Madrid in the autumn of 1936, Wintringham saw the newly formed Local Defence Volunteers as the vanguard of a genuine citizen army. His instructors drew upon their experience in Spain to give two-day intensive courses in enemy tactics and guerrilla warfare. By September 1940 a reluctant War Office was obliged to recognize the 'Osterley reds'. Endorsed by those regular officers who had actually experienced combat, the course became the template for Home Guard training nationwide, with Wintringham regularly expounding the principles of a 'people's war' in Picture Post, the Daily Mirror, and a succession of books in the series Penguin Specials. With invasion seemingly imminent, Allen Lane in July 1940 rushed out New Ways of War: a short, practical guide to guerrilla fighting. It later became required reading for many African and Asian nationalists. Like George Orwell and J. B. Priestley, Wintringham insisted that radical politics and a deep love of one's country were not incompatible, and that the nation's united defiance in the face of imminent invasion signalled an early end to the old, now much discredited, order.
By June 1941 the military had established full control over the Home Guard, but Wintringham had already departed to complete The Politics of Victory, a detailed critique of communist opposition to the war."
...........
"
Tom Hopkinson recruited Wintringham to work for the
Picture Post. He also wrote a regular column for the
Daily Mirror,
Tribune and the
New Statesman. This gave him a readership of several million. He also wrote several pamphlets on the war effort including
New Ways of War (1940),
Freedom is Our Weapon (1941) and
Politics of Victory (1941).
In
New Ways of War he wrote: "Knowing that science and the riches of the earth make possible an abundance of material things for all, and trusting our fellows and ourselves to achieve that abundance after we have won, we are willing to throw everything we now possess into the common lot, to win this fight. We will allow no personal considerations of rights, privileges, property, income, family or friendship to stand in our way. Whatever the future may hold we will continue our war for liberty."
Wintringham "believed that war provided the best opportunity for revolution and that a revolution was necessary for fascism to be defeated."
George Orwell agreed with him: "We are in a strange period of history, in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary." Both men had been deeply influenced by their experiences of fighting in the
Spanish Civil War.
In October 1939,
Winston Churchill suggested to Sir
John Anderson, the head of
Air Raid Precautions (ARP), that a
Home Guard of men aged over forty should be formed. Anderson agreed with Churchill's suggestion but it was not until the
German Army had launched its
Western Offensive that action was taken and on 14th May, 1940,
Anthony Eden appealed on radio for men to become
Local Defence Volunteers (LDV). In the broadcast Eden asked that volunteers should be aged be aged between 40 and 65 and should be able to fire a rifle or shotgun. By the end of June nearly one and a half a million men had been recruited.
Wintringham wrote several articles where he argued that the
Home Guard should be trained in guerrilla warfare.
Tom Hopkinson and
Edward Hulton came up with the idea private training school for the Home Guard. On
10th July 1940, Wintringham was appointed as director of the
Osterley Park Training School at
Isleworth,
Middlesex. In the first three months he
trained 5,000 in the rudiments of guerrilla warfare.
In 1940 Wintringham wrote a 20,000 word pamphlet entitled
How to Reform the Army. Over the next few months over 10,000 copies were sold and he was consulted by Sir Ronald Adam, the Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir John Brown, the Deputy Adjutant-General and Major General Augustus Thorne, the Commander of the Brigade of Guards.
..
On 20th May 1940 Wintringham became the Military Correspondent of the
Daily Mirror. He continued to write for other publications. One article published in the
Picture Post on 15th June that gave practical instructions for a people's war to resist invasion was bought by the War Office which printed off 100,000 copies and distributed them to
Home Guard units.
The
War Office became concerned about the activities of the
Osterley Park Training School. The
Inspector's Directorate of the Home Guard reported in
July 1940: "While approving of the school in principle, the London District Assistant Commander did not think the Instructors were of a suitable type because of communistic tendencies. On
10th September General Pownall informed the Inspector's Directorate that "the
school at Osterley was gradually being taken over by the War Office." In the
spring of 1941 Wintringham was dismissed from his post as director of the training school.
Wintringham published
People's War in 1942. He argued that a modern people's war combines "guerrilla forces behind enemy lines with a blitzkrieg striking force." In another pamphlet,
Freedom is Our Weapon, Wintringham wrote: "If we are able to achieve the making of a people's army, we can be sure that the men will come back determined to achieve and capable of achieving for themselves their own homes for heroes, their own society linking liberty, agreement and co-operation.""
https://spartacus-educational.com/Jwinteringham.htm .
http://tom.wintringham.ch/ .
