William Dudley Collard (1907–1963) was a British

barrister A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdictions. Barristers mostly specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation. Their tasks include taking cases in superior courts and tribunals, drafting legal pleadings, researching law and ...

and writer on law in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Collard was a member of the Anglo-Soviet Law Association, and represented the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...

as a lawyer. His affiliation with communism led to the intelligence services keeping a file on him. Following the "Trial of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center" in 1937 (the second of the

Moscow Trials The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. They were nominally directed against "Trotskyists" and members of "Right Opposition" of the Communist Party of th ...

), Collard published a book through the

Left Book Club The Left Book Club was a publishing group that exerted a strong left-wing influence in Great Britain from 1936 to 1948. Pioneered by Victor Gollancz, it offered a monthly book choice, for sale to members only, as well as a newsletter that acqui ...

entitled
Soviet Justice and the Trial of Radek and Others
' which argued that the trials had been conducted fairly. Most historians now conclude that the

were

show trial A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so th ...

s. He was married to Elizabeth Katherine Collard (1911—28 December 1978), a writer, journalist and political activist with a particular interest in Middle Eastern issues.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Collard, Dudley 1907 births 1963 deaths English barristers English communists Members of the Fabian Society 20th-century English lawyers

See also

References