Hugo Dewar (9 August 1908 – June 1980) was an author, poet, and political activist influential in co-founding two of the earliest

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a rev ...

groups. Dewar was born in

Leyton Leyton () is a town in east London, England, within the London Borough of Waltham Forest. It borders Walthamstow to the north, Leytonstone to the east, and Stratford to the south, with Clapton, Hackney Wick and Homerton, across the River L ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in 1908. He joined the

Independent Labour Party The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates ...

in 1928, and in 1930 co-founded the Marxian League (aka Marxist League). He joined 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 ...

in 1931, but was expelled the following year. He was one of the founders in 1932 of the

Communist League The Communist League (German: ''Bund der Kommunisten)'' was an international political party established on 1 June 1847 in London, England. The organisation was formed through the merger of the League of the Just, headed by Karl Schapper, and the ...

, and remained active in

International Left Opposition International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations". International may also refer to: Music Albums * ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011 * ''International'' (New Order album), 2002 * ''International'' (The T ...

groups until he was drafted into the army in 1943. He worked as an adult education tutor. In 1946, Dewar stood unsuccessfully for the ILP in the Battersea North by-election. In early 1938 in London, Dewar married Margareta Watzova (1901-1995), a fellow Communist and Trotskyist, who had been born in Latvia in the Russian Empire. Dewar died in West Sussex in 1980.

Selected bibliography

*''Assassins at Large'' (Wingate, 1951) *''The Modern Inquisition'' (Wingate, 1953) *''Communist Politics in Britain: The CPGB From its Origins to the Second World War'' (Pluto, 1976)

References

External links

Hugo Dewar Archive
at

Marxists Internet Archive Marxists Internet Archive (also known as MIA or Marxists.org) is a non-profit online encyclopedia that hosts a multilingual library (created in 1990) of the works of communist, anarchist, and socialist writers, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels ...

Catalogue of Dewar's papers
held at the

Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick The Modern Records Centre (MRC) is the specialist archive service of the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, located adjacent to the Central Campus Library. It was established in October 1973 and holds the world's largest archive collecti ...

1908 births 1980 deaths English Trotskyists Communist Party of Great Britain members Communist League (UK, 1932) members People from Leyton British Communist writers Independent Labour Party parliamentary candidates {{UK-activist-stub