Dave Springhall

Headstone for Douglas Frank Springhall on the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing.

Douglas Frank Springhall (28 March 1901 - 2 September 1953), known as Dave Springhall, was a British communist activist.

Born in Kensal Green, Springhall joined the Royal Navy at the age of fifteen, during World War I. In 1920, he wrote "Discontent on the Lower Deck", an article for the communist publication Workers' Dreadnought, leading to his dismissal from the Navy for "associating with extremists".[1]

Springhall joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and its affiliated Young Communist League (YCL). He worked as a builder, but struggled to find employment, focussing his time on the National Unemployed Workers' Committee Movement and the trade union movement. He stood as a Labour Party candidate for Richmond Town Council, then later as a Communist candidate, but was not elected.[1]

In 1924, Springhall was a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the Communist International, and also the Fourth Congress of the Young Communist International. In 1926, following the imprisonment of William Rust, he became Acting Secretary of the YCL, serving during the British general strike, for which he was twice jailed himself. From 1928 to 1931, Springhall studied at the International Lenin School. He then returned to the UK, when he led moves to expel Trotskyists from the CPGB.[1] From this period on, he may have been working for the GRU.[2] By 1937 he was secretary of the London district of the Communist party and a member of the party's Political Bureau.[3]

## Spanish Civil War

[edit]

During the Spanish Civil War, Springhall served as the first political commissar of the British Battalion of the XV International Brigade,[4][5] later becoming Assistant Commissar of the XV International Brigade. Although politically experienced, he was described as "a pleasant, but hopelessly obtuse and humourless man ... he seemed to be a well-intentioned man who was completely out of his depth in the position in which he found himself".[6] On 12 January 1937, following the Battle of Lopera and tensions between British and Irish volunteers, he called a meeting to discuss the issue. The stormy meeting resulted in the Irish volunteers voting to join the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. The meeting may have been a political miscalculation, but Irish volunteers saw it as a deliberate stunt by British Communists to ruin the chances of forming an Irish national unit. Springhall later admitted he was glad the Irish group had left, but he was blamed by many senior communist figures for a "grave political mistake".[7] Although he was shot at the Battle of Jarama, on 27 February 1937,[8] the bullet passed through his cheeks and he was not seriously wounded. He returned to the UK in 1938.

## World War II

[edit]

On his return to the UK he became editor of the Daily Worker, then briefly served as the CPGB's representative in Moscow. He returned to the UK again to ensure that the party supported the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.[9] General Secretary Harry Pollitt opposed this and was removed, Springhall working as National Organiser to lead the party alongside Rust and Rajani Palme Dutt.[1] The British government were concerned in early 1940 having seen copies of secret lecture notes by Springhall urging comrades in the armed forces to "initiate all effective actions against the war".[10] MI5 reported that Springhall was a "dangerous type of Communist agitator" and exempted from military service as he would "certainly constitute a serious menance to morale and discipline" in the armed forces.[11]

In 1943, Springhall was caught receiving secret documents from Olive Mary Sheehan, a clerk in the Air Ministry telecommunications office, who was also cadres leader of the secret Air Ministry group of the Communist Party. After his arrest and interrogation by MI5, he was found guilty under the Official Secrets Act on 28 July 1943 of obtaining "for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State information which might be useful to the enemy". He was given a seven-year prison sentence. He was thought to have been spying since 1941.[12] He was subsequently removed from his party posts.[1] It subsequently emerged that he had also obtained classified information from Ormond Uren of the Special Operations Executive.[2] He served four-and-a-half years of a seven-year penal servitude sentence. On his release, he worked in advertising before travelling through Eastern Europe to China, where he worked as an advisor to the Chinese Information Bureau of the Press Administration. He travelled to Moscow in 1953 to receive treatment for throat cancer, but died there aged 52.[1] His grave is located at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c d e f "COMMUNIST HISTORY NETWORK NEWSLETTER, No 5, April 1998 Archived 2012-03-10 at the Wayback Machine
2. ^ a b "Douglas Frank SPRINGHALL", National Archives
3. ^ Baxell, Richard (2012). Unlikely Warriors. London: Aurum Press. p. 37\. ISBN 978-1-78131-233-9.
4. ^ Thomas, Hugh (2012). The Spanish Civil War (50th Anniversary ed.). London: Penguin Books. p. 574\. ISBN 978-0-141-01161-5.
5. ^ Tremlett, Giles (2020). The International Brigades. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 213\. ISBN 978-1-4088-5398-6.
6. ^ Baxell (2012) p.125
7. ^ Baxell (2012) p.133-134
8. ^ Tremlett (2020) p.236
9. ^ Baxell (2012) p.412
10. ^ Baxell (2012) p.418
11. ^ Baxell (2012) p.428
12. ^ Baxell (2012) p.428-429

Media offices

Preceded by

Rajani Palme Dutt

|  Editor of the Daily Worker
1938-1939  | Succeeded by

John Ross Campbell

Party political offices
Preceded by

Robbie Robson

|  London District Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain
1930s-1937  | Succeeded by

Ted Bramley

Preceded by

R. W. Robson

|  National Organiser of the Communist Party of Great Britain
1940-1943  | Succeeded by

Peter Kerrigan

Military offices
Preceded by

New position

|  Political Commissar of the British Battalion
1936 - 1937  | Succeeded by

George Aitken

* v
* t
* e

Communist Party of Great Britain

Leadership|

| General Secretaries|

* Albert Inkpin (1920–1928)
* J. R. Campbell (1929)
* Harry Pollitt (1929–1939)
* Rajani Palme Dutt (1939–1941)
* Harry Pollitt (1941–1956)
* John Gollan (1956–1975)
* Gordon McLennan (1975–1989)
* Nina Temple (1989–1991)

|

Assistant General Secretaries|

* Fred Peet (1920–1922)
* John Gollan (1947–1949)
* George Matthews (1949–1956)
* Bill Wainwright (1956-59)
* Bill Alexander (1959–1967)
* Reuben Falber (1968–1979)

Chairs|

* Arthur MacManus (1920–1927)
* Willie Gallacher (1943–1956)
* Harry Pollitt (1956–1960)
* Frank Stanley (1964–1967)
* Tony Chater (1968–1969)
* John Tocher (1969–1971)
* Irene Swann (1972–1974)
* Mick McGahey (1974–1979)
* Ron Halverson (1980s)
* George Bolton (1980s–1990)

National Organisers|

* Tom Bell (1920–1921)
* Bob Stewart (1921–1923)
* Harry Pollitt (1923)
* Idris Cox (1930s)
* R. W. Robson (1930s)
* Dave Springhall (1940–1943)
* Peter Kerrigan (1943–1951)
* Mick Bennett (1951–1954)
* John Gollan (1954–1956)
* Bill Lauchlan (1956–1966)
* Gordon McLennan (1966–1975)
* Dave Cook (1975–1981)
* Ian McKay (1982–1991)

National Industrial Organisers|

* Ernie Woolley (1925–)
* Finlay Hart (1937–1939)
* Peter Kerrigan (1939–1942)
* George Allison (1942–1951)
* Peter Kerrigan (1951–1966)
* Bert Ramelson (1965–1978)
* Mick Costello (1979–1982)
* Pete Carter (1982–1991)

History|

* Foundation Congress
* Campbell Case
* Zinoviev letter
* Mass trespass of Kinder Scout
* British Battalion
* 1945 general election

Publications|

* Marxism Today
* Morning Star
* Workers' Weekly

Associated groups|

* Communist Party Historians Group
* Jersey Communist Party
* Democratic Left
* National Minority Movement
* National Unemployed Workers' Movement
* New Politics Network
* New Times
* Straight Left
* Young Communist League
* Connolly Association

Predecessors|

* British Socialist Party
* Communist Labour Party
* Communist Party (British Section of the Third International)
* Communist Unity Group
* South Wales Socialist Society

Splits|

* Communist Party of Britain
* Appeal Group
* Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity
* Communist League
* Communist Party of Britain (Marxist–Leninist)
* Communist Party of Great Britain (PCC)
* Workers' Socialist Federation
* Fife Socialist League
* New Communist Party of Britain
* New Left
* Revolutionary Marxist–Leninist League

Other topics|

* Britain's Road to Socialism
* British left
* Election results
* Far-left politics in the United Kingdom
* Members of Parliament
* Percy Glading
* Tankie

* v
* t
* e

Soviet and Russian spies

In the US|

| 1940s and before|

* John Abt
* Joel Barr
* Elizabeth Bentley
* Earl Browder
* Boris Bukov
* Whittaker Chambers
* Lona Cohen
* Morris Cohen
* Judith Coplon
* Noel Field
* Klaus Fuchs
* Harold Glasser
* Harry Gold
* David Greenglass
* Theodore Hall
* John Herrmann
* Donald Hiss
* George Koval
* William Malisoff
* Hede Massing
* Boris Morros
* Isaiah Oggins
* William Perl
* Victor Perlo
* J. Peters
* William Ward Pigman
* Lee Pressman
* Vincent Reno
* Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
* Alfred Sarant
* Saville Sax
* Morton Sobell
* Alexander Ulanovsky
* Nadezhda Ulanovskaya
* Julian Wadleigh
* Harold Ware
* Bill Weisband
* Nathaniel Weyl
* Harry Dexter White
* Maria Wicher
* Nathan Witt
* Flora Wovschin
* Anatoli Yatskov

|

Cold War|

* Rudolf Abel
* Aldrich Ames
* David Sheldon Boone
* Christopher John Boyce
* Thomas Patrick Cavanaugh
* Jack Dunlap
* James Hall III
* Robert Hanssen
* Reino Häyhänen
* Edward Lee Howard
* Robert Lee Johnson
* Karl Koecher
* Andrew Daulton Lee
* Robert Lipka
* Clayton J. Lonetree
* Richard Miller
* Ronald Pelton
* Earl Edwin Pitts
* Jack Soble
* Myra Soble
* Robert Soblen
* Oscar Seborer
* Robert Thompson
* George Trofimoff
* John Anthony Walker
* Jerry Whitworth

Post-Soviet|

* Evgeny Buryakov
* Anna Chapman
* Peter Debbins
* Robert Hanssen
* Harold James Nicholson
* Illegals Program

In the UK|

| Cambridge Five|

* Anthony Blunt
* Guy Burgess
* John Cairncross
* Donald Maclean
* Kim Philby

|

Portland spy ring|

* Lona Cohen
* Morris Cohen
* Ethel Gee
* Harry Houghton
* Konon Molody

* Michael Bettaney
* George Blake
* David Crook
* Litzi Friedmann
* Klaus Fuchs
* Percy Glading
* Melita Norwood
* Alan Nunn May
* John Peet
* Geoffrey Prime
* Goronwy Rees
* Michael John Smith
* Dave Springhall
* John Alexander Symonds
* Edith Tudor-Hart
* John Vassall
* Arthur Wynn

In Canada|

* Sam Carr
* Jeffrey Delisle
* Igor Gouzenko
* Elena Miller
* Gerda Munsinger
* Stephen Joseph Ratkai
* Fred Rose

In Japan|

* Hirohide Ishida
* Yotoku Miyagi
* Sanzō Nosaka
* Hotsumi Ozaki
* Ryūzō Sejima

Elsewhere /
in combination|

* Alexander Gregory Barmine
* Stig Bergling
* Dieter Gerhardt
* Walter Krivitsky
* Kerttu Nuorteva
* Vladimir Mikhaylovich Petrov
* Fyodor Raskolnikov
* Alfred Redl
* Ignace Reiss
* Vitaly Shlykov
* Herman Simm
* Siddiq Ghouse
* Richard Sorge
* Arne Treholt
* Stig Wennerström

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template