William Winter

**Wayne Komer** · Monday, 14th December, 2020, 01:06 AM

William Winter

December 14, 2020

2

Gifted Parents (continued)

He was however always kind, and it was only at the end of his life that he told me how much he had to put up with. A little I saw for myself, and at times it made me vaguely unhappy, but I soon forgot it in the abundant pleasures that were mine. “The Boynes,” as our house was called, was an ideal place in which to bring up a boy.

It was a low white stone building standing in its own grounds and surrounded by a red brick wall. The garden, apart from a drive to the front door and a croquet lawn, had been allowed to run wild and it was ideal for such sports as Indians and Cowboys, Bushrangers, or hide-and-seek. It possessed a marvellous collection of beeches, both the ordinary green and the copper varieties, and in the spring and late autumn it was a sight to behold. There was also a kitchen garden where we grew all our own vegetables but this was tucked discreetly away at the back of the house.

Inebriate family ghost

The house was all on the one floor, the only stairs being those leading to the cellar. It was built round a long passage lit in the day-time by a skylight, with three rooms opening off each side. This passage ran from the entrance hall to the door opening on the servants' quarters, the aforesaid cellar. and some store rooms. Around this rather curious architecture there hung a tale. He lived alone apart from a man-servant who, not unnaturally, soon began to find existence somewhat wearisome. Accordingly, he developed the habit of slipping out to the village inn after he had ensconced his master with his nightly quota of bottle. Unfortunately, one night Mr.Ivy felt more thirsty even that usual, and after finishing his last bottle rang for the servant to bring more. Receiving no reply to repeated janglings, he decided to deal with the matter personally, but he had overestimated his capacity and when the butler returned he found his master dead with a broken neck at the foot of the cellar stairs. Filled with remorse, he hanged himself on a large hook in the back passage, and his ghost is still supposed to haunt the house. The haunting takes the form of a butler carrying a tray, who at ten o’clock emerges from the service door, walks halfway down the main passage and then vanishes. I never saw this apparition myself nor to my knowledge did my parents, but the older villagers always made an excuse to leave the house before the fateful hour of 10 p.m., and our housemaid gave notice because she said “Something frit her”. She could not, or would not, be more explicit.

On the whole I had a very happy boyhood. Lessons I found fairly easy and I was able to pass such exams as were necessary without undue swotting. I did not share my father's aptitude for mathematics and won little or no distinction in this field, but in my favourite subjects, history and classics, I was, I believe I can say without boasting, pretty good.

Chess and Mathematics

By the way it is a great mistake to assume that chess and mathematics have anything in common. Intuition and imagination are the qualities that mark the great chess player, and the fact that Capablanca and some other leading masters were also good mathematicians is purely coincidental. Alekhine was a complete dud at the science.

Like all small boys I think I was a bit of a horror, and I can remember being guilty of one or two unpleasant pranks. One of these, to my subsequent regret, was played on my father. I have mentioned that he was a Sunday Christian and this was sufficient to give him the post of Vicar's Warden, probably because he was the only man in the village capable of reading the lessons without mispronouncing the names of the Hebrew Kings and Prophets. After he had finished a lesson it was his custom to mark carefully the place in the big Bible at which to start on the following Sunday. Noticing this, I and another boy went into the church when all was quiet and altered the position of the marker, so that, instead of the description of the Mosaic law set for the day, my father found himself reading the sprightly adventures of Lot and his daughters. It was well for me that he never discovered the culprit.

Loved cricket

Up to my introduction to chess my principal Interest in life was cricket, my enthusiasm for which was fully shared by my father. He taught me the rudiments of batsmanship, and bowled to me on the lawn, to the annoyance of my mother who objected to the green being cut up. Unfortunately, I never made much of a show as a batsman, though later in life I developed quite a useful leg-break. Once or twice a year he took me to see the County team play at Portsmouth or Southampton. There were giants in the Hampshire side in those days: C. B. Fry, Philip Mead, the prettiest of all left-handed batsmen - but oh! so slow, those great-hearted bowlers Newman and Kennedy, and the gigantic Brown, the most versatile of all-rounders. Occasionally too I was taken to London, either to Lords or the Oval, if there was a specially attractive match at either place. Those were of course red letter days in my life, though two of them ended disappointingly. An attempt to see M. A. Noble's all conquering, Australian team play the M. C. C. failed because our arrival at Lords coincided with that of a thunderstorm, and the only sight we had of an Australian was Warwick Armstrong smoking his pipe on the visitor's balcony. This was my first visit to Lords, and I gazed with awe at the sacred turf, waterlogged though it was, of which I had read so much.

On another occasion we went to the Oval to see the famous hitter G. L. Jessop, who was playing for Gloucestershire against Surrey. This time the weather was kindly, but my hero was not, for he was caught at silly mid-on off the second ball he received. By way of consolation, I remember we watched a century by Dipper, an admirable batsman, but, alas! no Jessop.

The love of cricket was shared by my, famous uncle and indeed, in my adolescent days, it was the only subject on which I could talk to him. At one time he ran his own team, the 'Allahakbarries', and wrote many amusing accounts of their performances, mostly, I fear, apocryphal. I once played for one of his teams and, though I failed with the bat, I redeemed my character by two tumbling catches at short leg, one of which sent back a Cambridge Blue.

E. V. Lucas

Another cricket enthusiast whom I met when on a visit to my uncle was E. V. Lucas, for whose ethereal style of writing I had developed a boyhood passion. I was all agog to meet him, and great was my disappointment when, instead of the Shelley-like figure I had expected, there appeared a large fat man whose only subject of conversation appeared to be the dinners he had recently eaten.

Then somebody mentioned cricket and the whole atmosphere changed. Lucas became absolutely lyrical in his account of a Woolley innings he had just seen, and he and I were soon in deep discussion on the relative merits of the batsmen Jack Hobbs and Victor Trumper and similar themes.

Besides cricket my principal hobby was exploring the countryside on foot or on my bicycle. Hampshire was a beautiful county in those days. quite unspoilt, and containing varied and attractive scenery. The trees of Selborne Hangar have to be seen to be believed and, in its own placid way, the valley of the Itchen just outside Winchester is one of the loveliest things in England. There were few parts of the county within a radius of twenty miles or so that remained unexplored by me.

(to be continued)

**Wayne Komer** · Monday, 14th December, 2020, 11:53 PM

William Winter

December 15, 2020

3

Introduction into chess

All these delights, however, had to take a back seat after my first introduction to chess. This occurred when I was twelve years old, and its manner was curious. I have mentioned that my father was quite a considerable player in his younger days, but had to give up the game when he came to Medstead because of lack of opposition. It so happened that we acquired a new clergyman who challenged my father to a game of chess, and to his surprise and disgust beat him with, I remember, a variation of the Allgaier gambit. This was just not good enough. My father had played at Simpson's with some of the best in the land and considered himself in a far different class from any country parson! So out came the dusty board and men, down came the long disused books, and a turning point in my life had arrived. For about an hour I watched him, fascinated, then tentatively asked "What is that!" It's chess" he replied. "Will you teach me?" At first he was reluctant as he thought I was too young, but I was so persistent that at last he agreed to show me the moves. The whole idea of the game fascinated me and from that moment I was determined that, whatever else I did, I would become a first class chess player.

My father at first restricted my lessons to
an hour a day, after supper. But we had an intelligent housemaid whom I taught to play, and of course I browsed in his books when he was not using them. Most of them were the work of his old chess tutor H. E. Bird, whose influence, especially in the Sicilian Defence, can still be detected in my play. When I was able to face my father over the board in an actual game he at first gave me the odds of the queen, but this badge of Inferiority was soon reduced to rook, then to knight, until finally we played level. He disapproved of the odds of pawn and move, and pawn and two, on the grounds that they made regular openings impossible, an opinion which I heartily endorse. It was a great day for me when I first beat him on level terms, and a still greater when the parson, invited to 'The Boynes' for tea, not only succumbed to my father - that had now become quite a regular occurrence - but also fell an easy victim to my carefully prepared Sicilian Defence.

Ethics of postal chess

Once my father had come back to chess his enthusiasm never waned. He played until the day of his death, and the chessboard was on the table by his bedside when I saw him for the last time. As soon as he found he was really recovering his zest for the game he started to play by correspondence, and I, of course, helped him in his analysis. I could never quite understand my father's attitude to these games. In my early days such assistance as I could give was of negligible value, but he continued to analyse with me when I was an acknowledged master, and on one occasion got Salo Flohr, accepted challenger for the world championship, to work out a winning combination for him. He had no hesitation in showing or even publishing games won with such assistance as his own. Yet in all other respects he was the most rigorously conscientious man I have met.

Cosmopolitan Chess

At fourteen I was taken several times to the Vienna Cafe in New Oxford Street, the most cosmopolitan chess resort I have ever seen. Representatives of every nation congregated there, and one could hear the word 'check' in a dozen different languages. Germans and Austrians predominated as was only natural since, at the time of which I am speaking, these were the leading chess playing countries of the world. Everyone was most kind to me, which may have been the reason why, later on, I was quite unable to accept the view that all the inhabitants of Germany and Austria ate babies for breakfast.

My real chess career began when I joined the City of London Chess Club at the age of fifteen. This was, and had been for many years, the leading club in the country, and everybody who had any kind of chess aspiration was a member. The club met in Grocers Hall Court, off Poultry, and was ruled with a rod of iron by its secretary
J. Waiter Russell. He was a real despot who would brook no kind of opposition, but there is no doubt that he did a tremendous amount of good work for the club. Later on, his jingoistic attitude made him my bitter enemy, but in those early days he did everything to encourage me, and presented me with the bound volumes of the rare City of London Chess Magazine autographed by himself.

The players at the City were rigorously divided into five classes, each holding its own winter tournament. The winner of this, and the winner only, passed into the class above. After a test game against G. Wilkes, a strong class II player with whom I just managed to draw, I was placed in class III, Russell rightly thinking it would be discouraging for me to meet too strong opponents at my first attempt. I won every game in this class in my first year, but failed in the second class or Mocatta Cup as it was called.

I enjoyed these trips to London. I stayed with my uncle but saw little of him as I was out in the morning before he was up and was usually in bed before he came in at night. He lived in Adelphi Terrace, in an enormous top floor flat supposed, and I believe rightly, to possess the best view in London. Certainly, on a clear day it was possible to look right over the built-up area of South London to the Surrey Hills in the distance. I loved to sit at my bedroom window and gaze out over the Thames and the multitudinous lights beyond it, wondering what was to become my destiny when I too became a Londoner, as I had every intention of doing. One or two of my dreams, such as that I would become British Champion, materialised, but on the whole they bore little relation to the reality in store.

First class status attained

At the second attempt I won the Mocatta Cup quite easily, and became an acknowledged first class player, for the City of London set the standard for the rest of England. Then the war came, and with its advent I will close the last really happy chapter of this book. To say that the war knocked the bottom out of my life would of course be true, but that was an experience that I shared with the bulk of my fellow countrymen. I don't suppose there was anyone in Great Britain whose life was not changed by the war. In a few cases for the better - if one considers get ting rich quick out of war profits a change for the better - but in the majority for the worse.

Where I differed from my associates was that I could not understand what was going on around me. Most of them took it in their stride, “It was a nuisance, but those damned Germans wanted taking down a peg or two, and it was up to us to do it. Anyway, it wouldn't last six months and then we would get back to normal." I just could not feel like that. It was not that I did not know what the war was about - on the contrary I felt that I knew it all too well. I had studied history and elementary economic geography, and knew that the mineral wealth of Alsace Lorraine, filched from France in the FrancoPrussian war, had made Germany the greatest industrial power in Europe. I also knew that the best markets were in the hands of others, principally of England, and that German opportunities for capital expansion were thus circumscribed. I knew that British industrialists were naturally anxious to keep these advantages in their own possession, and that their French colleagues were equally anxious to recover their lost provinces without which France was condemned to the status of a second-rate power. I knew, too, Russia's craving for an outlet to the sea via the Dardanelles, now under the rule of Germany's close friend Turkey. Here then was a situation in which big business in all the major European countries might hope to benefit from victory in a war, but what possible concern could it be of ordinary folk like me and my father, or those who worked in field, mine, or factory?

(to be continued)

**Wayne Komer** · Tuesday, 15th December, 2020, 09:46 PM

William Winter

December 16, 2020

4

War madness

I was soon to know. Foreign Minister Grey announced that England was entering the war to protect the neutrality of poor little Belgium, which the wicked Germans had violated. This struck me as absolute poppycock, unworthy of credence by a child of ten, but England lapped it up. with a fervour that seemed to me nothing short of madness. Young men left their peaceful country avocations to rush into Khaki to have a go at these Germans before they caved in. Even my kind gentle father, who could not bear to kill a mouse, suddenly became imbued with a lust for slaughter of people he had never seen, and who could not possibly have done him any harm. As for me I was prepared to think as badly as they liked of the German Kaiser and his entourage, but I could not regard our own hypocritical rulers in much better light. Still less could I be proud of England's association with that barbarous tyrant, the Czar of all the Russians, whose brutalities had been the subject of much comment in the English press until he became our noble ally. As for the Germans themselves, the ordinary people I mean, I could not think they differed in any marked degree from the French, the Russians, or ourselves. I completely discounted the tales of atrocities, with which my father used to regale us at breakfast, out of the columns of the Daily Mail.

To Cambridge

As may be imagined my life at 'The Boynes' at that time was by no means a happy one. If I gave the slightest expression to my views everyone obviously thought that I was mad, and indeed there were times when I came to doubt my own sanity. I felt nothing but relief therefore when the time came for me to take up residence at Clare College, Cambridge, whence my father had graduated some twenty years before. Cambridge was a strange place in those war years. The bulk of the undergraduates were already in the forces, but there was still a number in uniform training for commissions in the O. T. C. Pressure was put upon me to join these, but I firmly refused. For the most part they looked nasty pieces of work. There was of course the usual sprinkling of Indians and other Orientals, with some of whom I became very friendly. Today I can remember only two: an Egyptian named Talaat, an extreme nationalist who told me that I was the only Englishman in Cambridge whose throat he did not want to cut; and a charming Burmese, whose only fault was that his name was Moo Kow, which caused me some embarrassment when I had to introduce him in company. Besides the budding officers and the Orientals there was another small group, serious-looking young men who included in their number most of the best scholars of the university. These were the anti-militarists, the 'conchies' waiting for the time when they would be dragged before a tribunal of local tradesmen who could grant them total exemption (very rare), offer them non-combatant service, or reject the appeal absolutely, which meant in effect, "Join the Army or go to gaol." Many who were given the choice of non-combatant service preferred this last alternative. Towards this group I naturally gravitated, and had the satisfaction of discovering that if I were mad, some very clever people including several Dons were mad also. Another thing I found was that nearly all those anti-militarists were also Socialists, so I too became a Socialist. I am afraid that in those days I had a very hazy idea of what the term implied, but I knew that it stood for the workers and, surely, if anyone could stop this senseless slaughter it was the working classes. They, at any rate, had everything to lose and nothing to gain from continued bloodshed. I knew that the International Conference of World Socialist Parties, meeting shortly before the outbreak of war had pledged themselves solemnly, that in the event of hostilities breaking out they would proclaim a general strike in all belligerent countries.

Faith declining

When the event actually happened, however, the party leaders, with a few exceptions, forgot all about the strike and scurried to join their national governments, where they denounced the enemy just as vociferously as their Conservative colleagues. In spite of this I still pinned my faith to the Socialist movement. Even in those days I realised that Socialism is greater than its leaders. Although on the whole I got on well with my new friends I soon found there was a number of differences between us. Most of them were absolute pacifists, that is to say they objected to violence or killing in any circumstance whatever, whereas my point of view was that I wanted to choose whom I would kill, and understand why I was to do it. Nor could I claim any re1igious objections to war. Since August 1914 my faith such as it was, had been steadily declining and Cambridge had finally destroyed it. We were compelled to go to chapel twice a week, as well as once on Sunday, and the continual prayers for victory for the British Army, which could only mean mass slaughter of Germans, struck me as disgusting hypocrisy in those who professed to the Prince of Peace, especially as their colleagues across the sea were imploring just the same thing - with colours reversed as it were. I had little use for a god who allowed himself to be harnessed like a mule to the national cannon.

No desire to be killed

I had a year of Cambridge before I became of military age, and during that time I had to face up to the first real dilemma of my life. Should I register myself as a conscientious objector on purely political grounds, or should I allow myself to be conscripted into the military machine as, of course, was the wish of my parents! At the time it was a terrible choice. All my own instincts were in favour of the first course, even though it might mean remaining in gaol as long as the war lasted. When I tentatively broached the subject to my mother it was received with a storm of emotion which quite broke my resolution. With tears streaming down her face, she clasped my knees and swore that she would rather see me dead than branded as a coward, and I really believed she would, too. I hastily told her that if she felt so strongly I would give in to her wishes, and all was peace again. At the same time, I made a private resolution that once I got into the Army I would apply every ounce of ability I possessed, use every feint or subterfuge however unscrupulous, to avoid being put in a position where I had to kill or be killed. I had the strongest objection to taking the life of any potential Lasker or Tarrasch, and an equally strong one to their taking mine.

My friends at Cambridge, for the most part, considered my attitude to be a betrayal of principle, and so perhaps it was, but I had always dearly loved my parents, and I found the alternative course required more strength of character, or callousness, than I possessed. Once I had made up my mind things were not so bad. Cambridge, even in wartime, was a delightful place and I forgot most of my troubles in that best of anodynes, Chess.

The University club had naturally sunk to very small numbers, but those that were left were very strong. We managed to organise a championship, which I won by half a point from J. Birnberg, a player who made quite a name for himself in London chess circles after the war. I also played in the championship of the town club, and defeated W. H. Gunston, a Don of St. John's who was reckoned as one of the best players in England. He was much the strongest player I had yet met on even terms, and I was naturally very cock-a-hoop with myself, especially when I heard that he had not lost a game in the town championship for over twenty years. I could only tie for the title however, as I made draws with two of the lesser lights whilst Gunston won all his other games. Before the tie could be played off my time of liberty came to an end.

(to be continued)

**Wayne Komer** · Wednesday, 16th December, 2020, 11:43 PM

William Winter

December 17, 2020

5

Army Life

I am not going to say much about my army life. It was just plain Hell. My regiment was the Honourable Artillery Company, which I joined partly because its headquarters were in London and I hoped to be able to do at any rate some of my training there, and partly because my people considered that my fellow soldiers would be of a rather superior type to those I was likely to meet in an ordinary infantry regiment. I do not know whether this last supposition was true. The only man whose name I can remember was subsequently tried for murder, but on the whole, they were a decent enough lot of fellows. I cannot say the same of the officers and N. C. Os. Coarse and brutal, they seemed to take a sadistic delight in making my life as miserable as possible. I hated them with a hatred which I could not possibly feel for any German, and in all my experience with the H. A. C. I encountered only two men whom I would not have been delighted to massacre. It is possible that the views I held made me a difficult soldier, also that my sheltered life may have rendered me unduly sensitive to vulgar abuse, but looking back, and comparing these brutes with the very different types I served under in World War II, I cannot feel that my original judgment was far wrong. Enough of an unpleasant subject. Indeed, I would leave the war years altogether if it were not that they played a certain part in my development as a chess player.

As I had hoped I did the first part of my servitude in London and, since I lived out of Barracks at the Hampden Residential Club, I was able to get a good deal of chess in the evenings and on Saturday afternoons. I played chiefly at the Gambit Chess Rooms in Budge Row, kept by the Lady Champion Miss E. Price.

Personalities of the 1910's

Here I had a number of games on a professional basis with O. C. Muller, one of the last survivors of the old Simpson’s Pro's. Muller was a delightful chap with a fund of anecdotes about chess players and others, which ought to have been true, even if they were not. He could keep an audience enthralled with these tales, which were absolutely without malice. In addition, he was a first-rate chess teacher, and I learnt a great deal from him. He taught me how to build up a solid basis for the position, and the necessity for establishing such a basis before attempting any tactical adventures. Masterly restraint is another name for this, and it is the hall-mark of every first-class player. It was Muller who gave me my first real insight into the complexities of the endgame. I also had the opportunity of playing a number of semi-serious games with R. H. V. Scott and D. Miller, two of the leading London amateurs.

Scott was probably the most brilliant combinative player England has ever seen and had already won almost every honour except the British Championship, which fell to him in 1920. Since those days I have played over hundreds of games, including the beautiful brilliancies of the modern Russian school, and Scott's best combinations stand up quite well beside them. There were however weaknesses in his play which I shall discuss later. Miller was just the opposite type, a dour solid player exceptionally hard to beat. He is, I am glad to say, still with us, but Scott died a few years ago - he had been out of chess for a long time.

In these war days I did not go much to the City of London Club. Russell had already developed the jingoism which eventually drove him completely out of his mind, and I was soon at loggerheads with him. The first serious breach occurred on the question of the naturalised Germans. There was a number of these in the club, many of them British citizens since boyhood, and as loyal as Russell himself. Nevertheless, to the latter everything German was tainted, and a special general meeting of the club was called to purge the club of the abomination. Together with Scott and most of the younger and stronger players I vigorously opposed the expulsion, but Russell had sent out a three-line whip to fellow dotards and, by a large majority, the naturalised Germans had to go. Among them was the club's president, a man in his eighties, who had been a member for over fifty years. His expulsion broke his heart. He lived just long enough to alter his will in which he had left the club a large sum of money.

My first posting after London was Leeds, where at the Leeds club itself I found no strong players, but I was not long in discovering that in the neighbouring city of Bradford the British champion F. D. Yates, and the Mexican master A. G. Conde, were in the habit of spending Saturday afternoons in a cafe known, in imitation of the London resort, as 'The Gambit'. I was not long in making my way there, and found both masters helpful and encouraging. I played a number of games with each of them, and did not do at all badly. A comical feature of these exhibitions to Bradford was that some bright lad in the army had declared the city out-of-bounds to troops from Leeds, so that before I could leave at night Yates had to go out into the streets to watch for military policemen, surely the strangest job ever put on a British chess champion.

There was another chess incident too, which was not without its comical side, although at the time It caused me a lot of annoyance. We had an old Sergeant-Major, a superior type to most of that kidney, who fancied himself as a player and insisted on having one evening each week with me. He was not a bad player, about knight class I should think, but of course he stood no chance with me level, and I simply dare not offer him odds. One week it happened that by an accidental blunder I lost a game, and to my surprise I was later asked if I would like a week-end pass, while on the other occasions when I won all the games I invariably found myself on the Sunday guard, or 'stables', a euphemistic term which meant sweeping up horse muck. I therefore set myself to try to lose one game at each session, and a hard job it was. If I had simply made blunders and allowed him to mate me, or win my queen, he would have smelt a rat, so I had to lay traps for myself hoping against hope that he would see his opportunity. I think some of these losing games were among the cleverest things I have ever done on the chessboard, and I wish I had preserved them.

The war ends at last

It was while I was at Leeds that a world-shaking event occurred. The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. At the time I was aware that something had happened of far-reaching importance but, of course, I could only have the vaguest idea of its real significance. One thing I did know, the Bolsheviks led the Russian people out of the war and that alone was sufficient to make me inscribe the name of Lenin on my list of heroes. Why, oh why, could somebody not do the same for us? However, it was not to be so long. In 1917 it looked like another Thirty Years war. By November 1918 it was all over. At the time of the armistice, I was at Catterick camp, a place which was surely one of the creator's mistakes, and I had been nearly driven to suicide by the persecutions of a lunatic Commanding Officer, who fortunately blew his brains out before I blew mine. As a student I had a right to priority discharge, and early in 1919 I was back at 'The Boynes', a free man once more, full of hope for the future.

(To be continued)

**Gordon Taylor** · Thursday, 17th December, 2020, 12:28 PM

"He taught me how to build up a solid basis for the position, and the necessity for establishing such a basis before attempting any tactical adventures. Masterly restraint is another name for this, and it is the hall-mark of every first-class player."

Well said. Whenever given the chance I will pronounce "position first, then tactics." William Winter was certainly a character, but the English manufacture many of these. Fun reading!

**Wayne Komer** · Thursday, 17th December, 2020, 12:59 PM

William Winter

December 17, 2020

Thanks, Gordon!

I thought Winter’s Memoirs were worth preserving and seeing the light of day again after almost sixty years.

I put in a couple of hours each day transcribing them. A few of the things he writes makes me raise my eyebrows but I believe he gives a true and honest account of his life. Pages and pages to come.

I wish we had more of these life accounts – especially of Canadian chess players who have retired.

Wayne

**Wayne Komer** · Thursday, 17th December, 2020, 11:11 PM

William Winter

December 18, 2020

6

After the 1914-1918 War

I was back at Cambridge in a few weeks' time, occupying the same rooms as my father which I had been unable to secure when I first went up. The University was a very different place from that which I had left two years earlier. It was now packed to capacity, and many would-be students were turned away from sheer lack of living accommodation. It was of course by no means the normal Cambridge. Most of those in residence had been through experiences of which the undergraduate of ordinary times would never have dreamt, and they were naturally a very different type from the lads fresh from school who make up the usual complement. These were hard-bitten callous men, for the most part without ideals or aspirations, only anxious to get their degrees and start on the serious business of money-making. In the boom period which followed the war everyone thought they were going to make their fortunes. By no means all, however, were like this and, although almost all my old friends had disappeared, I had no difficulty in finding new ones interested in one, at least, of my three activities, work, chess and politics.

How Law resembles Chess

These I kept as far as I could in watertight compartments, so as to avoid such social solecisms as inviting a Tory chess player to tea with a Socialist activist. Inevitably there was some overlapping, but I avoided any serious contretemps. I do not think I have mentioned before that I was reading Law, which, paradoxical as it may appear in a revolutionary like myself, I have always loved. I am of course speaking of Law, in the abstract, not of the laws-a very different proposition. I think the explanation lies in the fact that there is a great deal of similarity between the ploys and stratagems of legal practice, and manoeuvring on the chessboard. In both the primary object is to outwit one's opponent within certain carefully defined rules, and in both, mental agility is the necessary ingredient of success. I believe too that Law, like a correctly developed game, is built on an inherently sound basis, the Common Law of England, which, I think, will still provide the foundation for the vastly different legal system of the future world.

Naturally the masses of statutes and orders at present branching out from this Common Law are for the most part designed for the protection of private property and the smooth working of the complex capitalist system, but even these can sometimes be used by a smart left-wing lawyer for purposes very different from their drafters' intentions. This was what I hoped to do when I came to practise. Also there exists a mass of Trade Union laws, Factory Acts, Rights of Injured Workmen, &c., which is of direct interest to the working class, and provides the opportunity for a great deal of subtlety. Altogether there was plenty of scope for Socialist lawyers in the years immediately following the war.

Re-starting Cambridge University chess

As far as chess was concerned I found that the University club had completely fallen into stagnation, and I had to start to build it up from scratch, with the assistance of that stalwart of Cambridge chess, B. Goulding Brown of Trinity, and one or two other Dons. An advertisement in the Cambridge Magazine had an amazing response, and over sixty turned up at the 'Blue Pig'-- otherwise the Blue Boar Hotel - where the clubroom was situated. I was elected president and, I fear, became dictator as well, but I think I made a pretty good job of it. I divided the members into three classes, arranging tournaments for each of them, and organized matches with both local and London clubs. I also got up simultaneous exhibitions. Most of the matches were lost, as our players were totally without experience, but we did well enough to show that there was plenty of latent talent and, for the first time, I tried my hand at giving chess lessons.

One of the simultaneous exhibitions was by J. H. Blackburne, probably the last this grand player ever gave. I had heard that he was Inclined to be slow and, knowing his tastes, arranged for two bottles of whisky complete with glass, one at each end of the room. The device worked to perfection. He fairly galloped up and down, and finished the twenty boards in less than three hours without a single loss. He must then have been in his late seventies, a majestic figure, with his long white beard reminding one of some biblical prophet, except that his eyes beamed with benevolence instead of blazing in denunciation.

.... and the Oxford-Cambridge matches

My next step was to revive the annual matches against Oxford which had been in abeyance since 1914. Usually these were played in London during the Easter Vacation, but as there was some difficulty this year about finding accommodation, our opponents offered us hospitality in Oxford. 1 was a one-man selection committee and found it a difficult job. After the first three places the rest of the candidates were of very much the same strength or weakness-however one likes to put it. As finally constituted the team contained some names since well-known in other walks of life. The third board was L. S. Penrose, now a professor at London University, and the fifth was occupied by Kingsley Martin now [1955] the editor of the New Statesman. Disappointed candidates for places suggested that his selection wa due rather to his political opinions than his ability as a chess player, but he gave the best answer by winning brilliantly. In fact, we all won, and the score of 7-0 stands a record for either side in these events.

Beats T. H. Tylor

On the first board my opponent was T. H. Tylor of Balliol with whom I have had many a stern struggle since. I was very proud of this game which was published in The Field; with highly complimentary notes by the famous master Amos Burn. I spent the night in Balliol as Tylor’s guest, and made the acquaintance of the famous college port. I believe we played some friendly games afterwards but I have little recollection of them. I left the Cambridge club with a membership of seventy-five and, though the numbers have dropped, I am glad to say it has flourished consistently ever since. I have taken every opportunity of visiting it as a member of the Hampstead touring side, and always enjoy reviving old memories. I think it is a pity it now meets in a teashop instead of “The Blue Pig.”

Politics

The political side of my Cambridge activity consisted mainly of study. Naturally I read everything I could find about the Russian Revolution, and mastered the subject sufficiently to give a lecture to the University Socialist Society on the Soviet Constitution. It went down very well. I thought I was able to deal with a number of questions, and as I strolled home in the evening I was feeling distinctly pleased with myself when a dark figure suddenly loomed up in front of me and a raucous voice said, "The proctor would like to speak to you, sir." I had inadvertently lit a cigarette while wearing cap and gown. It was a sad anti-climax.

The University Socialist Society, which ultimately achieved great importance, was in a very small affair. Its principal function was to engage a speaker to address public meetings in the town, a task of some difficulty as the speakers knew that they grave risk of being mobbed by gangs of hooligans mainly drawn from the ex-officer undergraduates. These types mobbed the very mild Norman Angell and forced him to take refuge in the fire station, but allowed a real revolutionary in Arthur MacManus to conduct his meeting in perfect peace and quietude-they had never heard his name. One of the speakers invited was G. B. S., who replied on a postcard that he thought it very cruel to invite him to Cambridge when he might be lecturing in some comparatively peaceful centre such as Memel or Riga. These cities at that time were the scene of particularly savage fighting!

It was always a great grief to me that I never met Shaw in the flesh. At one time he lived opposite my uncle, and I have often seen him through the window moving about his flat. Although he did visit my uncle occasionally I never happened to be there at the right moment.

I was once staying with Barrie when he went to lunch with Shaw, and he returned in a furious temper equally disgusted with the fare and the conversation. Both of them loved the theatre, that was the only point in common.

Only undergraduates can play in the Oxford-Cambridge match

In addition to my Russian studies, I began to acquire some knowledge of the philosophy of Marxism, which has been my support right through my life. In these studies, I was very fortunate to have the guidance of Clemens Dutt, brother of the R. Palme Dutt who was at Oxford. Clemens had already graduated when I returned to Cambridge, so I was unable to give him a place in the University chess team in which he would have been a great asset, as he was a very fine player indeed, quite up to the best amateur standards. I proposed him for membership of the City of London club, but he was turned down incontinently. I was told that Russell, who was by now completely ga-ga and must have mixed up Clemens with his brother, nearly had a stroke when he saw the name. "If this man is elected, " he roared "we'll all be blown up as we sit at our boards." At Cambridge, Dutt and I used to spend every Sunday afternoon together discussing chess, and Marxism, as well as the immediate problems of the day.

Very happy hours they were, marred only by the Salvation Army who seemed to think a vacant piece opposite Dutt's rooms the proper place for their most cacophonous efforts at soul-saving.

(to be continued)

**Wayne Komer** · Saturday, 19th December, 2020, 12:25 AM

William Winter

December 19, 2020

7

After the 1914-1918 War (continued)

A convinced Communist

In order to gain some experience of the practical side of political work I joined the local branch of the Independent Labour Party and took part in two by-elections for the Local Council, both of which, if I remember rightly, were won by the Labour candidate. Even in the early days after the war people were realising that things were not altogether for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Not so pleasant a memory is waiting two hours in the pouring rain as part of a demonstration to welcome J. H. Thomas, who had just negotiated the settlement of a railway strike on terms more or less satisfactory to the workers. He was very popular then, but he did not make a good impression on me. His exaggerated illiteracy seemed to me highly bogus.

I remained In the Cambridge I.L.P. until the majority of its members went over to the newly formed Communist Party. Naturally I went with them, and I have stood with the Communists ever since. It is now some time since my health compelled me to abandon active political work, and rumours have got about to the effect that I have changed or modified my opinions. I wish to take this opportunity of denying categorically any such reports.

I believed in 1920 that in Communism remained the only hope of civilization. I believe it with much more reason today when half the world is governed according to Marxist principles. I am not one of the so-called intellectuals who joined the Communist Party when it was 'fun', or a popular thing to do, and scuttled like rats when things became dangerous. Some of these are numbered with the Party's most savage enemies, and I hold them in utter contempt. I am mentioning no names. Those whom the cap fits, let them wear it.

Cambridge v Oxford Match
March 14, 1919
Board One
Winter, William – Tylor, Theodore Henry
D61 QGD, Orthodox Defence, Rubinstein variation

1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Nbd7 5.e3 Be7 6.Nf3 O-O 7.Qc2 c5 8.Rd1 cxd4 9.Nxd4 a6 10.cxd5 Nxd5 11.Bxe7 Nxe7 12.Bd3 Ng6 13.h4 Re8 14.Bxg6 hxg6 15.h5 gxh5 16.Rxh5 g6 17.Rh3 Kg7 18.Ke2 Rh8 19.Rg3 Qe8 20.Ne4 Nf6 21.Qc3 e5 22.Nd6 Qd7 23.N4f5+ Kg8 24.Nxc8 Qb5+ 25.Qd3 Qxd3+ 26.Rxd3 Rxc8 27.Ne7+ Kg7 28.Nxc8 Rxc8 29.Rh3 Nd5 30.Rh4 1-0

Getting a coveted invitation

Great things were promised for the English chess world in 1919. A great tournament was being arranged at Hastings in which the unbeatable, the almost legendary, Capablanca had promised to take part.

A generous patron

To get into this was of course the height of my ambition, but how? It was clear that all I had yet done was to show myself a player of promise, and much more than that was necessary to secure one of the coveted places in the Victory tournament. After much heartburning I decided my only chance lay in winning a match against one of the n competitors, and therefore boldly challenged R. H. V. Scott. Scott, whose own place in the tournament was secure, was quite ready provided we could find someone who would put up a stake and provide the necessary hospitality. Here I had a stroke of luck. I found a patron. Mr. H. Rodney, a former president of the Metropolitan Club in London who then occupied a similar position at Hastings, had taken favourable notice of my play, and he agreed to pay all the expenses of the match as well as providing a prize of £20. "You won't win" he told me ”but the practice will do you all the good in the world."

This was the general opinion of the chess cognoscenti. I was not so sure. As I have previously mentioned, I had played a great deal with Scott during the war and thought that, brilliant tactician though he was, there were certain weaknesses in his approach to the game of which I could take advantage. This kind of gamesmanship was an important weapon in the armoury of Dr. Lasker who, before any tournament, made a careful study of the weaknesses of each of his opponents, both as regards style of play and temperament. It is entirely legitimate, and can prove very useful until one comes up against an opponent like Capablanca who had no weaknesses of any kind. In Scott's case, one of his foibles; an aversion to exchanging queens, and I, took full advantage of this in the first two games of the match both of which I won with comparative ease; but Scott was not finished yet. In the third game he tied me up in a variation of the Sicilian which I had not previously seen, and in the fourth I made the fatal mistake in going for an early win of material and allowing him a king's side attack. Things now looked bad for me. I had the black pieces in the fifth game and I dared not play my favourite Sicilian defence because I could not discover a satisfactory answer to his new line.

Fortunately, I remembered that he had a predilection for a certain variation of the Ruy Lopez which I considered quite unsound and for the first, and nearly the last, time in my life, I met the open game face to face. The gamble worked. He played the dubious line, and I forced a win by a nice sacrificial attack.

The invitation comes

This defeat completely demoralized him and he played the last game very badly, leaving me the victor by four games to two. Almost immediately after, I received an invitation to compete in the Master's section of the Victory Congress, putting me of course in the seventh heaven of delight. I am eternally grateful to Rodney for what he did for me in those early days. He was the last survivor of that generation of British chess patrons who made possible the careers of Blackburne, Bird, and the other great professional masters. An aristocrat of the old school, and a true-blue conservative, he did not in the least mind my political opinions, and indeed told me that he preferred the Socialists to the 'fat men who had done well out of the war' now dominating his own party. Apart from chess he took quite a fancy to me and I was his guest on several occasions at his beautiful home on the East Cliff at Hastings, once the property of Henry James. He loved good food and drink, of which I was properly appreciative, though I could never accustom myself to his habit of drinking sherry for breakfast. I am very fond of sherry, but I do love my morning cup of tea.

A great tournament

The Competitors in the Master's section of the Victory Congress were: J. R. Capablanca (Cuba), B. Kostich (Yugoslavia), M. Marchand (Holland), Dr. Olland (Holland) and A G. Conde who, though resident in England, played as the representative of Mexico, together with F. D. Yates, Sir G. A. Thomas, R. P. Michell, V. L. Wahltuch, R. H. V. Scott, H. G. Cole, and myself from England. The tournament suffered from the fact that no players from the ex-enemy countries or from Russia were permitted to compete, but the presence of Capablanca was quite sufficient to make it a memorable event. I do not suppose any chess player, certainly none since Morphy, has ever caught the public fancy so much as 'Capa'. Even non-players - people who did not know a knight from a pawn - knew his name or something like it, and I have been continually asked by people of this category, "Did you ever play with Capablanca?" Possibly his appearance, which caused him to be much photographed, had something to do with it. He was a trained diplomat. He was later known as Cuba's Ambassador Extraordinary to the world at large, and certainly looked more like an Embassy attache than a chess master.

I am bound to say that my first impressions of him were not favourable. I have never been partial to glossy immaculate young men, and in common with other English players I resented his behaviour at the board. He never sat down, but when it was his turn to move, strolled up to the table, surveyed the position for a few seconds, made his move, and walked away as if he were giving a simultaneous exhibition. Probably he was justified in holding the opposition in contempt, but he need not have shown it quite so blatantly. Later on, he got rid of all his mannerisms and I came to appreciate his sterling character, particularly the way in which he upheld the dignity of the chess profession and the rights of his fellow practitioners. The chess world suffered a grievous loss when he died during the 1939 war, while still in his fifties. Whether at the period of which I am writing, and for a few years later, till 1925 to be exact, he was the strongest player that the world had yet seen, is a moot point.

(to be continued)

**Wayne Komer** · Saturday, 19th December, 2020, 09:55 PM

William Winter

December 20, 2020

8

A great tournament (continued)

Certainly he [Capablanca] was the hardest to beat. From San Sebastian 1911 to the match with Alekhine in 1927 his losses could be counted on the fingers, and this period included his world title match with Lasker. Certainly also no one has ever played chess so effortlessly. So perfect was his technique that he succeeded in making it appear an easy game - this proved his eventual undoing. He began to despise his medium, publicly declared that chess was played out and would have to be made more difficult by the introduction of fresh pieces, and then proceeded to lose six games to Alekhine. Afterwards, he revised his ideas. He ceased to rely on technique alone, and gave his natural genius more play. He became more like the Capa of pre-war years, and his tournament successes thoroughly demonstrated his right to a return match for the world title. This is not the place to discuss the abortive negotiations between the two great masters on this subject, but all chess lovers must regret the consequences. Not only was there no match, but relations between the two reached such a pitch that they would not speak to one another or even sit at the board together. It was all most unpleasant for those who, like myself, were on the best of terms with both of them. Great chess artists are a bit like children and need control, hence the necessity of FIDE.

After Capablanca, the strongest player in the Victory tournament was Boris Kostich, a colorful professional who did sufficiently well in American tournaments during this war to secure backing for a match with Capablanca, in which he was well and truly crushed.

Amazing memory

He was full of vitality and enthusiasm, a real go-getter who managed to arrange for himself a tour of the Native States of India, from which he came back with sufficient money to buy himself a house in his native Serbia, and set up as a sort of country squire. He also brought back a fund of stories about his adventures with elephants, tigers, harem beauties, and jealous murderous courtiers, which I suspected to be more lurid than true. I got on very well with him and spent most of my spare time in his company. I have never put him in the very front rank of chess masters, but he had one extraordinary gift, a prodigious memory which enabled him to play over out of his head almost any game of the present century, and a good many of an earlier date.

It was terribly hot at the time of the tournament, and almost impossible to sleep till the small hours of the morning, so Kostich and I used to sit on deck chairs at the edge of the sea while I would ask him for the score, say, of Rubinstein v. Duras, Pistyan, 1912. A few moments concentration and out would come the moves accompanied by short expositions on the difficult points whilst I followed it on my pocket board. He was hardly ever at fault. Naturally this colossal memory served him in good stead in his practice, but occasionally it proved a drawback, as when he spent so long trying to recall what Blackburne played in a rook ending that he lost on the time limit. Not surprisingly he came second in the Victory tournament, followed by Yates and Thomas, the latter of whom played particularly well and would have won third prize outright but for resigning to Capablanca, through some hallucination, an ending in which he had at least a forced draw.

My own play was a great disappointment to me. Naturally I expected to lose to Capablanca, but I did not think it would happen in the childish way it did, and I collapsed almost as badly against Kostich. The one bright spot was a good victory over Yates, and I also beat Scott and Conde.

At the end of 1919 I took my degree and left Cambridge. Although I never saw the University at its best I thoroughly enjoyed my sojourn there and always have an affection for the old place. No town that I have ever seen, with the solitary exception of Prague, has so thoroughly retained the atmosphere of the Middle Ages. It is always a pleasure to re-visit it. It was now necessary for me to make up my mind what I was going to do with my life. I had agreed with my parents that I should qualify as a solicitor but I managed to persuade them to allow me one year of chess before I settled down to the 'serious business of life.'

At the back of my mind, I had the sneaking hope that if I could gain some startling success in this year I might be able to make the game a profession.

Another match

Good old Mr. Rodney was nearly as disappointed over the result of the Victory tournament as I was myself. He knew and sympathised with my ambitions, and organised a match at Amsterdam between myself and Marchand, the champion of Holland.

The trip to Holland was a great thrill to me. I had never been abroad before except fof one short holiday in France with my parents when I was quite a small boy, and everything was sheer delight. Amsterdam, which later I came to know quite well, is of course a magnificent city in itself, and utterly and completely different from anything one sees in England. The canals with their streams of barges alongside the streets, the railway-train-like tramcars which are also pillar boxes, the cavalry charge of cyclists nine or ten abreast in what we term the rush hours, were a never failing source of pleasure, but I think that what impressed me than anything was the sense of being neutral country, far removed from the hates engendered by the war. Very typical was the sight which met my eyes when I went into a barber's shop on the morning of my arrival. On one wall was a huge picture of Marshal Foch, and opposite to it another, equally large, of Marshal Hindenburg. I detested these men and all that they stood for, but their pictures in the same shop really meant something.

Pipe dreams shattered

As for the match itself, there is little to say. I played much better than in the Victory Congress, and put up a hard fight, again the strategical technique of the professional master proved too much for me and I had to admit defeat by two games with three draws. The match, played Amsterdam chess club, attracted a great deal of attention, and daily reports appeared in the Amsterdam Telegraaf, each containing the game with excellent annotations. Among the spectators was a future world champion, Max Euwe, then still a student. Unlike most young players, who incline to arrogance - I was not deficient in this vice myself - Euwe was shy and diffident, and it was only when I got him to
the board and he started to analyse that I realised that here was a great master of the future.

My opponent, Marchand, clearly saw the writing on the wall and was already preparing to abandon chess for a commercial career. "There is only room for one chess master in Holland" he said. I sympathised with him, for I also saw the writing on the wall and it said 'SOLICITOR'S OFFICE'. My little pipe dream was over.

Starting as a solicitor (attorney)

The first thing I had to do was to find a suitable firm to which to article myself. It was of course essential that the principals should be Socialists and the work should largely be concerned with the cause of the working class. Naturally I could not possibly take any interest in the work of a family solicitor or of any business looking after commercial companies. With the assistance of the Dutts I soon found what I was looking for. Scott Dickens and Thompson were a new partnership formed shortly after the conclusion of the war during which both principals had been in prison as conscientious objectors. Young though the firm was it had already handled the business of a number of Trade Unions; it also did a great deal of work on behalf of the tenants' associations who had many rights under the Rent Restrictions Acts, if they would only find out what they were. Thompson, in particular, became a real expert on these complicated pieces of legal jargon, which drove even the judges quite frantic. I started my new duties in January 1921, living at the Hampden Club, where I stayed at intervals during my military career. I think that I had better mention at this moment that I was quite without money of my own. As an articled clerk I was not of course paid, and apart from occasional bits made out of chess and sundry writing, I was entirely dependent on a small allowance from my people. At first this was of no consequence as I was a creature of simple tastes, but later it was to have vital effects. For a time, all went well, and it was an exciting world in which I found myself, in those early days of my life in London. The boom of the immediate victory had passed away, unemployment was developing on an unprecedented scale, and everywhere the workers were on the march to protect the improved conditions they had secured in the short-lived period of prosperity. Nor were their activities solely concerned with working conditions and wages. By threats of direct action, they had compelled the Government to abandon its war of intervention against the Soviet Union, and, under the leadership of a youthful communist named Harry Pollitt, had stopped the shipment of arms to Poland, in which country lay the last hopes of the interventionists led by Winston Churchill.

(to be continued)

**Wayne Komer** · Saturday, 19th December, 2020, 09:56 PM

William Winter

December 20, 2020

8 (continued)

Plight of the unemployed

It was no wonder that I and many of my comrades thought that the revolution was just around the corner. Even chess had to take a back seat in my mind in those days. I concerned myself principally with the position of the unemployed.

In 1921 there was no such thing as National Assistance, and when unemployment insurance became exhausted they were left to the tender mercies of the Guardians of the Poor. These had an absolute discretion regarding what was necessary to keep an unemployed worker from starvation, and under Tory Boards, whose only concern was to keep down the rates, the plight of the unfortunate workless can be imagined. Sporadic riots broke out all over the country and mass demonstrations were held, which at first took the form of collecting alms from shopkeepers and business men. This was quite the wrong tactic. It was the powers that be, the Government and the Local Authorities who had created the conditions which deprived these men of work, and it was their business to look after them.

The best elements of the unemployed soon realised this and formed the National Unemployed Workers movement, a contributary body, a sort of unemployed workers' trade union in fact, with three main objectives: to compel the Boards of Guardians to pay adequate scales of relief, to force the State to take over responsibility for unemployed maintenance or work, and, as an ultimate objective, the overthrow of the capitalist system of which unemployment, poverty, and war, are the necessary concomitants.

The leading figure in this movement was Walter Hannington, an engineer with whom I was to work in close contact for a considerable time. I know, respect, and admire all the leading Communists in the country, but I will always have a specially warm spot in my heart for Wally, because of his exuberant enthusiasm and good nature, which neither frequent imprisonment, nor privation, could impair. He would make an ideal National Organiser for the Engineers, but, alas! his politics forbid.

Clashes with the Police

Naturally all this working class agitation led to frequent clashes with the police, sometimes resulting in cases in which we were engaged professionally, and one of these led to a meeting that was to effect my whole life. A certain Dennis Garrett, a leader of the Islington unemployed, had been convicted of causing a breach of the peace and bound over to find two sureties of £25 each for his good behaviour. In default he was sentenced to three months imprisonment. The police hated Garrett who was one of the most active and capable of the unemployed leaders, and did all they could to keep him inside, turning down surety after surety on frivolous or irrelevant grounds. At last, the matter came into our hands, and we had no difficulty in securing a court order for the man's release. I went to the gaol to fetch him out, and was asked as a favour to break the news to his wife who lived in a back street off Essex Road, Islington. I climbed what seemed miles of dark ricketty staircase, knocked on a door, and saw Molly Garrett for the first time.

Love

My readers may have noticed that I have had nothing to say about women. This is not due to reticence but simply to the fact that so far they had played no part in my life. I am perfectly normal sexually, and as fond of women as most men, but the high incidence of venereal disease during the war, coupled with the nauseating talk on sex matters in the army, had disquieted me temporarily with the whole business. I had a mild flirtation with one of the members of the Cambridge Socialist Society, and another, not quite so mild, with a redhead whom I met while exploring London's Chinatown, but neither had any influence on my life. Somehow Molly was different. I am no hand at portraying sentimental emotions and do not intend to try here. Suffice it to say that after our first meeting we wanted to see one another again, and after several such we decided we wanted to be together always. There was no objection on the part of Molly's husband, who had a Kathleen of his own, and seemed rather grateful to me for taking his wife off his hands, while the fact that we could not get married did not matter two hoots. In those days we considered marriage to be a bourgeois anachronism, and indeed I have little use for it even now, except in so far as it provides a living for the Junior Bar - I shudder to think of the fate of freshly called barristers if the supply of undefended divorce cases dried up. Ways and means for Molly and me presented a problem. The Hampden club was for men only and I could not change my address without awkward questions from my people.

Catastrophe

This difficulty was solved by retaining my membership of the club and continuing to use it as an address, while we lived in a furnished room. For about two months everything went according to plan, but then came catastrophe. An unfortunate accident brought my father unexpectedly to London, he went to the Hampden club only to find that I had not been living there for weeks, and the fat was in the fire.

(to be continued)

**Wayne Komer** · Monday, 21st December, 2020, 12:03 AM

William Winter

December 21, 2020

9

Sir James Barrie condemns

This was the time when the fact that I was entirely dependent on my allowance assumed devastating proportions. My family issued an ultimatum, "Give up this woman or your allowance stops". On my previous clash with my parents over the war I had given in to their wishes, but then I was alone. Now I had someone else on my side and I stood firm. So did they. My father told me privately that he himself would have turned a Nelsonian eye on the whole affair, and let things go on as before, but my mother and my uncle were adamant. I always suspected that Barrie was the hidden hindrance and my suspicions were confirmed when his solicitor, Sir George Lewis, sent for me to his office. Lewis apparently thought he would bully me into submission and only found out his mistake when I threatened to horsewhip him on his own doorstep unless he spoke of Molly with proper respect. I think he returned a very bad report of me. I hope he did. He was a thoroughly nasty little man.

However, all this did not alter my situation· The fiat went forth. My allowance was cut and Molly and I found ourselves at the mercy of a world in the throes of a slump with unemployment increasing every day.

After a long council of war, we decided to stick it out. Naturally I had to give up my Articles, but we had certain assets. I had become a fairly competent public speaker, had also established some literary associations, while Molly could often obtain casual work machining handbags, at which I believe, she was fairly efficient. Also, we thought in our innocence it could not last for long. The miners were locked out, the engineers were threatened, and the employed agitation was increasing in intensity every day.

Whole-heartedly into political activity

Surely, we thought, with all this turbulence the hour of revolution cannot be far away. We decided to throw ourselves whole-heartedly into political activity and after much discussion settled on Bristol as the best place for our activities.

There were several reasons for this. For one thing my friend Clemens Dutt had a post at Bristol University - I am afraid that I was the cause of his losing it - and for another thing the unemployed committee whom I had met while on a visit to Dutt struck me as a fine body of men but without political or agitational experience. I felt sure we would be warmly welcomed and so it proved. A dwelling-place was found for us in a house in Philadelphia Street, a narrow alley in the centre of the town which has now, I believe, been pulled down. It was just what I wanted. It was cheap - 3/6d. a week was the figure we paid - and the street had the reputation of being so tough that the police were very chary of entering it, except in force. As I was pretty sure that my activities would sooner or later cause me to fall foul of the law, it was a great thing to feel that the natives, so to speak, were on my side.

Bitterness in Bristol

The only drawback to our new home was that courting cats were able to gain access to the space beneath the floor boards, but one cannot have everything. The unemployed committee turned out to be, as I had thought, an excellent set of men, the most able being Percy Glanville, a C. P. member who had gained some organizational experience in the A. E. U. and was also an excellent public speaker. He and I became great friends and on us devolved most of the propaganda work. The chairman was a man named Stewart, an anarchist of vast erudition who was quite a character in his way. He always wore a black skull cap which he would never take off under any circumstances. Once when he was ill I went to see him in bed and found him still wearing his old cap. I found out the reason when he was called to give evidence at the Police Court, and in spite of all protests denuded of his headgear. He was bald as an egg and the contrast between the vast shining ball that was the top of his head with his lined features and great hooked nose was extraordinarily comical. Poor Tommy Stewart, he developed tuberculosis and died soon after I left Bristol.

When I arrived, I found the mass of the unemployed in bitter mood. Two days previously a demonstration to the Board of Guardians had been broken up by the police who had first driven a fire engine through the ranks of a perfectly peaceful procession and followed it up with a baton charge.

Bandages and sticking plaster were thus the order of the day, and several of the older men were still in hospital. British police are usually spoken of with paeons of praise not only by visiting foreigners but by writers like Ted (Blue Lamp) Willis who really ought to know better. I am quite prepared to admit that they compare favourably with their opposite numbers in other countries. They are less corruptible than the American, and less brutal to the ordinary criminal suspect than their French counterparts but, when it is a question of a working class and particularly an unemployed demonstration they show themselves in their true light as the strong-arm men of the propertied classes.

I am speaking of what I know, I have taken part in at least six perfectly peaceful demonstrations where these thugs have gone into action, lips drawn back in a snarl, striking out indiscriminately at young and old, men and women. The mounted men, Ally Sloper's cavalry we called them, are even worse than the others. It is their mission to break up an orderly march by making their horses trample on the demonstrators' toes and this creates a mob which falls an easy prey to the men on foot. It may be objected that the real blame for all this lies with the men at the top who give the orders, and no doubt they must bear the chief responsibility, but the rank and file cannot be exonerated. Every recruit to the Police Force knows what he may be called upon to do, and it is no life for a decent young working man.

The general condition of the Bristol unemployed in 1921 was indeed deplorable. Housing was in an appalling state, more than half of St. Judas' ward, the big working class district in the centre of the City, had been condemned prior to the war and though nothing immediate could be done about this, the distress was aggravated tenfold by the hordes of children literally crying for bread. If I say that the amount of relief paid by the Bristol Board of Guardians was half the bare subsistence allowance I should be paying them a compliment.

It was evident that a stern fight lay ahead. The first thing to do was to secure a hall where we could talk to the men without being interfered with by the police, and this was secured through the assistance of Harry Day, Labour M. P. for Central Southwark, and the owner of a chain of cinemas throughout the country, one of which, known as the Vestry Hall, he placed at our disposal for meetings every morning. We even had over two thousand members, nearly all of whom attended the hall each day.

Half the morning was devoted to consideration of individual grievances, some of which we managed to put right as soon as we discovered that the Relieving Officers were cutting down even on their own miserable scales of relief, and the rest to general policy discussion.

Police on the war-path

The main problem, that of raising the scales, was tackled in two ways. The first part was what I may term mobilizing what I may term the decent part of the populace against the vile condition in which masses of their fellow citizens were compelled to live. There were numbers of people in Bristol who did not like the idea of starving the unemployed but they passed it off as "not so bad as it’s painted" etc. We were able to convince them that It was ten times worse.

Such important citizens as the Lord Bishop, and Brigadier-General Thompson who was killed in the R.101, addressed our meetings and, though somewhat shocked at having to stand while the "Red Flag" and the "International" were sung, they did valuable work in bringing matters to the decent but apathetic section of whom I have spoken. The Local Press too gave us excellent publicity, always reporting our meetings and sometimes abusing us in leading articles.

(to be continued)

**Wayne Komer** · Monday, 21st December, 2020, 12:04 AM

William Winter

December 21, 2020

9

Police on the war-path (continued)

The second part of our activities was, shall we say, not quite so legal. It consisted of intimidating the individual members of the Board of Guardians and the Relieving Officers. Large demonstrations were out of the question, as they would have been broken up by the police, but a surprising effect was produced by marching even a small body round a Guardian's house in the dusk of the evening. It seemed to make him quite tender-hearted. We had other methods too - a particularly brutal Relieving Officer was hung in effigy in the Vestry Hall, his own son helping to pull the rope! Gradually all the agitation had its effect, one concession after another was grudgingly yielded, an extra penny had to be put on the rates, and a claim for a general rent allowance, would, if granted, certainly have involved another. Also, there was the general problem of rents, and here the knowledge of the Acts which I had acquired with Scott Dickens and Thompson came in useful. We were able to stop a number of convictions by proving that so far from the tenant owing rent, he had been so overcharged for such a long period that the landlord owed him considerable sums. This naturally did not make us popular with the slum property owners. Side by side with the struggle for immediate palliatives we did not neglect the very important side of our organisation's programme, the political education of the unemployed. They learnt from practical experience that they could not get anything without fighting for it and we gave· them lectures on Russia, on elementary economics, and a weekly review of the political happenings of the day, all designed to show that, although palliatives could be secured within the framework of the capitalist system, they could never obtain security, or earn the true rewards of their labour until they had replaced the system by a Socialist one.

Glanville and I were responsible for the propaganda and naturally we did not confine it to the unemployed, but addressed open air meetings all over the City and its environs. It was a really hot campaign and I was not at all surprised when one morning in October I was awakened by a frantic knocking on the door, and the message that six policemen had raided Glanville's house in the middle of the night and marched him off to the lockup. Granville lived with his parents in a respectable part of the town and they could risk a night raid but they did not fancy a visit to Philadelphia Street, where they might have been greeted with unpleasant substances from the top floor windows, so I was able to escape before their arrival. I was hurried into the back room of a cycle shop belonging to one of the faithful, the members were convened and we held a council of war.

(to be continued)

**Wayne Komer** · Monday, 21st December, 2020, 11:34 PM

William Winter

December 22, 2020

10

Would give himself up

To the suggestion that I should be smuggled out of town, covered with sacks, in the back of a builder's lorry, I returned a firm negative. Even if I could make a I getaway, I had no wish to live the rest of my life hunted by the police. On the other hand, I wanted to extract the utmost possible propaganda value from my arrest, and finally it was settled that I should slip into the Vestry Hall, conceal myself in the operator’s box and wait until called upon by the chairman to emerge and deliver a farewell oration. After this I would give myself up. It chanced that the principal speaker that morning was Clemens Dutt who was billed to talk on the “Aims and Objects of Communism", so we were assured of a large audience. Everything went according to plan, I was duly hidden in the box and very stuffy and uncomfortable it was, quite the worst el I have ever occupied.

Stewart, as chairman, made a brief opening speech in which he said only that after the lecture he had an important announcement to make, and then he called on Dutt. He also sent word to the local Press that it would be worth their while to attend the hall, and certainly they did us well. My own speech was reported practically verbatim, and so was a good deal of Dutt’s – rather unfortunately for him as it caused the University Authorities to terminate his appointment. When the lecture was over and Dutt had answered a few questions, the chairman made the brief announcement that Glanville had been arrested and that there was a warrant out for me. “And now” he continued. “I call on Comrade Winter to address you.” I then emerged from the operating box and marched to the platform to the accompaniment of such roars of applause as I have never heard before or since. Naturally my speech was as rhetorical as I could make it and finished up with the well-known but effective “Stone walls do not a prison make”, etc.

Committed for trial

When I sat down there were rumours that the police were outside and the tense emotions of the crowd found vent in action. “We won’t let them take you,” shouted a lively docker "Break up the chairs boys, and give the bastards hell.” I rose to quell the tumult. A riot was the last thing I wanted. I knew that extra police had been drafted in from the countryside and that troops were also within call. “I don’t want anyone to get his head broken for me," I told them. "I propose to go from here to the pub across the road and have a few drinks with my pals.
Then, I will go to the Bridewell and give myself up.” This must have been conveyed to the police, for, when I emerged from the hall not one of them was to be seen. The landlord of the pub, a staunch supporter announced first drinks on the house. More people that I can mention insisted on my having one with them, and I am afraid I was distinctly unsteady when, finally, I presented myself at the Central Police Station where I was received with open arms. Knowing the temper of Bristol crowds, I am sure they expected serious trouble and were equally surprised and relieved when everything ended peacefully. The next day, Glanville and I were brought up at the magistrate’s Court on a charge of sedition and were committed for trial, on bail, to the Assizes due to take place in about a month’s time.

Scott, Roland H. – Winter, William
5^th Match Game, Hastings, April 1919
C65 Ruy Lopez, Berlin Defence, Duras variation

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 d6 4.d3 Nf6 5.c4 g6 6.Nc3 Bg7 7.Bg5 h6 8.Be3 O-O 9.Qd2 Ng4 10.Bxc6 bxc6 11.O-O-O Nxe3 12.fxe3 Be6 13.Rdf1 d5 14.exd5 cxd5 15.Qe2 Rb8 16.Nd2 Qd6 17.cxd5 Bxd5 18.Nc4 Bxc4 19.dxc4 e4 20.Qc2 Qc5 21.Nd1 Rfd8 22.Qxe4 Bxb2+ 23.Nxb2 Rxb2 24.Rd1 Rdb8 25.Rd2 Qb4 0-1

Hastings 1919
Round 3, August 13, 1919
Winter, William – Yates, Fred Dewhirst
D32 QGD, Tarrasch Defence

1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 c5 3.c4 e6 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Nc3 Be6 6.g3 Nc6 7.Bg2 Nf6 8.O-O Be7 9.dxc5 Bxc5 10.Bg5 Be7 11.Nd4 O-O 12.Nxe6 fxe6 13.Bh3 Qd7 14.Qb3 Bc5 15.e3 h6 16.Bxf6 Rxf6 17.Rac1 b6 18.Bg2 Raf8 19.Na4 Qf7 20.Rc2 Ne5 21.Nxc5 bxc5 22.f4 c4 23.Qc3 Nd7 24.e4 h5 25.Qd4 Nb6 26.Rd1 h4 27.exd5 hxg3 28.hxg3 Qg6 29.Rc3 Nxd5 30.Bxd5 Rxf4 31.Bxe6+ Qxe6 32.gxf4 Qg4+ 33.Kh2 Qe2+ 34.Kg3 Rf7 35.Re3 Qh5 36.Qd8+ Kh7 37.Qh4 1-0

About a month elapsed between our committal for trial and the beginning of the Assizes, a period which Glanville and I devoted to the preparation of our defences, a task for which we had plenty of time as the conditions of our bail precluded us from making public speeches or taking any active part in political agitation. In the early twenties Communists and working class agitators had to defend themselves, for the simple reason it was impossible to find counsel who would conduct the cases as their clients wished. Counsel defending us, would have babbled about the young man of excellent character carried away by their enthusiasm. “They did not mean any real harm” etc. In other words, they would have apologized for our existence, whereas we wished to use the proceedings as part of our indictment of the state of society prevailing around us. Nowadays things are quite different and there is a number of sturdy fighting counsel from D. N. Pritt, Q.C. downwards who will defend working class propogandists to the bitter end.

Defends himself – with relish!

I must confess I rather looked forward to the proceedings. I had always fancied myself as an advocate and here I was in a double star role of Counsel for the Defence, and Prisoner. I was not so pleased when I heard that the judge would be Mr. Justice Avory. He was known as the Hanging Judge, and although he could not hang us, he also had a reputation for ferocious sentences in lesser cases.

The alleged sedition took place at one meeting only, a Sunday night open-air affair, and there were four or five counts against each of us, consisting in some cases of as many as three hundred words. I may say at once that the actual charges were ridiculous. Some of the alleged remarks had not been made at all, in others, words attributed to me had been spoken by Glanville, and vice versa, while other statements had been torn from their context in such a manner as to give them a totally different meaning from that intended. The most suspicious feature of the whole affair was the fact that the four police witnesses handed in practically identical reports, although they swore that they had taken no shorthand notes and had not consulted together. Credo quia absurdum est might well have been the motto of every juryman who accepted such evidence.

Of course, Glanville and I knew from the start that the result was a foregone conclusion. An unemployed agitator in 1921 had just as much chance of getting fair play from a jury of British ratepayers as a Kaffir has in a Johannesburg court to-day - exactly none. All that we could hope to do was to get as much propaganda value, and if possible a little fun, out of the proceedings.

Glanville was tried first. I was kept locked up below while this was going on, but I soon heard the result - nine months imprisonment. I also heard that he had made a fairly rousing speech in his defence, in which he certainly did not apologise for his existence. Then it was my turn. I had often seen Avory in the Law Courts in London, so his thin bloodless death-mask face did not make the same impression on me as on those to whom it was strange, but I admit that he looked much more intimidating seen from the dock than from the safety of the solicitors’ benches.

Could he confound the police?

The first two police witnesses I found easy meat. I started off by asking the first one, a red-nosed sergeant, about what I may term the matters extraneous to the case. Was the lamp under which the meeting took place lit or unlit 1 How far was the platform from the corner of the street 1 Was it pitched on the left or right hand side 1 The answers to these I carefully noted down. Then I took him to the main part of his evidence - the extracts from my speech he remembered by heart all the way from the meeting to the Police Station, a distance of half a mile or so. Then I asked permission to give him a memory test, a request to which, rather to my surprise, the Judge acceded.

Slowly I repeated a verse of poetry:

What is freedom? Ye can tell
That which is slavery is too well
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.

The sergeant replied "I refuse to repeat that seditious nonsense." "I have no doubt your Lordship is aware" I said to Avory, "that that is a quotation from Shelley, generally regarded as England's greatest poet since Shakespeare." Avory made no comment, but told the witness that he must try and repeat the verse. I said it over to him again, he got through the first two lines and then collapsed.

(to be continued)

**Wayne Komer** · Tuesday, 22nd December, 2020, 11:10 PM

William Winter

December 23, 2020

11

"I have no doubt your Lordship is aware" I said to Avory, "that that is a quotation from Shelley, generally regarded as England's greatest poet since Shakespeare." Avory made no comment, but told the witness that he must try and repeat the verse. I said it over to him again, he got through the first two lines and then collapsed. I then tried him with another verse, this time from Morris, with which he was equally unsuccessful. "And yet you say" was my last question "that you could remember two hundred words of my speech at least half an hour after they were spoken?” “Yes, I do” he said doggedly. I shook my head and glanced at the jury, who gazed back at me stonily.

The next witness was even easier prey. A young constable just promoted to the detective branch. He not only failed to repeat a single line of verse, but also contradicted his colleague in almost every particular, regarding the light etc. When he finally sat down and saw the look of cold disgust turned on him by the sergeant, he appeared almost ready to cry. I heard the following week he was seen pounding a beat. So far I had succeeded beyond my expectations, and even the Judge looked somewhat shaken, but the next two witnesses restored the balance. They were older men, experienced police detectives, and up to all the tricks of their trade. Not only did they go through my poetry test with flying colours but they also managed to repeat with a fair degree of accuracy, a paragraph from The Times leader which I read out to them. This of course was very much easier than remembering large chunks of a speech after considerable time had elapsed, but it did give a certain plausibility to the Prosecution's case which, with a biased jury, was all that was necessary. Possibly an experienced counsel might have shaken the evidence, but I doubt it. A really hard-boiled policeman is a very difficult witness to break down. I talked for about half an hour in my final speech emphasising the points I have already outlined here, and then came the summing up.

Congratulated by the judge

Avory started off by congratulating me on the way I had conducted the defence, which he said had not suffered at all from the absence of learned counsel. He told the jury that the evidence of the first two policemen was open to grave doubts, and to all intents and purposes advised them to disregard it, but emphasised the accuracy with which the others had coped with the memory tests. Then he gave the jury the conventional caution that they must not convict unless they were sure beyond reasonable doubt, and left it to them. The jury, needless to say, did not take long. They did not even have the decency to leave the box before returning the inevitable verdict. The Judge then read me a quite unnecessary homily to the effect that he was sorry to see a member of his own university – nay, even his own college - in such a position, a particularly foolish remark as I could have easily retorted that had I known that the Hanging Judge had been to Clare I would have chosen a different college. I wisely resisted the temptation. The sentence was six months, three months less than Glanville as he had a previous conviction for assaulting the police, i.e. trying to prevent a policeman batoning an elderly man in a workers' demonstration.

Wrongfully convicted?

A question I have often been asked is "Were you wrongfully convicted ?" It is a difficult one to answer. Legally I think 'yes' because the prosecution had based its case on the alleged extracts from our speeches, which, as I have said, were too silly for any unprejudiced jury to believe that they had been uttered. Taking a wider view of the situation, however, I am not so sure. Certainly, if it be correct, as has been argued, that it is seditious to stir up hatred and contempt against a section of His Majesty's subjects - to wit the Capitalist Class - then we were guilty, as we had done precisely that ever since the campaign started.

Kindly treated in prison

Recently, there has been quite a spate of books written by literate ex-convicts dealing with the miseries and frustrations of their life in prison. I have no such harrowing tale to tell. I must speak as I find, and I have to say that during the whole of my sojourn in Horfield Gaol, I was treated with consideration and courtesy by all the staff from the Governor down to the latest-arrived 'screw'. Of course, I am not saying that all prisons were like this. I am sure that the hell-holes that have been described did and do exist. I just happened to strike lucky. I got an instance of this on the night of our arrival. One of my fellow prisoners was a sailor who, like me, had got six months - I do not remember on what charge. He happened to be at the head of the line and, when he had answered his name, the warder in charge of reception said "Will you sit over there please" pointing at a row of benches in the corner. "Blimey!" said the sailor afterwards, "Those are the first civil words I have heard since I went into the bloody Navy." He had evidently become a convert to the Johnsonian theory that no man would join the Navy who had the wits to get into prison. Remembering the treatment meted out in the Army to honest men who were supposed to be serving their King and Country, I had some trepidation as to what was likely to happen now that I was a criminal in a penal establishment, but this incident made my first night's sleep a good deal easier, and my optimism was confirmed when we were taken before the Governor next morning. He struck me then, and I have never had cause to change my opinion, as a thoroughly humane man anxious, as far as was compatible within the rules, to make prison life as tolerable as possible for the unfortunate captives.

At first he regarded Glanville and me with some suspicion. He admitted that he had no experience of political prisoners and seemed afraid that we might try and organise a riot, but when he found that our only ambition was to earn our remission and get out as quickly as possible he became most friendly, and often paid us a visit in our cells to give us what he called the news of the day. There were of course one or two black spots. The doctor before whom we had to parade for a medical inspection told us that if he had his way we would have been hung drawn and quartered and our limbs distributed on the principal gates of the city. We hastily decided not to put ourselves under his care if we could possibly avoid it.

The chaplain too, I found rather a nuisance. For some reason or other he seemed to think that I was a likely brand to be plucked from the burning and came nearly every day to my cell to hold on the tenets of his faith. In the ordinary way I would rather have enjoyed knocking over his half-baked arguments which seemed to be derived from some ill-digested reading of Paley's Evidences of Christianity, but unfortunately there was only one stool, so while he harangued I had to stand up. I decided that something had to be done so I challenged him to a public debate on Christianity versus the Materialist conception of history - to be held as soon as possible after I got out. I suggested the Kingsley Hall, the best in Bristol, should be hired for the occasion and an entrance fee be charged, the profits (if any) to go the Communist Party, and half to any or religious organization he cared to name. News of this soon spread round the goal - a prison grape-vine is a remarkable thing and I heard that even the Governor chuckled. Anyway it was completely successful in abating the clerical nuisance.

(to be continued)

William Winter

William Winter

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