Wicks, Harry, 1905-1989

Harry Wicks (1905-1989) joined the Communist Party in 1920. He worked on Victoria Station, London and was editor of a railwaymen's paper the Victoria Signal. Wicks was influenced at work by an I.L.P. signal man called Harry Manning. In 1926 he was elected to the Central Committee of the Young Communist League and in the following year he was selected to study at the International Lenin School (I.L.S.) in Moscow. The I.L.S. as a privileged training school for Communist militants. During his time in Moscow he operated under the pseudonym Jack Tanner. At the I.L.S duplicated study notes were issued to each student and when Wicks returned to England in 1930 he brought the study notes home with him. On his return from Moscow Wicks became involved with the Left Opposition and was expelled from the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1932 along with Reg Groves, and later Stuart Purkiss, B Williams and Henry Sara. Harry Wicks continued to be involved with the Trotskyist movement for the rest of his life. He later became a member of the Workers League.

Reference: H. Dewar, Communist politics in Britain: the CPGB from its origins to the Second World War (London, 1976).

Reference: R. Groves, The Balham Group (London, 1974).

Reference: H. Wicks, British Trotskyism in the Thirtiesin the International, vol. 1 no. 4,(1971).

Reference: H. Wicks, The General Strike (Worker's League Pamphlet, 1976).

Reference: H. Wicks, Notes on the History of Bolshevism (Marxist League Pamphlet, 1976).

From the guide to the Papers of Harry Wicks, 1920s-1980s, (Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick Library)