OCR Text |
Show THE ZEPHYR/FEBRUARY-MARCH 2007 THE PARTY & ME Recollections of a young, working class Welsh Communic. 60 years later By Ellen Clifford Ellen Clifford was born in Cardiff in Wales on September 10, 1924, the youngest of five children. leave the school, I regarded the reason as an insult - most of the girls preferred reading Her father, a veteran of World War I, worked on the coal ships at the Cardiff docks. Her Irish moth- comic books and true romances and the nuns approved of that level of reading matter as er was a barmaid nicknamed “Dolly” before she married. Ellen Clifford has always had a passionate interest in human rights and vocally opposed the wealthy elite in Great Britain. Ultimately she joined the Communist party in the 1930s. She trained as a nurse and served in London during the blitz. After the war she travelled to Australia and worked at Inniminka, a remote hospital mission. On returning to Britain she became a district nurse in Gloucester. She married Reg Clifford and immigrated permanently after World War II to Australia where they had three daughters. She now lives in Perth, Western Australia. our recreation. As I was still too young to start work, I was sent to what was called a Labour School and I thought I was very wicked when the whole school was assembled in the morning and we sang real Protestant hymns like “Onward Christian Soldiers” - I thought it was smashing but I would not dare tell my ultra-catholic relations. Then I did some training as a shorthand-typist but found office work boring, and I was glad when the opportunity arrived for me to work as a laboratory assistant in the Pathology Lab at the Welsh National School of Medicine. This work was very heavy---the test-tubes, plates etc. were then made of glass and I had to carry loads of them from the labs to the cleaning areas and do everything by hand. The boys who usually did this work had all been called up for National Service so I was one of the first girls to do the job. First thing in the morning IJ had to collect the rats that had been taken from the foreign ships in port---they had been nailed to wooden boards and my job was to slit their abdominal skin, take out their pancreas and lay it on top of the rat so that the pathologists could see it---evidently plague showed up as spots on the vital organ. One day there was a big I was very young when I first became aware that not all people were given an equal share of this world’s wealth and opportunities. A great man called Keir Hardie had travelled to the coal valleys of South Wales and encouraged the miners to stand up for them- selves and demand better pay and conditions. My father worked in the mines as a young boy of 12 years old but as soon as he was big enough, at the age of 15, to pass for the Army he chose that way of life and was sent out to the Boer War as a bugle-boy. My father preferred the Army to the coal-pits for most of his adult life. However, his family remained in the Rhondda Valley and one of his brothers used to visit us in the sea-port city of Cardiff. Uncle Enoch was a great favourite of my brother Danny and myself. He told us stories of the terrible conditions that the miners had to put up with and how their pleas for help were ignored by the extremely wealthy and absentee aristocrat who owned vast areas of land, including the coal mines. scare over one rat and before I knew where I was, a doctor was dousing me with a very strong solution of Lysol and my hands were being scrubbed raw. Fortunately, it was a false alarm.. . I was very young when I first became aware that not all people were given an equal share of this world’s wealth and opportunities. A great man called Keir Hardie had travelled to the coal valleys of South Wales and encouraged the miners to stand up for themselves and demand better pay and conditions. Ellen Clifford in the I was a very shy, introverted child who preferred reading to social activities and I spent hours in our local public library. Twice, my father had to get an official to unlock the doors and get me out late at night. My favourite books were very serious heavy works like Carlyle’s French Revolution, and, of course, I discovered Marx and Engels---I became inflamed with slogans like “workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but 1940s your chains.” I cannot remember the details of how I came to join the Young Communist League but I was very proud of my party card and felt it was my mission in life to change the world for the better. I first expressed my newfound views by standing outside the Trade Union Hall and selling the Daily Worker until my poor father came by on his bike, gave me a clip around the ear and sent me packing home. I had won a scholarship to a Catholic High School, the first member of my family to receive a secondary school education, but I found the outlook of the nuns and lay teachers very narrow-minded and conservative. We even had our own version of the Bible which had all the sexy bits left out; I sat at the back of the class next to a Jewish girl who was allowed to bring her own Bible so I read hers and she told me what to say if teacher asked me a question. i Nonetheless, my teachers managed to instill some knowledge into my reluctant brain and I was grateful for a little Latin in my nursing career. And I have always had a great affection for the bit of French I learned, which I mangled with an atrocious accent. However, my progress came to an abrupt end when one of the nuns caught me reading Engels (tucked inside a comic book) and my father was asked to remove me from the school before I became a bad influence on the other girls. Although I was very glad to PRINTS TECHNOLOGY THAT WORKS FOR YOU. pasa Ute @ 10 8aale a ftr:) MOAB, UTAH 84532 435 259-4384 REMEMBER THE DICK CHENEY PHILOSOPHY: “Yesterday's Enemies” are tomorrow’s “Collateral Damage.” ip SSS, Just call aje Collateral’ Dick WW N\ |