John Horner and the Communist Party

Rosalind Eyben is a historian, social anthropologist, and Emeritus Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK. Following a career in international development policy and practice that included working in many parts of Africa and later in India and Latin America, she became Chief Social Development Advisor at the UK Government’s Department for International Development, a role that she left to research and teach about power and relations in the international aid system. Among her previous books are International Aid and the Making of a Better World (2014) and, with Laura Turquet, Feminists in Development Organizations: Change from the Margins (2013).

• Foreword by Kevin Morgan Prologue 1. ‘Walthamstow Wide Awake!’ 2. A Sense of Class 3. At Sea 4. The Lady of Shalott 5. No More War 6. ‘The Coming Struggle for Power’ 7. ‘Marx for You and God for Me’ 8. Hampstead 9. ‘Pale Pink’ and ‘Deeper Red’ 10. Close to Death, August-September 1939 11. ‘Imagination and Decision’ 1939-40 12. ‘Bombed But Far From Beaten’ 13. ‘Known to Keep Strange Company’ 1941-43 14. The Campaign for a Second Front 15. ‘Go to it, Housewives!’ 16. ‘Dare to Make it Known’ 17. ‘Sliding into the Deep Freeze’ 18. ‘The World Shall Yet Live in Peace’ 19. The Children’s Perspective 20. ‘Both Betrayed and Betrayer’ 21. Exit Epilogue: Uncomfortable Encounters with Truth

'In this vividly personal narrative, exploring the truths of John Horner’s exemplary trade union leadership and complicity in Stalinism is a task that has required both intimate knowledge and critical distance. We can be grateful that Rosalind Eyben has had the skill to carry it out with such conviction.'Excerpt from the Foreword by Kevin Morgan, Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Manchester, UKFirefighter talks to Rosalind Eyben, daughter of the wartime FBU general secretary John Horner and his wife Pat, about her new book on their lives - Firefighter magazine, June/July 2024, 'He secured a voice for the FBU': https://www.fbu.org.uk/magazine/june-july-2024/he-secured-voice-fbu