Mary Docherty

Mary Docherty (27 April 1908 – 2 February 2000) was a British activist and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Born to a working-class family in Cowdenbeath, Scotland, she was influenced by the communist beliefs of her father, a miner, as well as by the poverty she grew up in.

Mary Docherty was born on 27 April 1908 in the town of Cowdenbeath.

Her parents were Janet Todd, who worked in a theatre, and William Docherty, a miner.

She was the second of three daughters.

Her father had lost his job due to his political work with the Communist Party, and as a result was forced to sell firewood to support the family.

Due to the family's financial circumstances, they were often forced to subsist on cheap local herring, including when Mary's mother was pregnant with Mary.

Docherty's small size as a baby was attributed to this diet.

The county of Fife, of which Cowdenbeath was a burgh, was a stronghold of the Communist Party; Docherty later stated that "Fife was just as radical" as Clydeside, and that the local party had been asked to "slow down" by the party headquarters in London.

Docherty's father was a member of the Fife Communist Anarchist Group, and later a founding member of the Communist Party.

She was influenced by her father's political activism, as well as by the poverty and hunger that her family endured.

Her father wrote political plays, in which Docherty would perform as a child.

She contracted tuberculosis at the age of four, due partly to the malnutrition her mother had experienced.

She later said that the strike of 1921, during which the British army was brought in to Cowdenbeath to support the local police, was very influential on her.

She was 13 years old at the time.

As a child, she attended a Socialist Sunday School which taught politics, science, and geography.

She later switched to the Proletarian Sunday School, which had a similar ideology, and encouraged children to discuss politics.

Her academic record at school was good, and she passed an exam allowing her to enroll in "Higher Grade," but she dropped out of school in 1922.

Docherty remained single throughout her life, but played a maternal role in the life of her adopted younger sister Frances.

She also took care of her mother until the latter died at the age of 100.

Docherty's father joined the Fife Communist Anarchist Group, and was also a founding member of the Communist Party in Britain.

Docherty herself joined the Communist Party at the age of 18, the youngest age at which she was able to do so, soon after the 1926 United Kingdom general strike.

She initially became a member of the Young Communist League, or YCL.

During the strike, she was involved in the "Local Councils of Action", which were inspired by the Russian Soviets, and helped coordinate the strike.

The miners' defeat in the strike was very influential upon her.

The Communist Party provided her with an adult education, during which she was one of two women among 48 men.

The other woman in her class was her mother.

While still a teenager, she became the literature secretary for the Cowdenbeath branch of the party, and was responsible for the production and sale of a number of weekly newspapers.

While Docherty was still in her twenties, she organized a children's wing of the party in Cowdenbeath, known as the "Young Pioneers".

During propaganda meetings of the children's wing, she taught songs, poetry, and plays, and in 1928 organised an agitation to obtain a holiday for all schoolchildren on 1 May, or Labour Day, which was successful in five different burghs, including Cowdenbeath.

She also organized a campaign against corporal punishment, and for free food for children while they were at school.

The use of the strap to punish children was eventually prohibited after the communists were elected to the Fife education authority and the town council in Lochgelly.

She joined the Communist Party at the age of 18, and in 1929 traveled to the Soviet Union as a Scottish delegate to a gathering of young communists.

She founded a local children's wing of the Communist Party, carried out a successful agitation to declare 1 May a school holiday, and worked for communist Member of Parliament Willie Gallacher.

Her affiliation with the party allowed her to travel to the Soviet Union in 1929 as a Scottish delegate to a gathering of young communists.

In the same year she had tried to join the National Unemployed Workers' Movement, but was told that women were not allowed to be members.

Docherty had a great love for the Soviet Union, despite what she saw as a political breakdown in that country.

Vladimir Lenin was an idol of hers.

During her time in Russia she spent three months in a sanatorium near the Black Sea, recovering from tuberculosis.

She retired from active politics at the age of 60, but continued to give talks and write her memoirs, published in 1991 as A Miner's Lass.