Philip Spratt

Philip Spratt (26 September 1902 – 8 March 1971) was a British writer and intellectual.

Initially a communist sent by the British arm of the Communist International (Comintern), based in Moscow, to spread Communism in India, he subsequently became a friend and colleague of M.N. Roy, founder of the Communist parties in Mexico and India, and along with him became a communist activist.

Philip Spratt was born in Camberwell on 26 September 1902 to Herbert Spratt, a schoolmaster, and Norah Spratt.

He was one of five boys.

His elder brother David Spratt, left boarding school to join the British army during World War I, and was killed at Passchendaele in 1917.

Although raised a Baptist, Herbert Spratt later joined the Church of England.

Philip Spratt's own rejection of religion came early on: "'By the age of 17 I had a fair knowledge of nineteenth-century physical science, and I read a little on my own in biology. On Sunday evenings after church I used to take a fast walk round the neighbourhood, and for some months on these walks I argued with myself about science and religion. I decided quite definitely that the religious theory of things was unsound. But I remember no 'conflict' or emotion over my rejection of religion. I kept it entirely to myself, and I still attended church, and continued to do so till I went to the university.'"

Philip Spratt won a university scholarship in 1921 to study mathematics at Downing College, Cambridge.

He wrote in his memoirs: "But I was in no mood to devote myself to my proper studies, or to associate with the dull dogs who stuck to theirs. I dabbled in literature and philosophy and psychology and anthropology."

He was awarded a First-class degree on completing the Mathematics tripos.

He joined the Union Society, the University Labour Club and a private discussion society called the Heretics, of which Charles Kay Ogden was president; Frank P. Ramsey, I.A. Richards and Patrick Blackett often attended.

Philip Spratt, Maurice Dobb, John Desmond Bernal, Ivor Montagu, the historian Allen Hutt, A. L. Morton, A. L. Bacharach, Barnet Woolf and Michael Roberts comprised the tiny handful of Communist Party members at the university at that time.

Spratt, Woolf and Roberts would sell the Worker's Weekly to railwaymen at the town railway station or canvass the working-class areas of Cambridge.

Spratt worked, for a while, at the Labour Research Department in the Metropolitan Borough of Deptford, and was a member of the London University Labour Party.

In 1926, at the age of 24, he was asked by Clemens Dutt (the elder brother of Rajani Palme Dutt) to journey to India as a Comintern agent to organise the working of the then nascent Communist Party of India, and in particular to launch a Workers and Peasants' Party as a legal cover for their activities.

He was expected to arrange for the infiltration of CPI members into the Congress party, trade unions and youth leagues to obtain leadership of them.

Spratt was also asked to write a pamphlet on China, urging India to follow the example of the Kuomintang.

He was accompanied to India by Ben Bradley and Lester Hutchinson.

Spratt was arrested in 1927, on account of some cryptic letters written to and by him that were seized by the Police.

He was, however, charged with sedition, on account of the pamphlet entitled India and China that he had written on Clemens Dutt's instructions.

He was tried by jury and – the judge, Mr. Justice Fawcett, having summed up very leniently – they found in his favour.

Hansard records show that on 28 November 1927, Shapurji Saklatvala, the MP for Battersea North, questions Earl Winterton (then Under-Secretary of State for India in Baldwin's government) about the wrongful detention of Philip Spratt for six weeks prior to his trial.

Spratt at once got involved in organizing Workers’ and Peasants’ Party (WPP) in Bombay, Calcutta and elsewhere.

He later rose to their all India leaderships.

Young Comrades’ and later Young Workers’ League were constituted, both by WPP and independently, as powerful mass organisations in 1927-30.

Spratt played an active part and described their growth and activities.

He wrote that WPP took initiative to form the Leagues, which became widespread in the country.

Philip Spratt and others in the WPP disagreed with MN Roy’s assessment that it should be a parallel organization to the Congress, as the latter was ‘practically dead’.

WPP by its program and constitution

was working inside the

Congress to strengthen

the left and at the same

time as an independent

organization.

Spratt wrote a booklet, ‘India and China’, published by S. S. Mirajkar on behalf of WPP, which led to his trial.

He was among the first architects, and a founding-member of the Communist Party of India, and was among the chief accused in the Meerut Conspiracy Case; he was arrested on 20 March 1929 and imprisoned.

As a result of his reading during his time in jail, and also his observation of political developments in Russia and Western Europe at the time, Philip Spratt renounced Communism in the early 1930s.

After India gained independence from the British, he was among the lone voices – such as Sita Ram Goel – against the well-intentioned and fashionable leftist policies of Nehru and the Indian government.

He was the Editor of MysIndia, a pro-American weekly, and later of Swarajya, a newspaper run by C. Rajagopalachari.

He was also a prolific writer of books, articles and pamphlets on a variety of subjects, and translated books in French, German, Tamil, Sanskrit and Hindi, into English.