GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
30 JULY. CHINA POST #633
CHINA AND THE FOREIGN MEDIA
CHINA AND JACK PERRY
The narrative on China and Jack Perry has triggered a host of enquiries and questions. China today is now a big news item and tracking China from its first significant appearance on the international stage in April 1952 does attract attention. But there are two parts to the narrative – China and Jack Perry.
JACK’S FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH CHINA
The Big Story is China – much bigger than many people today fully appreciate because it is always difficult to see the Present as History. But we do need to see what is happening today as a continuum of the passage of time since 1951 – the year of Jack’s first encounter with Dr Ji and China – if we are to reach balanced conclusions about the past and, also, informed judgments about the future. Hence my persistent focus on China Today and its actions in China and in the world at large –Rare Earths, Infrastructure Progress in China; China and BRICS; China and the Belt+Road Initiative; China and Trump; China and its Foreign Trade.
Ast the same time there is another Story – secondary to the Story of China – about how Jack Perry emerged from the challenges of the Jewish East End of London, from Oswald Mosley, and from the Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Great Britain to become a textile businessman of note that took him in 1952 – via Red Square in Moscow – to Tiananmin Square in Beijing.
And throughout, the narrative is the changing international background – the General Strike of 1926; the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler; the rise and fall of Oswald Mosley; the Battle of Cable Street in 1936; the pre-War Rise and the post-War decline of the British Communist Party; the Korean War; the Moscow Economic Conference of 1952 and finally how Jack became the first Western Businessman to visit China in 1953. It is energising to have had the opportunity to observe this journey from the sidelines.
GROWING UP WITH JACK PERRY
I have been fortunate to grow up in the household of a man whose contemporary pronouncements on China as they happened were informed – drawing, as they did, on the basis of direct experience of the country from the first year of his intensive contact with its leaders in 1951.
I was fortunate. I was one of five children and family circumstances often dictated the instruction from my mother to my father – “You take Graham, the (two elder) girls can look after the (two younger) boys.”
It meant that I accompanied my father from the age of six (in 1951) to many of his important meetings – with the Chinese representatives in London, with members of the Soviet Trade Delegation in Highgate and even to members of the Communist Party in England’s Lane, Hampstead, London.
And remember in those days – the early 1950’s – there were no computer games, no mobile phones, no chat lines to occupy me as Jack sped from one important meeting to the next. But I had ears and eyes and I listened and watched intently. I was fortunate to have an accelerated introduction into the world of politics and a memory which has not yet deserted me. I watched, I listened and, even as a pre-teenager, I reflected.
There was an additional advantage; without any TV and only limited radio I became, albeit at a young age, a voracious reader of the Daily Express and the Daily Worker delivered in the morning to our home in Deansway, and the Evening News and the Evening Standard purchased in the evening by my father on his way home. The Times with its intimidating Announcements on the front page yielded to the Express and the Worker.
1951 is a blur but 1952 is clear – the Derek Bentley Murder Trial, the sinking of the Flying Enterprise, the arrest in the U.S. of the Rosenbergs and the Cup Final which occurred, coincidentally, on my birthday, Saturday 3 May. No happy ending here. Arsenal – the Reds appropriately – reduced to ten fit players by the early injury to their Welsh right back, Wally Barnes, (no substitutes) succumbed to a headed goal by Newcastle United’s Chilean No 10 – inside left George Robledo – just six minutes before the final whistle. It was a cloudy day with light drizzle and the weather reflected the occasion. We lost.
Frank Sedgman beat Jaroslav Drobny at Wimbledon in the Men’s Singles and King George VI died on 6 February – we came to school to learn the news and then in mourning mood – as was the Nation at Large – we were sent home – for me on the 102 red bus. The Greatest Show on Earth was showing in all the cinemas. Surrey started a seven-year run of County Cricket Championship wins and Fiery Freddie Truman made his first appearance causing the Indian batsmen no end of trouble.
LONDON IN THE 1950s
As a youngster I was fortunate. I was in at the beginning of my father’s foray into China with my ears pinned back and my eyes wide open. And as we drove from meeting to meeting in my father’s black Humber Hawk (LXR 406) I recall the Central London Bomb Damage – clear, visible and tragic. Nazi bombs left London streets looking like mouths with missing teeth. And the roads, full of potholes and gaping holes, were far from smooth and easy to negotiate.
This was 1952 – just seven years after the end of the War; Food rationing was still in existence and central heating was for the late 1950s. It rained on Coronation Day in June and the Killer Smog arrived in December. There were no family summer holidays in 1952 for reasons that became clear in 1953. Life was a long way from Prime Minister Macmillan’s 1959 Election Boast – “You’ve Never Had It So Good”.
CHINA BEGINS TO FEATURE
And all the time, the China Initiative was underway. The Moscow International Economic Conference took place between 3-12 April and Jack was away. I can recall being ushered out of the kitchen when my father wanted to have a private word with my mother – I later learned – about the visa issues that caused some late problems. But all the time there was the Daily Express and the Daily Worker which I read avidly – Desmond Hackett William Hickey in the former and Alan Winnington and Barbara Niven in the latter. I do recall checking the Daily Worker particularly every Saturday in the summer months to see whether Middlesex were playing at Lords in the County Cricket Championship – the world always seemed more calm when Jack Robertson and Sid Brown walked down the steps at Lords to open the batting for my team.
Friends have pressed me for more information about the early days and I have been happy to oblige because I had a front seat at the unveiling of a new Play – China and Jack Perry. Some have pressed me to reveal all; to make the narrative a Top to Bottom account of the Perry Family – warts and all. But I am going to disappoint you. This is not a Kiss and Tell Story of salacious gossip that regularly fills the tabloid media. That is not Me. The China and Jack story is The Story – not Jack the Father or Jack the Husband. This is not an account of my Family’s Life and Times. Yes, there are references to the Family but only insofar as they impact upon the main story – and that main story is the first appearance on the international of the new People’s Republic of China – and its relationship with Jack Perry. And Yes, there are references to Jack the Man because his personality and character are key to understanding the overall narrative.
A CHINA STORY
But this is a China Story. It is an account of how China came into world affairs in the 1950s. It does involve a substantial focus on my father and I do address the make-up of the man because his whole being played a leading role in the emerging role of China onto the stage of world affairs but no tittle-tattle, no private family revelations, no Sunday scoops. Not because they do not exist – they don’t – but because that trivia is merely life at the margins.
The core, central, narrative is this –
“How did a boy, who was compelled by meagre family finances to leave school aged 14 in 1929, to take a job at 15/- a week to work as an assistant warehouse manager sweeping the floors of a London dress manufacturer become, in 1952, aged 37, the choice of a Chinese Professor of Economics – who reported directly to Premier Zhou Enlai – to be China’s principal trade partner?
Where was he at school?
Why were his parents forced to withdraw him – a scholarship pupil – from a grammar school of repute?
Why did he commence work in the dress industry?
How did a sweeper of floors in 1929 become the Managing Director of his dress company in 1937?
What attracted Jack to the Communist Party?
What were the career jumps that brought him to the attention of China?
Who was Joan Robinson?
What was the political journey that took him from the streets of the East End of London, first, to Red Square in Moscow in 1952 and then to Tiananmin Square in Beijing in 1953?
What was the importance of the Moscow Economic Conference in April 1952?
Who was Dr Ji Chaoding?
How did the leading members of China’s Trade Delegation to the Moscow Conference invite Jack to become their trade partner?
How did Jack make the transfer from being a manufacturer of women’s dresses to, in 1952, to being an international trader in tea, wool and technical oils?
And, finally, how did Jack work with the Communist Party?
The story starts with the Jews of Eastern Europe and the journey to London of Jack’s mother from Russia and Jack’s father from Poland. Their meeting, their marriage and their struggle to make a living for their four children.
At the same time Dr Ji is a man on a mission in China determined to build a career for himself initially in Beijing and then as an Economics Professor first, in Chicago and, then, in Columbia whilst all along being a member of the Communist Party of China and reporting directly to Zhou Enlai – later to become Prime Minister of China.
How did Jack Perry come to the attention of Harry Pollitt, the leader of the British Communist Party and what role did Pollitt play in the development of Jack’s links with China?
It is an account of personalities, of politics, of power, and finally of principles. It is principally about a key relationship between Dr Ji and Jack Perry but like the pebble thrown into the stagnant pool, the ripples are ever-widening. And what commenced across the Dinner Table in Cambridge late in 1951 – when Dr Ji and Jack Perry met for the first time – led to a front row seat at The China Story (1951-2026)
GRAHAM PERRY
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THE IRAN WAR
“The likeliest outcome is…a new normal,” argues Ilan Goldenberg, a former American official who now works at J Street, a doveish pro-Israel advocacy group. That would involve recurring clashes, periodic air strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme, Iranian control of Hormuz and an enduring American presence in the Middle East. Says Mr Goldenberg: “I’ve worked on Iran for nearly 20 years. Our options are never great, but I’ve never seen things this bad. For the first time in my career, I’m at a loss.” ■
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
Hitherto, the Israelis have always been confident. Not so much now as the comment of Ilan Goldenberg makes clear. The feeling is growing that the U.S. and Israel have been out-manoeuvred by Iran. Why Should Iran need to develop a Nuclear Bomb if they Control the Straits of Hormuz?
Iran remains an unattractive and repressive regime but Trump and Nathanyahu have strengthened- not reduced – Iran’s world power. A big Own Goal.
GRAHAM PERRY
