Herefordshire 1938: The Commissar Close Combat Police (CCCP)

Tuesday 17 July 2012

The Commissar Close Combat Police (CCCP)

Time to take a look at the far left of the spectrum...

Comrade Commissar Fred Kite re-inspected the curt order in his hands as the tug boat that had delivered the message made its way out of the dock; contemptuous of the long range artillery shells that burst around it, sending plumes of brown Mersey spray into the air.

‘Our brothers toiling in the fields and must be liberated from the despotic yoke of the bourgeois landowners and educated in the truth of Socialism,’ he read under his breath, his Cockney accent, betraying his past as a Shop Steward in the capital, as clipped as his moustache. ‘The following is a list of comrades who have come to the attention of the Comintern and have proven themselves worthy with their revolutionary zeal and loyalty to the Communist Party.’

He looked at the names – all young lads he noticed: Archie Buttress, who at 14 year of age had to be dragged kicking and screaming back to his suburban home after running away to join the International Brigade; Terry McQueen, apprentice toolmaker turned trade unionist and arsonist; Peter Dobson-Browne, expelled from Eton after repeated scuffles with Fascists in the East End – the list went on, all known for their passion for Communism and ferocity in the trenches around Liverpool.

‘You are to gather these comrades and form them into a cohesive unit. Your mission is to take them into the countryside where the revolution has yet to take hold or Trotskyist traitors make mockery of the party line. Through their rhetoric you are to educate the masses, through their vigilance you are to educate backsliding socialists, through their actions on the battlefield you are to educate the enemy.’

Comrade kite turned to the cargo manifest clipped to the order: revolvers, pump-action shotguns, tommy guns, grenades – close-up and bloody stuff. ‘Actions indeed…’ he mused.