Tameside Tories see RED over Communist party funeral flag!

Tameside Health Campaigner - Rod McCord

A major row has erupted over a family’s right to display in public, the Communist Party flag, in memory of their father, who was a lifelong communist.

Last Thursday, over 300 people attended the memorial service to Rodney (Rod) McCord at the Stalybridge Civic Hall.  A local health campaigner and member of Stalybridge Labour Party, Rod died in Willow Wood Hospice, on Wednesday 15th February 2018, aged 67. Later in the afternoon, a service took place at the Dukinfield Crematorium.

Originally from Openshaw, Manchester, Rod was one of three children of Phyllis and Charles McCord. Along with their father, Rod and his two sisters, Christine and Marilyn, were all members of the Communist Party (CPGB). Rod left instructions that the Communist Party flag was to be draped over his coffin and a communist   banner with the hammer and sickle and "RIP COMRADE", was displayed in the civic hall. The Red Flag and The Internationale were also played at the service and relayed out into the street.

Afterwards, family and friends retired to the Stalybridge Labour Club, where £1,348.94 was collected for Willow Wood Hospice. To show honour and respect to their father, the McCord family, decided to display the CP flag on the flagpole at Stalybridge Labour Club to "mark our Dad's passing."

A local busybody Stalybridge councillor, called Doreen Dickenson, a kind of priggish, parochial, Mrs Grundy type of character, got wind that something rather communist and lefty was going on in her own backyard of Stalybridge.  Even before, Mr McCord had been laid to rest, she was scurrilously tweeting about how un-English and alien it was to display communist flags and play communist songs, in this little northern cotton town. Although Dickenson, later removed the offending tweet, after being contacted by the McCord family, she said she'd received complaints from constituents about the 'Communist Party Flag' and communist music being relayed outside by loudspeakers that she found disgusting. She also seemed to think that because the event took place in a public building (which the family had hired for the occasion), they had no right to fly the flag or play music. 

Many Tameside Labour members appear to have been either unaware of the incident, indifferent, or in support of the kind gesture to honour Mr. McCord, who was held in high regard.  Jonathan Reynolds MP, who represents Stalybridge & Hyde, said:

"Rod was a truly lovely person, generous, intelligent and warm. Many people will know him in particular for his work with Tameside Hospital Action Group... I always thought he was one of the most well-read and informed people I ever met. There was a great turnout today, and Rod's sons and grandchildren all gave magnificent tributes to him. Dave Ormsby gave a brilliant eulogy, which was funny as well as poignant. Rest in Peace Rod."

Councillor Jan Jackson, who chairs the Stalybridge Town Council, said the flag was a family matter and was "not aligned or associated in any way with the New Stalybridge Labour Club." she said:

"It has gone viral and caused a furore on social media, something that should not have happened. It was the funeral of a very stalwart person who sat on the Tameside Hospital Action Board (sic) and did a lot of good work in the community. People are dying all over the world and struggling to put a loaf of bread on the table, yet flying the flag has caused all this fuss.  There are more important issues."

The McCord family later issued a statement saying that it was not their intention to cause offence, upset, or to associate the flag with the Labour Party.

I don't suppose that any of us should be surprised at the foul antics that the Tories and the far right are prepared to stoop to in order to make political capital over their opponents. Even the death of a truly decent man, and the respect his family paid to him, is something that cannot take place without controversy or be exploited for political gain.  Some have even tried to connect this flag incident with the recent poisonings of Yulia and Sergei Skripal.  But what should one expect from a party that snatched milk off the school kids and now threatens to take their free school meals off them, if their family earns more than £7,400 a year.

We understand that the manager of Stalybridge Labour Club received death threats following this incident.  We also understand that someone in the office of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, contacted one of Mr McCord's son's, demanding that the communist flag be taken down and that when he asked to speak to 'Jeremy', he was told he was out at a meeting.  This seems rather cowardly and gutless action from a party that proclaims itself to be socialist.  Needless to say, the party must have found it a political embarrassment.

Despite being embarrassed by a red flag, the Labour Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell, says in his  'Who's Who' entry, that his hobbies include "fermenting (sic) the downfall of capitalism."  In 2011, he called on unhappy workers to spit in their boss’s tea.  Clearly, the pragmatic politician lies behind many of these hard men on the left.

And what would my dear friend Rod McCord, be making of this right now?  I bet he'd be laughing his little red socks off. He certainly went out with a bang! RIP mate.

Derek Pattison,
Joint Editor Northern Voices.

Rod McCord - Obituary.

OBITUARY – RODNEY (ROD) McCORD

5th March 1950 - 15th February 2018

Rod McCord with sons Patrick, Danny, and late wife Liz

It is with deep sadness and regret that we have to announce the death of our good friend and highly esteemed colleague, Rodney (Rod) McCord, who died in Willow Wood Hospice on 15^th February 2018, aged 67.

Originally from Openshaw, Manchester, Rod spent most of his married life living in Stalybridge, where he was active in the local Stalybridge Labour Party.  He was one of three children, of Phyllis and Charles McCord, who along with their father were all active members of the Communist Party (CPGB). After the death of his wife Liz, in 1996, he then had responsibility for continuing to bring up his two sons, Patrick and Danny, who attended Copley High School.

Rod was educated at the Central Manchester Grammar School and the University of Sheffield where he studied political Science. After leaving university, he worked for the Inland Revenue and the Manchester Direct Works Department.

A keen local health campaigner, Rod worked with us for many years, in the Tameside Hospital Action Group (THAG) which was set up with the help of Ashton MP David Heyes in November 2006, as well as the ‘Campaign for Change at Tameside Hospital.’ He was also involved with the local health watchdog LINk, (now called Tameside Health Watch). He worked tirelessly to improve standards for patients at Tameside Hospital and often did ward visits to speak to patients about their experiences. This was at a time when Tameside Hospital was being accused of providing sub-standard patient care and the hospital, was denounced by the local Coroner, as “despicable” and “Chaotic”. Failure to address these issues would result in the hospital being placed in “Special measures” following the Keogh review, and the resignation of the hospital CEO, Christine Green, in July 2013.

He was a familiar face at any meeting where Tameside Hospital were being held to account and would grill Tameside Hospital management relentlessly, if he felt standards for patients were remiss or inadequate. As a member of THAG, he wrote the document “A Charter for Change” that was submitted to the hospital.

Though he could be blunt and vituperative with those in authority, no one who knew him ever doubted his sincerity, inherent decency, compassion, and his commitment to any cause that he took up. A stickler for accuracy, he was once told by a High Court Judge during a legal case that he brought himself, against a building contractor represented by a barrister - which he won with costs - that he found Rod too pedantic. He then praised him for being one of best lay persons (litigant in person) that had ever brought a case before him in his court. This legal case, he prepared himself, with no legal experience other than the text books he’d found in a law library in central Manchester. Such was his ability and thoroughness, when it came to mastering any brief.

A devoted grandfather, to Amber, Sammy, Josh and Lily, Rod was an avid reader, a keen walker and liked swimming. He was also a Manchester United supporter and a big fan of Dennis Law.  A man of great principle and integrity, he will be greatly missed by his family, his many friends, and colleagues, who will remember him for his wit and lively and enlightening conversation.

A memoriam service is to take place on Thursday 8^th March, at

Stalybridge Civic Hall, commencing at 12 pm followed by a funeral service at Dukinfield Crematorium at 1.30pm.

Derek Pattison (THAG).

Milton Pena – Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon (retired) Tameside Hospital.

Liz Degnan – Campaign for Change at Tameside Hospital.

Paul Broadhurst – Community Health Campaigner.

Hidden Heroes of Easter Week – Memoirs of Volunteers from England who joined the Easter Rising

By Robin Stocks

Review: by Derek Pattison

To this day, the armed rebellion that took place during Easter Week of 1916 in Dublin, known as the ‘Easter Rising’, remains controversial. Some see it as a courageous and brave act that led to the birth of the Irish Republic, whereas, others, see it as a reckless act of folly, an attempted revolt against Britain while we were at war with Germany. British intelligence was certainly aware of the planned rising and the armed shipments from Germany, which also went to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), formed in 1913. Most of the people, who died during the six days of the rebellion, which was supported by Germany, were Irish, mostly civilians, and the poor of Dublin. And they died for a cause that they hardly understood or supported. Moreover, many Irish people were aware in 1916 that Irish Home Rule was on the cards and that partition was inevitable. In January 1913, the Third Reading of the Home Rule Bill had been carried in Parliament and the Government of Ireland Act 1914, provide home rule for Ireland.

According to the author of this book, nearly a hundred Irish rebels travelled to Ireland from cities in England and Scotland during the early months of 1916 to participate in an armed uprising which they had heard about. Those from England were frequently described as ‘London Irish’ despite being from other parts of England, such as the city of Liverpool. Some of those who participated during Easter Week also came from the Manchester area and Stockport and this book, is largely about four of those Manchester volunteers. Only two of the volunteers were born in Ireland. These are Liam Parr and Redmond Cox. Gilbert Lynch, was from Reddish in Stockport and Larry Ryan, was born in Salford.

Liam Parr had left Dublin about 1910 when he was 19-years-old and had settled in West Didsbury, in South Manchester. He left Manchester in February 1916 to travel to Dublin and undertook military and munitions training at Kimmage Mill, Larkfield, Dublin. On Easter Monday 1916, Parr was in the Liberty Hall office, the headquarters of the Irish Transport & General Workers Union (ITGWU) and was one of the first to take over the GPO office on Sackville Street, on Monday afternoon. After the surrender on Saturday afternoon, he was arrested and returned to England where he was interned in a camp in Frongoch, Wales.

Redmond Cox was born in Boyle County, Roscommon, in 1893. As a 22-year-old, he’d been living in Cheetham, Manchester, with his sister. He travelled to Dublin in February 1916. Before surrendering, Cox had been in ‘Four Courts’ and he was later arrested and returned to England. He was released from imprisonment after a fortnight.

Gilbert Lynch had been born in Reddish, Stockport, in 1892. A devout Catholic, he joined the National League of Young Liberals in 1908 and was involved with the Clarion in 1916. He claimed to have been a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (Fenians) in 1913 and to have joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1917. A member of Stockport Trades Council, he said that his political outlook had been influenced by reading “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist.” A gun-runner, Lynch arrived in Dublin the week before Easter with 500 rounds of .303 ammunition and had been carrying small-arms. During Easter week he had been based in Father Matthew Hall, which was being used as a first-aid station and to detain prisoners and spies. Lynch escaped arrest because he had been in hospital having “twisted his ankle getting over a barricade.” He later made his way back to Stockport.

Laurence (Larry) Ryan was born in Salford in 1894. His mother lived in Seedley in Salford. Unlike the others, it is not known when Ryan travelled to Dublin, but he did train at Kimmage Mill and was one of the first, to take up a position in the GPO building. After the surrender, Ryan was arrested and returned to England. He was interned until Christmas in Frongoch camp in Wales.

On Easter Monday 1916, the rebel’s had planned to occupy the General Post Office building on Sackville Street, Dublin, and to use this building as their headquarters. Many of the leaders including James Connolly, a socialist who had been born in Cowgate, Edinburgh, mistakenly believed that the English imperialists would not use artillery because they would not bomb their own property. Therefore, they expected an infantry attack on the GPO building and posted battalions in four main positions outside the city centre to command the routes that British soldiers would take to attack the GPO. The rebel plan also involved armed risings in the rest of the country. Bolands Bakery, the Marrowbone Lane Distillery, the South Dublin Union Workhouse and the Jacobs factory, were all sites of revolt. Some of the rebels did use Mauser rifles that had been provided by the Germans and brought to Ireland by Erskine and Molly Childers in their yacht ‘Asgard’ in July 1914. The Easter Rising lasted six days before the rebels on the instructions of their leaders, surrendered on the Saturday.

On the third day of the rebellion, Patrick Pearse, a barrister, writer, schoolteacher and nationalist mystic with a martyr complex, had told the rebels in the GPO building that the country was steadily rising and that volunteers were marching from Dundalk on Dublin and that reinforcements would arrive and release them. “They were later told by a visitor of the despondency in the city as well as the news that the country had not risen.” Connolly was certainly aware, that after the surrender, all those who had signed the proclamation of the Irish Republic, would be shot by the British and that this was a cause he was happy to die for. He told others that they were likely to be imprisoned and should keep quiet about what they had done.

After the surrender, many volunteers recalled the hostility and abuse they had encountered from many Dubliners. Con Colbert, who was later shot in Kilmainham Gaol, said after the surrender: “the people who we have tried to emancipate have demonstrated nothing but hate and contempt for us.”

Hidden Heroes of Easter Week is a book that is well worth reading.  Robin Stocks has done a great deal research on this book and many of the accounts given by the volunteers who took part during Easter Week in Dublin are based on witness statements, interviews with family members and research done in archives and libraries in England and Ireland. Where I think this book is at its weakest, is in its lack of analysis of the rising itself and what effect it had on Irish society.

This book does not mention that 450 people were killed and 2,500 injured during the rising and nine reported missing. Among the dead, were 117 soldiers, 41 of them Irish, plus 16 armed and unarmed policeman, all Irish. Some 64 volunteers out of a total of 1,500, who played some part in the rising, were also killed. However, alongside 205 combatants who died, 245 wholly innocent civilians also died. The dead were mostly Irish civilians and Dublin’s poor, who died for a cause they barely understood or supported or were even hostile to. Some saw it as an opportunity for looting. Many of the civilians were killed by British forces using machine-gun fire, incendiary shells and artillery.

As Robin Stocks makes clear, not all leading Republicans were in favour of the insurrection. Bulmer Hobson, a leading Fenian, considered it a reckless adventure. Speaking after the rising, Hobson said that towards the end of 1915, Connolly (who had served in the British army in Ireland), had decided to have a “little insurrection” with the citizen army.

“His conversation was full of clichés derived from the earlier days of the socialist movement in Europe. He told me that the working-class was always revolutionary, that Ireland was powder magazine and that what was necessary was for someone to apply the match. I replied that if he must talk in metaphors, Ireland was a wet bog and the match would fall in the puddle.”

He described Patrick Pearse as a “sentimental egoist, full of curious Old Testament theories about being the scapegoat of the people who had become convinced of the necessity for a periodic blood sacrifice to keep the national spirit alive. There was a certain strain of abnormality in all this.”

Before leading his men out of Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), on Easter Monday, to start a rebellion, we are told that Connolly had said ‘smilingly’: “Well girls, we start operations at noon today. This is the proclamation of the republic.” What we are not told in this book, is that on the way out of the building, Connolly halted at the bottom of the stairs to speak with his friend and colleague William O’Brien. Connolly told him: “Bill, we are going out to be slaughtered.” Is there any chance?” asked O’Brien. “None whatsoever” said Connolly. He then marched his men out of the building along with his fifteen year old son, Roderick (Roddy ) Connolly, who would survive the rising.

Although fifteen of the rebel leaders were executed, many of those who took part in the rising were treated with surprising leniency by the British authorities, including the four Manchester volunteers. Some 3,430 men and 79 women were arrested after the rising and 1,424 men and 73 women were subsequently released. Of almost 2,000 men who were interned in England, over 1,200 were quickly released and most of the others were home by Christmas 1916. All were freed under a general amnesty in July 1917. Those who faced a court martial, included 170 men and one woman, Constance Markievicz. Ninety death sentences were passed and fifteen carried out. Those sentenced to life imprisonment, were released within 18-months.

Today, many Republican groups and trade unions in Ireland, have adopted James Connolly as their patron saint or founding father. While it is true to say that the execution of the rebel leaders produced sympathy for the cause and turned the men into martyrs, Connolly’s influence was marginalised after the rising – all of Connolly’s children took the anti-Treaty side. Ireland did not become the workers socialist republic that Connolly had wished for. What emerged triumphant from the Easter Rising was Irish Catholic Nationalism and it was Pearse’s vision of Ireland, which was elevated. There was little support for Marxism in Ireland before the rising and afterwards and many Sinn Fein and IRA members were fiercely anti-Communist. Indeed, in the 1960s, communists were banned from the Republican movement. Ireland under Eamonn de Valera’s, Fianna Fail, was protectionist, isolationist, and obedient to the Catholic hierarchy. Divorce, contraception and abortion, were all illegal. It was a world of secrecy and obedience with its Magdalene laundries and the subordination of women. It survived by exporting its young, mainly to Britain, where they could earn a living. The Irish Catholic Church supported Franco during the Spanish Civil War and some Irish Catholic’s, fought with the ‘Blueshirt’s on the nationalist side under Eoin O’Duffy. Others supported the Republican side.

None of the Manchester volunteers fought in the civil war which broke out in Ireland in 1922 following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, which was supported by a majority of Irish people. It had been estimated that six times more nationalists were killed in the war than had been killed by the British forces between  1916-1922.

Tragically, we now know that Admiralty SIGINT Unit, Room 40, had been intercepting decrypted messages dealing with German support for the Irish nationalists between the outbreak of WW1 and the eve of the Easter Rising in 1916. Under interrogation at Scotland Yard, Sir Roger Casement, asked to be allowed to call for the rising to be called off to avoid a blood bath, but this was refused. Sir Reginald (Blinker) Hall is reputed to have told Casement – “It is better that a cankering sore like this should be cut out.”

January 2018.