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How we raised the scarlet berry high!

In his second piece on a life intertwined with the Morning Star, lifelong communist CHRIS BIRCH reflects how politics informed his early life — even on his and his wife Betty's wedding day

IN MY first article, I said that I was the secretary of the student branch of the Communist Party, and also that Betty was to be my wife.

 

The wedding was fixed for Thursday September 14 1950. The committee of the student branch met at 6.30am, and we were afraid to go away on holiday in case we missed the revolution.

 

And our wedding was somewhat unusual. My parents’ wedding in St George’s church, St Kitts, in 1927 had been very simple with just a few family and friends, as my mother disliked fuss. She did not wear a wedding dress, just a plain, white linen suit. In fact a woman standing outside the church, presumably disappointed by the small congregation and the lack of flowers and finery, commented that it was a “miserable” wedding. Ours was to be similarly low key.

 

Betty and I didn’t want anything fancy and would have been happy with a small, quiet ceremony in a register office. There certainly wasn’t the money for anything big.

 

After some debate, Betty’s mother got her way, and we agreed on having the wedding in Rothwell’s Congregational Chapel with the wedding breakfast in the Co-op rooms.

 

We did get to choose our own hymns, very unusual ones, the minister thought, for a wedding.

 

We had Ebenezer Elliott’s hymn:  When wilt thou save the people?

 

O God of Mercy! When?

Not kings and lords, but nations!

Not thrones and crowns, but men! Flowers of thy heart, O God are they!

Let them not pass, like weeds, away!

Their heritage a sunless day!

God save the people!

Shall crime bring crime forever,

Strength aiding still the strong?

Is it thy will, O Father!

That man shall toil for wrong? ‘No!’ say thy mountains; ‘No’ thy skies;

‘Man’s clouded sun shall brightly rise,

And songs be heard instead of sighs.’

God save the people!  When wilt thou save the people?

O God of Mercy! When?

The people, Lord! The people!

Not thrones and crowns, but men!

Thy children, as thy angels fair;

Save them from bondage and despair!

God save the people!  

 

And to the tune of God Save The King (we had a king in those days):

God bless our native land!

May heaven’s protecting hand

Still guard her shore.

May peace her laws defend,

Foe be transformed to friend

And Britain’s power depend

On war no more.

Not on this land alone,

But be God’s mercies known

From shore to shore to shore:

Lord, make the nations see

That men should brothers be,

And form one family

The wide world o’er.

 

Before the wedding, Betty and I picked strawberries in June and July 1949 at the same Smith and Holborn farm where I had been the previous summer, again organised by the Student Labour Federation, and run by our communist friend, Frank Long, who was to be my best man at our wedding, shortly before he was killed in a road accident.

 

The cost of board and lodging was 31 shillings a week each but I have no memory or record of what we earned from picking the fruit.

 

Betty collaborated with Eric Winter, who was to become quite famous in the world of folksong, in writing a strawberry-pickers anthem, which included the lines:

One for Smith’s habilitation,

One for Holborn’s compensation,

All the rest goes to the nation.

Picking’s nationalised.

 

It was sung to the tune of Men of Harlech, and formed part of a camp show called What’s Red, a Strawberry-pickers Political Revue, also written by Betty and Eric:

 

The People’s Fruit is deepest red.

It nestles in the strawberry bed.

It makes our limbs grow stiff and sore.

Its life blood stains our fingers raw.

Then raise the scarlet berry high.

In its pursuit we’ll live or die.

Though cowards flinch and slackers stop,

We’ll pick the red fruit till we drop!

With heads uncovered, torsos brown,

We’ll chuck in stones to weigh them down.

Come camp fatigues, class A or B,

We’ll curse the thrice damned strawberry. Then raise the scarlet berry high … etc.

 

Perhaps for some of you, dear readers, I should add that it was a parody of The Red Flag, the anthem of the British labour movement.

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