Kitty Wintringham

This exhibition offers a brief glance at the life of Kitty Wintringham. Her papers are held by the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives:  Wintringham Collection . Kitty was married to Tom Wintringham, a socialist and leader of the British Battalion of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. All sources cited come from the Wintringham papers, and I have also taken some information from Hugh Purcell's biography of Tom, The Last English Revolutionary: this is indicated within the exhibition.

While she appears to have had a distant relationship with her father, Kitty and her uncle Henry Miller wrote to one another frequently. Henry was married to  Alice Duer Miller , a famous writer and suffragist, whom Kitty greatly admired.

Born in 1874, Alice attended Barnard college at a time when it was ‘frowned upon.’ She wrote frequent columns for the New York Tribune, and her satirical refrain, ‘Are Women People?’ became a campaign slogan for the American suffrage movement.

Through her journalism, novels and poetry, Alice achieved widespread acclaim. She was especially well-known for her book of verse,   ‘White Cliffs’ , published in 1940. This elegy to England during the Blitz sold over a million copies and was credited with turning American public opinion toward joining the Allies in the Second World War.

Kitty and Henry exchanged letters throughout their lives and there was clearly a warm bond between them. After Alice's death on 22nd August 1942, Kitty wrote in condolence to Henry:

'As a child [Alice] was my idea of a queen... my ideal of a woman, intelligent, brilliant, poised but at the same time full of warmth and heart, truly womanly in the highest sense of the word, no trace of attempting to be a bad imitation of a man, which was the curse of so many women who fought for the suffragette cause.’ Wintringham 10/4 LHCMA 

Kitty's reflections on Alice are striking: she admires not only her intelligence and commitment to the suffrage cause but the 'womanly' way in which she conducted herself. Across her letters, articles and papers, Kitty appears to be constantly negotiating how to conduct and present herself in the deeply masculine culture of Republican Spain and the British Left.

You can read Professor Mary Chapman's reflections on Alice Duer Miller's legacy  here 

Kitty attended Bryn Mawr between 1926-1930, a women’s college in Pennsylvania. She studied politics and economics and spent the summer holidays 'toruisting’ around Europe.  

After graduating, she spent some time in Germany and worked in advertising in New York, but became ‘bored and disgusted with the life of the upper brackets of society.’ She fed her interest in politics by reading and joined the League against War and Fascism.  (Wintringham 8/2 LHCMA)

The mid-1930s was a time of fizzling international and political unrest. In 1936, the same year civil war broke out in Spain, Kitty travelled to Russia, in her words, 'for some perspective’, and returned home with 'first-hand information.' She wrote copious letters to her close friend, the playwright Leslie Reade, dragging her typewriter between cities and on and off trains:  

‘If the typing of this letter is a bit more erratic than usual, put it down to the fact I am typing with the machine on the seat alongside me, which is not too convenient.’ Wintringham 8/1 LHCMA

It is unclear exactly what the purpose of her trip to the Soviet Union was. Tom’s biographer Hugh Purcell believes she was there as a tourist.

'I may be wild and high and free here, and most independent here and loving it’ Wintringham 8/1 LHCMA

However, Kitty also spent time visiting a collective farming community and learning about economic policy. Whilst at the farm near  Yaroslov,  she slept in a hayloft, bathed in the stream and discussed Soviet politics and unemployment in the US with a woman who invited her in for tea. 

Kitty wrote long descriptions to Leslie about workers’ pay, healthcare provision and farming methods. She appears to have been collecting information for research purposes:  

‘Spent 5 hours today with Bob Merriman, who is over here studying Soviet Economy....He talked of Stakhanovism and its aims, the new divorce laws, the constitution, collective farms, finance, retail trade and tomorrow is going to try and get time to tell me the way they calculate prices which is terribly complicated. What he gives you each time is the intent back of certain laws and there fore stuff we cannot possibly get at home.’ Wintringham 8/ 1 LHCMA

Although she had a caustic wit and a love of dancing and merriment, it seems highly unlikely Kitty was in the USSR as a tourist. She writes to Leslie of the way travel has changed her: ‘It solves certain things and wakes you up and generate and starts things going which perhaps were germinating there for a long while but needed some shock like this to start them off.’ Wintringham 8/2.  

She tells Leslie that she might use the letters she has written to write a book for travellers:  

‘I don’t mean the dull ones who travel out of boredom but of those like myself who do it for its own sake and never go to strange outlandish places. But rather a chronicle of 2 things. The funny amusing anecdotes which happen when you travel, plus the reaction of travel on your inner life..... Anyway not a word of to anyone of this.’ Wintringham 8/1 LHCMA

Kitty never published this book but her time in the USSR had a profound effect on her. She returned home determined to travel to Spain.

‘I have kept a carbon copy of all this and will do so with my future letters so that if any go astray I will have a complete record to show you on my return. In other words I’m going to make my letters to you my diary. Do you mind if I kill two birds with one stone?’ Wintringham 8/1 LHCMA

It is striking that whilst travelling and feeling ‘dirty and uncomfortable all the time’, Kitty decided to carry a heavy typewriter with her, when presumably she could have written letters by hand. Her letters are full of humour, but they also reflect an exciting, turbulent period of her life in which her horizons were shifting and she was exposed to a vastly different culture from upper-class New York.

‘Is it the country or is it me... I for one find that you love it and for some reason are so stimulated you almost burst.’  Wintringham 8/1 LHCMA

That Kitty held onto these letters until her death in 1966 is also testament to the importance she attributed to them and to her time in the Soviet Union. Very little evidence of her life before meeting Tom Wintringham remains in her personal collection. 

The facts of Tom's life and his wartime record in Spain are well-established in Purcell's biography, The Last English Revolutionary (London, 2004). You can read a review in The Guardian  here , and it is also available, along with Tom Wintringham's papers, at the  Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London .

To Purcell, Kitty was a ‘young adventurer... out for excitement and a shameless flirt, perhaps in reaction to her wealthy, overbearing and conservative mother.’ He is puzzled at her arrest on suspicion of being a Trotskyite spy when, he concludes, she was simply ‘a foolhardy and gabby young woman', possibly prone to talking too much, and breathless in her admiration for Tom, who was ten years her senior.

Tom's name for Kitty was 'Schwimp': the joke was that she was small like a schrimp, but he had a slight lisp, so the nickname became 'Schwimp.' He continued to address her as 'Schwimp' for many years, seen here writing to her about election tactics in 1945.

After Tom became injured in the Battle of Jarama in February 1937, Kitty cared for him in hospital and they spent time in southern Spain on the coast while he recovered. In July 1937, Kitty was formally expelled from Spain and returned briefly to the US before arriving in London in October 1937, where she reunited with Tom. They moved in to a flat together in Arundel Square, north London. They were not to escape conflict for long however, as international tensions were brewing and war was once again on the horizon.

Her later articles for Federated Press indicate the imminence of war with Germany, and she was critical of both major political parties in Britain in the run-up to war. In February 1939, she wrote: ‘The people of England are restless and anxious, crying for a courageous lead out of the hopelessness and fear of the present situation. While Parliament (in splendid isolation from the feeling of the people) presents the disgusting spectacle of the dullest session in years. The Chamberlain government in fact, though not in form, is ruling by decree and the Labour Party is so afraid they might take power by mistake they let it go by default.’ Wintringham 8/2, LHCMA.

However, in a letter to her editors attached to an article about the situation in Europe in August 1939, Kitty expects 'the full force of the crisis' to 'hit us tomorrow, or in a few days.' However, she expresses doubt over whether this will lead to war: 'as you can see I still don't think there will be a war this year.' She remarks 'so far the English are if anything quieter than last year, though I understand war scare is going full force your way.'

Sadly, Kitty's predictions turned out to be incorrect: Britain declared war on Germany just eleven days later, on 1st September 1939.

The war proved to be a frantic time for Tom and Kitty. Tom wrote numerous articles, pamphlets and books on war and military strategy, arguing for a 'people's war' in which ordinary citizens should be trained to fight against invasion. His socialism informed this 'revolutionary patriotism': and he was one of the founders of the Home Guard training school in Osterley Park.

Kitty's role in his wartime work is somewhat ambiguous. She continued to work as a journalist, and was also heavily involved in Tom's work, writing to her friend, the poet Ines Munroz, of one of Tom's most famous works, Deadlock War, that 'we've boiled out a book in about six weeks.... it hasn't given us a moment for anything else-- since there were a large number of articles to be written at the same time.' Wintringham 10/2 LHCMA.

Tom described Kitty's work as secretarial; but it is clear she was highly involved in his prolific writing during the war, for which he became extremely famous and began to exert considerable influence. Kitty was present for the discussion Tom had with their friend Tom Hopkinson when the idea for the training school was established: it was she who appointed instructors and secretaries and presumably oversaw much of its organisation.

Tom and Kitty got married in January 1941; but no photographs, cards or ephemera relating to their wedding could be found in her papers. Purcell believes they got married without informing Kitty's family. It was also in 1941 that Tom founded the socialist Common Wealth party, along with Richard Acland and J.B. Priestley, within which Kitty would also come to play a significant role.

Tom had stood in the Midlothian and Peebles Northern by-election as the Common Wealth candidate in 1943, and he lost the seat by only 800 votes, having acquired ‘a great following among the bungalow class.’ Wintringham 3/2/5. It is unclear exactly why Kitty decided to stand in the same Scottish seat in 1945. Purcell’s view is that it was a mistake, and Kitty was desperate to prove herself independent from Tom: she was always doomed to fail. 

Kitty’s election leaflet included a message from Tom to the voters of Midlothian North: ‘Working with me as my secretary she [Kitty] has often complained when I left things unfinished... in Midlothian I left something not quite finished: the Tory majority came down from over 10,000 to under 900. You can see that she finishes that up neatly.’ Wintringham 3/2/5. 

To another friend and local Labour activist, Dr Leys, Kitty also expressed her dissappointment: ‘even from mining areas men have come up to say that a large proportion of them will vote for me as Labour have no organisation and have not been near them all during the war, but we have.'

While she maintains that she will not attack the Labour candidate personally, she expresses serious frustration: 'C.W. [Common Wealth] is fighting a maximum of 30 seats... everyone of these seats are ones that the Labour party could not possibly win yet with the exception of Aldershot they have to date put up a LP candidate against us, which includes Acland, Millington and Lawson.... if we now withdraw from this handful of seats it will mean the end of C.W. as a movement.’ Wintringham 3/2/5.

Leys replied with sympathy, agreeing it is a 'hellish position' and he 'had all the feelings of a traitor... [but] I have great admiration for you an would love to see you and 20 other CW members in the H.' [House of Commons] Wintringham 3-2-5.

To Anne, Leys is even firmer in his castigation of Labour: ‘I’d entirely agree that the L.P. are wrong, wrong not to have arranged a common front for the election, wrong in this constituency not to have been frank, or to have made up their minds earlier, wrong not to have accepted Kitty’s campaign as fait accompli, and to give her their support. I’d sooner see Kitty Wintringham in the House than anyone the L.P. is likely to rake up so late. But still I think she ought to withdraw: this isn’t a personal campaignm nor a Common Wealth campaign... but a campaign against the Tories first and last, and one seat may make a diference.’ Wintringham 3/2/5.

It remains a mystery why, when Labour were happy to stand down for Tom as Common Wealth’s candidate in 1943, they refused to do so for Kitty in 1945. Perhaps there was pressure from the Party Executive, perhaps a general election attracted different feelings: or perhaps the majority of party members simply did not like Kitty.  

Purcell castigates Kitty for her 'disastrous' performance in Midlothian; but he declines to mention that unlike Tom, she was battling against a Labour candidate. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that she failed to win the seat- especially given the significant national swing to Labour in 1945.

Nonetheless, Kitty was not alone in believing she genuinely held a good chance of winning the seat, before Labour decided to enter the race. Leys and Moffat, both Labour Party members, expressed their admiration for her: perhaps they saw qualities in Kitty that Purcell does not. Tom meanwhile, had no Labour opponent in Hampshire, as the local party did not field a candidate. He still failed to win the seat.

This is where Kitty’s papers end. Nothing of her life after Tom’s death remains in the archive. The central contradiction of her life and work seems to be borne out by the traces of it left in the twenty-first century: the tension between her independent mind and the ways in which her life and career was shaped and determined by that of her husband.

I hope that this exhibition has shed light on some of the ways in which Kitty both defied and deferred to the expectations of her age, and is a reminder of the ways in which women have always played active roles in political change; even if historians have allowed them to fade into the background.

Certainly, women of Kitty’s generation faced prejudice and discrimination. More concerning, however, is our own failure to see women as active participants in historical change, and to allow the centrality of the male experience to dictate the way in which we see the past.  

Blog Post:  Kitty Wintringham, journalist, campaigner and political activist.