Denzil Dean Harber
Encyclopedia
Denzil Dean Harber was an early British
Trotskyist leader and later in his life a prominent British ornithologist.
Denzil Dean Harber was born at 25 Fairmile Avenue, Streatham
on 25 January 1909. His father was a ship's carpenter turned architect, his mother the daughter of a successful south London butcher.
During the First World War the family moved to Sussex
where they lived in a succession of houses at Climping
, Lewes
, and Eastbourne
and finally at the Black Mill, Ore
near Hastings
.
From a very early age he developed an interest in many aspects of natural history
including reptiles, butterflies and moths
, fossils and birds.
Suffering from chronic asthma
from infancy his formal education was spasmodic. He was however taught how to learn, and how to plan courses of study himself by an inspiring private tutor. Developing what became a lifelong interest in languages he taught himself French
and German
.
It is not clear how he became interested in politics, but by the end of 1926 he was reading various anti-imperialist pamphlets published by the Labour Research Department
. By March 1927 he had read the first volume of Capital
. According to John McIlroy (see references) he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain
(CPGB) in 1929.
It was undoubtedly this political interest that led him to start to teach himself Russian
and then to study Russian Commerce at the London School of Economics
(LSE). In the summer of 1932, he travelled to the Soviet Union as an interpreter for a Canadian journalist with the intention of settling there but was disillusioned by what he found. Returning home, he found copies of the Bulletin of the Opposition published in Russian by the Trotskyist Left Opposition
in Henderson's bookshop in the Charing Cross Road
.
Harber expected that the journalist who employed him would publish a full account of their visit to Russia and felt because he went as her employee it would not be right for him to publish his own, but in fact the journalist never did. However Harber did write a short report entitled Seeing Soviet Russia for the Lent Term 1933 issue of the student journal of the LSE Clare Market Review
which included how he had witnessed famine in the Russian countryside and the ruin of Soviet agriculture. This is one of the very few contemporary accounts of Russian conditions written by an outside visitor fluent in Russian.
In 1932 Harber joined the Communist League
, the successor of the Balham Group an opposition group in the CPGB and the first independent Trotskyist group in the country. Trotsky advised the group to enter the Independent Labour Party
(ILP), which had just disaffiliated from the Labour Party
. Trotsky believed that the group should work for a "Bolshevik
transformation of the party".http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/britain/britain/ch09.htm#a5
The majority of the Communist League argued against joining the ILP in favour of maintaining an open party, but allowed thirty of its members led by Harber to form a secretive "Bolshevik-Leninist Fraction" in the ILP. This difference in orientation essentially split the party, and in November 1934, sixty Trotskyist ILPers officially formed the Marxist Group
, led by Harber.
While, perhaps due to this delay and infighting, the Group never achieved the influence hoped for by Trotsky, it did win new members, including C. L. R. James
. Ted Grant
also joined the organisation, having moved from South Africa
. By the ILP Conference of 1935, it claimed a similar strength to the Revolutionary Policy Committee
, which was sympathetic to the Communist Party of Great Britain
.
However Harber now left the ILP to join the Labour Party, as Trotsky urged, now forming the Militant Group
. Harber later led this into the Revolutionary Socialist League
(RSL) of which he was a secretary for a time. In 1944 the RSL fused with the rival Workers International League to form the Revolutionary Communist Party (1944-1949].
Harber was one of the British delegates to the founding conference of the Fourth International
in Paris on September 3 1938 and together with C. L. R. James was elected to represent Britain on the International Executive Committee.
Later than month he married Mary Whittaker who he had first met in the Labour League of Youth. The following year he moved with her back to Sussex - to Eastbourne - where he became a Co-operative Society insurance agent, a job he held for the rest of his life.
By 1937 he had revived his interest in natural history and in particular in ornithology. In Sussex he started to contribute to the South-Eastern Bird Report. That for 1939 records his sighting of a Snow-Bunting at Birling Gap near Eastbourne on September 24 of that year. For the next ten years he combined political activity with ornithology.
Harber had long opposed Gerry Healy
, but when the Revolutionary Communist Party dissolved in 1949, he did briefly follow many of his comrades into Healy's group, The Club
. However after publishing one article in the Club's journal, Marxist Review, he abandoned active politics (though not his political beliefs) in favour of ornithology.
In 1948 the Sussex section of the South Eastern Bird Report became an independent publication The Sussex Bird Report under the editorship of Grahame des Forges. In 1949 Harber became the report’s co-editor and from 1956 its sole editor, a position he held until 1962 when he relinquished control to the newly formed Sussex Ornithological Society.http://www.sos.org.uk/about.htm. In 1963 his and des Forges’s A Guide to the Birds of Sussex was published.
Very early in his ornithological career Harber had come to the conclusion that a series of rare and exotic birds allegedly shot in an area around Hastings between 1903 and 1916 (the so-called Hastings rarities
) were forgeries and the manuscript to the Guide to the Birds of Sussex rejected them. By the time the Guide was published a full exposure of the forgery had been published in British Birds (magazine)
(1962 vol 55 8 283-349).
Harber’s reputation as an ornithologist increased over the years. In 1955 in an extended review of The Birds of the Soviet Union for British Birds he brought together his knowledge of Russian and ornithology. In 1959 he was invited to join the British Birds Rarities Committee
http://www.bbrc.org.uk/ – the official adjudicator of rare bird records in Britain – and in 1963 he became its Honorary Secretary.
He died on 31 August 1966
Mid-season movements of swifts in Sussex British Birds Vol 45, 1952 pps 216-218
Special Review; The Birds of the Soviet Union, British Birds Vol 48 pps 218-224, 268-276, 313-319, 343-348, 404-410, 447-453, 505-511
Slender-billed Gull in Sussex. British Birds Vol 55,1962 pps 169-171
(with G. des Forges) A Guide to the Birds of Sussex, Edinburgh. 1963
Chapter on Yugoslavia in A Guide to Bird-Watching in Europe ed. J Ferguson-lees, Q Hockliffe & K Zweeres, London 1972
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Trotskyist leader and later in his life a prominent British ornithologist.
Denzil Dean Harber was born at 25 Fairmile Avenue, Streatham
Streatham
Streatham is a district in Surrey, England, located in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is situated south of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.-History:...
on 25 January 1909. His father was a ship's carpenter turned architect, his mother the daughter of a successful south London butcher.
During the First World War the family moved to Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
where they lived in a succession of houses at Climping
Climping
Clymping is a civil parish, located around the hamlet of Climping in the Arun District of West Sussex, England. The parish also contains the coastal hamlet of Atherington. It is located three miles west of Littlehampton, just north of the A259 road...
, Lewes
Lewes
Lewes is the county town of East Sussex, England and historically of all of Sussex. It is a civil parish and is the centre of the Lewes local government district. The settlement has a history as a bridging point and as a market town, and today as a communications hub and tourist-oriented town...
, and Eastbourne
Eastbourne
Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...
and finally at the Black Mill, Ore
Ore
An ore is a type of rock that contains minerals with important elements including metals. The ores are extracted through mining; these are then refined to extract the valuable element....
near Hastings
Hastings
Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....
.
From a very early age he developed an interest in many aspects of natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
including reptiles, butterflies and moths
Moths
Moths may refer to:* Gustav Moths , German rower* The Moths!, an English indie rock band* MOTHS, members of the Memorable Order of Tin Hats...
, fossils and birds.
Suffering from chronic asthma
Asthma
Asthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
from infancy his formal education was spasmodic. He was however taught how to learn, and how to plan courses of study himself by an inspiring private tutor. Developing what became a lifelong interest in languages he taught himself French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
.
It is not clear how he became interested in politics, but by the end of 1926 he was reading various anti-imperialist pamphlets published by the Labour Research Department
Labour Research Department
The Labour Research Department is an independent trade union based research organisation, based in London, that provides information to support trade union activity and campaigns. LRD's publications Labour Research, Bargaining Report, Fact Service and LRD Booklets, along with an Enquiry Service...
. By March 1927 he had read the first volume of Capital
Das Kapital
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
. According to John McIlroy (see references) he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
(CPGB) in 1929.
It was undoubtedly this political interest that led him to start to teach himself Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and then to study Russian Commerce at the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
(LSE). In the summer of 1932, he travelled to the Soviet Union as an interpreter for a Canadian journalist with the intention of settling there but was disillusioned by what he found. Returning home, he found copies of the Bulletin of the Opposition published in Russian by the Trotskyist Left Opposition
Left Opposition
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927, headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January...
in Henderson's bookshop in the Charing Cross Road
Charing Cross Road
Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus and then becomes Tottenham Court Road...
.
Harber expected that the journalist who employed him would publish a full account of their visit to Russia and felt because he went as her employee it would not be right for him to publish his own, but in fact the journalist never did. However Harber did write a short report entitled Seeing Soviet Russia for the Lent Term 1933 issue of the student journal of the LSE Clare Market Review
Clare Market Review
The Clare Market Review was established in 1905 and is the oldest student-run journal in the UK. It is based at the London School of Economics and published by the university's Students' Union.- Notable contributors :...
which included how he had witnessed famine in the Russian countryside and the ruin of Soviet agriculture. This is one of the very few contemporary accounts of Russian conditions written by an outside visitor fluent in Russian.
In 1932 Harber joined the Communist League
Communist League (UK, 1932)
The Communist League was the first Trotskyist group in Britain. It was formed in 1932 by former members of the Communist Party of Great Britain from Balham and Tooting in South London, including Harry Wicks. They had been expelled after forming a loose grouping inside the CPGB, known as the...
, the successor of the Balham Group an opposition group in the CPGB and the first independent Trotskyist group in the country. Trotsky advised the group to enter the Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...
(ILP), which had just disaffiliated from the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
. Trotsky believed that the group should work for a "Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
transformation of the party".http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/britain/britain/ch09.htm#a5
The majority of the Communist League argued against joining the ILP in favour of maintaining an open party, but allowed thirty of its members led by Harber to form a secretive "Bolshevik-Leninist Fraction" in the ILP. This difference in orientation essentially split the party, and in November 1934, sixty Trotskyist ILPers officially formed the Marxist Group
Marxist Group (UK)
The Marxist Group was an early Trotskyist group in the United Kingdom.Its origins lay in the Communist League, the first Trotskyist group in the country. Trotsky advised the group to enter the Independent Labour Party , which had just disaffiliated from the Labour Party...
, led by Harber.
While, perhaps due to this delay and infighting, the Group never achieved the influence hoped for by Trotsky, it did win new members, including C. L. R. James
C. L. R. James
Cyril Lionel Robert James , who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J.R. Johnson, was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist, socialist theorist and essayist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts...
. Ted Grant
Ted Grant
Edward "Ted" Grant , 9 July 1913 in Germiston, South Africa – 20 July 2006 in London) was a South African Trotskyist who spent most of his adult life in Britain...
also joined the organisation, having moved from South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
. By the ILP Conference of 1935, it claimed a similar strength to the Revolutionary Policy Committee
Revolutionary Policy Committee
The Revolutionary Policy Committee was a faction within the former political party Independent Labour Party of the United Kingdom.The RPC was formed in 1931 by members of the Independent Labour Party who were especially unhappy with the gradualist policies of the Second Labour Government...
, which was sympathetic to the Communist Party of Great Britain
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
.
However Harber now left the ILP to join the Labour Party, as Trotsky urged, now forming the Militant Group
Militant Group
The Militant Group was an early British Trotskyist group, formed in 1935 by Denzil Dean Harber, former leader of the Marxist Group, as an entrist group inside the Labour Party....
. Harber later led this into the Revolutionary Socialist League
Revolutionary Socialist League (UK, 1938)
The first RSL was formed in early 1938 with the merger of two different parties, the Marxist League led by Harry Wicks and the Marxist Group led by C. L. R. James....
(RSL) of which he was a secretary for a time. In 1944 the RSL fused with the rival Workers International League to form the Revolutionary Communist Party (1944-1949].
Harber was one of the British delegates to the founding conference of the Fourth International
Fourth International
The Fourth International is the communist international organisation consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky , with the declared dedicated goal of helping the working class bring about socialism...
in Paris on September 3 1938 and together with C. L. R. James was elected to represent Britain on the International Executive Committee.
Later than month he married Mary Whittaker who he had first met in the Labour League of Youth. The following year he moved with her back to Sussex - to Eastbourne - where he became a Co-operative Society insurance agent, a job he held for the rest of his life.
By 1937 he had revived his interest in natural history and in particular in ornithology. In Sussex he started to contribute to the South-Eastern Bird Report. That for 1939 records his sighting of a Snow-Bunting at Birling Gap near Eastbourne on September 24 of that year. For the next ten years he combined political activity with ornithology.
Harber had long opposed Gerry Healy
Gerry Healy
Thomas Gerard Healy, known as Gerry Healy , was a political activist, a co-founder of the International Committee of the Fourth International, and, according to former prominent U.S. supporter David North, the leader of the Trotskyist movement in Great Britain between 1950 – 1985...
, but when the Revolutionary Communist Party dissolved in 1949, he did briefly follow many of his comrades into Healy's group, The Club
The Club (Trotskyist)
The Club was a Trotskyist group in the United Kingdom. It operated inside the Labour Party and was the official section of the Fourth International from 1950 until 1953 when, after the FI split, it became part of the International Committee of the Fourth International...
. However after publishing one article in the Club's journal, Marxist Review, he abandoned active politics (though not his political beliefs) in favour of ornithology.
In 1948 the Sussex section of the South Eastern Bird Report became an independent publication The Sussex Bird Report under the editorship of Grahame des Forges. In 1949 Harber became the report’s co-editor and from 1956 its sole editor, a position he held until 1962 when he relinquished control to the newly formed Sussex Ornithological Society.http://www.sos.org.uk/about.htm. In 1963 his and des Forges’s A Guide to the Birds of Sussex was published.
Very early in his ornithological career Harber had come to the conclusion that a series of rare and exotic birds allegedly shot in an area around Hastings between 1903 and 1916 (the so-called Hastings rarities
Hastings Rarities
The Hastings Rarities affair is a case of putative ornithological fraud. Two articles in the August 1962 issue of the journal British Birds, one a statistical examination by John Nelder, the other an editorial by Max Nicholson and James Ferguson-Lees, made a case for several records of birds...
) were forgeries and the manuscript to the Guide to the Birds of Sussex rejected them. By the time the Guide was published a full exposure of the forgery had been published in British Birds (magazine)
British Birds (magazine)
British Birds is a monthly ornithology magazine that was established in 1907. It is now published by BB 2000 Ltd, which is wholly owned by The British Birds Charitable Trust , established for the benefit of British ornithology...
(1962 vol 55 8 283-349).
Harber’s reputation as an ornithologist increased over the years. In 1955 in an extended review of The Birds of the Soviet Union for British Birds he brought together his knowledge of Russian and ornithology. In 1959 he was invited to join the British Birds Rarities Committee
British Birds Rarities Committee
The British Birds Rarities Committee , established in 1959, is the national bird rarities committee for Britain. It assesses claimed sightings of bird species that are rarely seen in Britain, based on descriptions, photographs and video recordings submitted by observers...
http://www.bbrc.org.uk/ – the official adjudicator of rare bird records in Britain – and in 1963 he became its Honorary Secretary.
He died on 31 August 1966
Selected writing
OrnithologyMid-season movements of swifts in Sussex British Birds Vol 45, 1952 pps 216-218
Special Review; The Birds of the Soviet Union, British Birds Vol 48 pps 218-224, 268-276, 313-319, 343-348, 404-410, 447-453, 505-511
Slender-billed Gull in Sussex. British Birds Vol 55,1962 pps 169-171
(with G. des Forges) A Guide to the Birds of Sussex, Edinburgh. 1963
Chapter on Yugoslavia in A Guide to Bird-Watching in Europe ed. J Ferguson-lees, Q Hockliffe & K Zweeres, London 1972
Archives
- Harber Archive at the Marxists Internet Archive
- Harber's papers at Warwick University
- three letters from Harber in the Trotsky archives at Harvard University