Peter Fryer
Encyclopedia
Peter Fryer was an English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 Marxist writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

.

Early life

Peter Fryer joined the Young Communist League
Young Communist League (Britain)
The Young Communist League is the name of both the youth wing of the former Communist Party of Great Britain and the current youth wing of the Communist Party of Britain ; an organisation that sees itself as the successor to the Communist Party of Great Britain.-Original Young Communist League...

 in 1942 and the Communist Party
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:...

 in 1945. On leaving school in 1943 he became a reporter on the Yorkshire Post
Yorkshire Post
The Yorkshire Post is a daily broadsheet newspaper, published in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England by Yorkshire Post Newspapers, a company owned by Johnston Press...

, and was dismissed by the paper in 1947 for refusing to leave the Communist Party. In 1948 he joined the staff of the Daily Worker
The Morning Star
The Morning Star is a left wing British daily tabloid newspaper with a focus on social and trade union issues. Articles and comment columns are contributed by writers from socialist, social democratic, green and religious perspectives....

, becoming its parliamentary correspondent.

Fryer did though cover foreign affairs from near the beginning of his time at the newspaper. In 1949 he reported on the show trial
Show trial
The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...

 of the Hungarian communist László Rajk
László Rajk
László Rajk was a Hungarian Communist; politician, former Minister of Interior and former Minister of Foreign Affairs...

, who had falsely confessed to being an agent of Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...

 and others. He later felt guilt after Rajk's execution and eventual "rehabilitation" early in 1956, for what he felt had been his acquiescence.

Hungarian uprising

In October 1956 he was sent to Hungary to cover the uprising
1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956....

. His dispatches, including a description of the suppression of the uprising by Soviet troops, were either heavily censored or suppressed. He left the paper; his resignation had in fact taken place several months earlier, but he had been persuaded to serve a year's notice. He wrote a book about the uprising (Hungarian Tragedy, 1956) and was expelled from the Communist Party for criticising its suppression in the "capitalist" press. Hungarian Tragedy is in print; the most recent edition also contains some articles he completed after the book, which was published very quickly after the events he witnessed.

Fryer then became the editor of The Newsletter, the journal of 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...

, a Trotskyist organisation led by 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...

, and with Healy was a founder member of the Socialist Labour League. He parted company with Healy and was delighted when Healy's organisation expelled him in 1985. Fryer wrote a weekly column for the Workers Press
Movement for Socialism (Britain)
The Movement for Socialism is a socialist group in the United Kingdom, led by Cliff Slaughter. It originated as one half of the major split in the Workers Revolutionary Party of 1985, following allegations about Gerry Healy's sexual activities...

, the paper of the organisation which had expelled Healy, for several years after 1985. As a socialist journalist, he was inspiring and painstaking, and wrote articles about how to write for the widest political audience, later made into a book called Lucid, Vigorous and Brief (1993).

Empire Windrush

In 1948 Fryer had covered the arrival in Britain of settlers from the Caribbean on the Empire Windrush, which ultimately resulted in Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (1984). Two short related books, originally given as lectures, are also in print: Aspects of British Black History and The Politics of Windrush.

Whilst critical attention has tended to focus on Hungarian Tragedy and Staying Power, other books by Peter Fryer: Private Case - Public Scandal: Secrets of the British Museum Revealed (1966), Mrs Grundy: studies in English prudery (1963), and The Birth Controllers (1965) were also ground-breaking studies that had significant impacts at the time, opening the subjects to wider debate and helping to change established (and Establishment) attitudes.

His Rhythms of Resistance, about the African musical heritage in Brazil, was published in 2000. Peter Fryer's interest in listening to and playing music came together with his travels in Brazil with his Brazilian son-in-law. As well as a leading authority on blues music, its history and related music in Africa and South America, he was a highly accomplished blues pianist, and was performing regularly until his death at the Caipirinha jazz bar in north London.

Later life

At the time of his death he was working on a study of life in Mississippi in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, under the working title Behind the Blues. He intended this work to rework black American history and he hoped this would be as influential as Staying Power. He had also just found out that he was to be honoured by the Hungarian government, in recognition of his "continuous support of the Hungarian revolution and freedom fight". Following his death he was posthumously awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary at a reception at the Hungarian embassy in London.

External links

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