Following a tip-off, the Library managed to purchase a small archive of correspondence received by Griff Jones, an active member of the Labour Party in Swansea in the first 30 years of the last century, at an auction.
The archive is only one box but the best things come in small packages so it was a great pleasure to go through these papers. There are three really interesting files, a letter from Philip Snowden, the first Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, and letters and postcards from Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister, to Griff Jones. Griff was also a cartoonist, and some cartoons came with the collection. They have been transferred to the Graphics department.
Many of the letters deal with the administrative issues of organizing Labour meetings in Swansea, although one from Snowden rejects a request in a humorous manner:
"I was in Swansea last year – nay indeed this year. And now you ask me to come again. There are, I am told 800 branches of the I. L. P. and 2000 branches of the Labour Party. If I take 3 days a week to visit each of these it will be just sixty years before your turn comes round again. Write to me again just before your turn comes round."
There are a few interesting comments in the letters from Ramsay MacDonald, including his views on the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and damning comments on the Labour Party election campaign in 1931.
And although there is much less substance in the messages on the postcards from MacDonald to Griff Jones, it is a fascinating collection because it shows the nature of his travels and the relationship between him and Jones - I'm sure he didn't send postcards to every local Labour organizer from around the world!
View the Griff Jones Papers catalogue.
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