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David Guest (communist)

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David Guest
David Guest (left) meets Harry Pollitt in Spain
Born
David Haden-Guest

(1911-01-06)6 January 1911
Died28 July 1938(1938-07-28) (aged 27)
Gandesa, Spain
Cause of deathKilled in action
Resting placeGandesa
NationalityBritish
Alma materTrinity College, Cambridge
Occupation(s)Mathematician, philosopher
Years active1931–1938
Political partyCommunist Party of Great Britain
PartnerSuzanne McShane
ParentLeslie Haden-Guest, 1st Baron Haden-Guest & Muriel Ethel Carmel Goldsmid
RelativesPeter Haden-Guest, 4th Baron Haden-Guest (brother)
Military service
Allegiance Spanish Republic
Service / branch International Brigades
UnitBritish Battalion of the "Abraham Lincoln" XV International Brigade
Battles / warsSpanish Civil War

David Guest (6 January 1911[1]– 28 July 1938) was a British mathematician and philosopher who volunteered to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and was killed in Spain in 1938. He was the uncle of American-British musician, actor and director Christopher Guest.

Biography

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Guest was the son of Leslie Haden-Guest (created 1st Baron Haden-Guest in 1950), a longtime Labour Party Member of Parliament and Muriel Ethel Carmel Goldsmid, daughter of Albert Goldsmid (a pioneering Zionist as head of Hovevei Zion in Great Britain and Ireland) from the Goldsmid family of merchant bankers.

He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1929 and studied from 1930 to 1931 in Göttingen in Germany, where he witnessed the latter years of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazi Party.[2] He became involved "anti-fascist activity".[3] Arrested at a communist youth demonstration, he was released after a two weeks.[4] On his return he joined the Communist Party at Cambridge in 1931.[3] There Guest became the head of a party cell that included John Cornford, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Victor Kiernan and James Klugmann.[4] This enabled dons such as Maurice Dobb and John Bernal to take a back-seat. It was claimed that David Guest would "stride into hall at Trinity wearing a hammer and sickle pin in his lapel."[5]

In 1933, after leaving Cambridge Guest moved to Battersea, South London, where he lectured in mathematics and worked for the Communist party at the Peoples' Bookshop in Lavender Hill. He soon became active in Battersea Young Communist League. While working at the bookshop he joined the shop workers union. In May 1935, he organised a Youth Peace Parade of fifty young people, some dressed as nurses, others with gas masks and with stretchers, to warn of war. For a short period of time he taught at a secondary school for English-speaking children in Moscow, but returned to England to lecture at University College in Southampton.[6]

In 1938 he left his post as a lecturer at University College to volunteer for the International Brigades fighting in Spain. He wrote of his decision:

Today we have certainly entered a period of crisis, when the arguments of 'normal times' no longer apply, when considerations of most immediate usefulness come in. That is why I have decided to take the opportunity of going to Spain.

Guest arrived in Spain on 31 March 1938 and joined the British Battalion of the International Brigades. The Battalion went into action at the Battle of the Ebro which began on 25 July 1938. Three days later, on 28 July,[7][8] Guest was killed on Hill 481[9] at Gandesa by a sniper as he read a newspaper.[10][11]

After his death, notes he had made while lecturing at the Marx Memorial Workers' School were published as A Text Book of Dialectical Materialism in 1939.

Publications

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  • Guest, David, (1939) A Text Book of Dialectical Materialism, Lawrence And Wishart (republished as Lectures on Marxist Philosophy (1963))

References

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  1. ^ Birgit Sondergeld (2010). Spanische Erinnerungskultur: Die Assmann'sche Theorie des kulturellen Gedächtnisses und der Bürgerkrieg 1936–1939. Springer-Verlag. p. 255. ISBN 9783531924915. Archived from the original on 31 January 2016. Retrieved 21 January 2015.
  2. ^ Helena Sheehan Marxism and the Philosophy of Science.
  3. ^ a b Michael Walker. David Guest. Communist Biogs. Retrieved 17 January 2024.
  4. ^ a b "Biography of David Guest". Archived from the original on 20 October 2014. Retrieved 18 September 2014.
  5. ^ Phillip Knightley, Philby: KGB Masterspy (1988) page 32
  6. ^ "Guest David". Archived from the original on 30 October 2020. Retrieved 25 July 2021.
  7. ^ Sugarman, Martin (2012). "Against Fascism – Jews who served in The International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War" (PDF). Jewish Virtual Library. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 April 2014. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  8. ^ Carmody, Jim; Baxell, Richard (2012). "List of those who died in Spain". International Brigade Memorial Trust. Archived from the original on 7 February 2012. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  9. ^ Jenkins, Nicholas (2012). "David Haden-Guest". W.H. Auden – Family Ghosts. Archived from the original on 5 August 2012. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  10. ^ Beaumont, Peter (1 May 2005). "Forgotten warriors return to battle sites". The Guardian. London. ISSN 0261-3077. OCLC 60623878. Archived from the original on 29 August 2013. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  11. ^ "TEACHER KILLED IN SPAIN – David Guest, British Communist, Fought With Loyalists". The New York Times. 7 August 1938. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
[edit]
  • Walker, Michael. "David Guest". A Compendium of Communist Biographies.

Further reading

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  • Guest, Carmel Hayden (1939) David Guest – A Scientist Fights For Freedom 1911–1938, Lawrence and Wishart.
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