William Gallacher MP (1881 - 1965)

A number of Willie Gallacher's manuscripts are found amongst the papers of Robin Page Arnot, a fellow leading member of the Communist Party. They include undated parts of a murder story, a western and a detective novel, the full manuscript of a western novel, The big feller (c.1950), written under the pen name of Random Scott, and several typescripts and manuscript poems, together with correspondence and other items of political interest.

Willie Gallacher was a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and sat on the Executive Committee of the Communist International from the mid 1920s until his election as Member of Parliament for West Fife in 1935. He was the only Communist in parliament until Phil Piratin was elected in Mile End in 1945. He was defeated by Labour in 1950. He acted as president of the Communist Party from 1956 to 1963. He was an able journalist, pamphleteer and polemicist, and his published memoirs are well known, but he also wrote novels and poetry.

Access will be granted to any accredited reader

Other repositories:

Gallacher Memorial Library, Glasgow Caledonian University

Personal papers and archives of Communist Party of Great Britain, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, People's History Museum

Files re casework for the unemployed, Marx Memorial Library

• William Gallacher, Revolt on the Clyde: an autobiography (1936)
• N Green ed., The last memoirs of William Gallacher (1966)
• Robert Duncan, ‘Gallacher, William (1881–1965)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33311, accessed 20 Dec 2006]