Harry Thompson (radical lawyer)
He was then articled in 1902 to William Bramwell & Co., Preston solicitors, through the support of Percy Taylor, Constance's husband and a close friend of George Lansbury.
[8] Coming into contact there with John Ward, Thompson from an early point had trade union work and close links.
[1] It was converted in 1916 to a form of open prison, with the cell door locks removed, called Wakefield Work Centre.
[13] Thompson was on a representative committee elected by the inmates, with Walter Ayles, the pacifist organiser James Scott Duckers, and Henry Sara.
[27] Scott Duckers & Thompson defended James Winstone in a September 1919 libel action brought by Sir Eric Geddes.
[28] In 1920 Duckers was retained to defend John Frederick Hedley of the Socialist Labour Party, charged under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914.
[31] The firm defended a libel action in April 1921, brought in the wake of the Black Friday crisis by J. H. Thomas against the printers of The Communist, the National Labour Press, and its editor, Francis Meynell.
[1] In autumn of that year, as the protest began to spread through London boroughs, Thompson advised a group of imprisoned Poplar councillors in negotiations with a government minister, Alfred Mond, and successfully applied for a court order to have councillors from Poplar and Holloway released.
[36] Duckers and Thompson differed on party politics, however and went their own ways, a notice appearing that the partnership was dissolved from 31 August 1921.
[44] It was with Robert Page Arnot, Walter Baker, H. N. Brailsford, G. D. H. Cole, Fred Hall of the Co-operative College, Henry Devenish Harben, W. H. Hutchinson, Bernard Langdon-Davies and George Lansbury.
He gave advice to MacDonald, then Prime Minister, in 1924 on the handling of a gift of money and a car from Alexander Grant of McVitie's biscuits.
Five of the defendants—William Gallacher, Wal Hannington, Albert Inkpin, Harry Pollitt, and William Rust—were imprisoned for 12 months, with others receiving shorter sentences.
[50][51] In the Meerut Conspiracy Case of 1929, Thompson was retained by Benjamin Francis Bradley, Lester Hutchinson and Philip Spratt.
[55][56] Around this period the firm began to send briefs in civil cases to Rose Heilbron, who later worked frequently for them.
[57] In the aftermath of a police raid on the offices of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement (NUWM) in 1932, Thompson visited Wal Hannington in Pentonville Prison.
[58] It led to an important test case, Elias v Pasmore, a victory on the police seizure of documents for the NUWM, which received damages in the absence of a search warrant, but a double-edged one in terms of the precedents set.
[60] In January 1935 he defended Roland Park and Ivan Seruya in Jarrow Police Court, on the charge of showing an "inflammable" film in the Miner's Hall, Boldon, the successful defence being funded by the NCCL and the British Institute of Adult Education, the secretary of which from 1934 was William Emrys Williams.
[61][63] Seruya was a Londoner, a student at the Regent Street Polytechnic, a CPGB member involved in the Young Communist League and the Friends of the Soviet Union.
[65][63][66][67] The NCCL was the target of a campaign by Hugh Trenchard and Sir Philip Game, successive Metropolitan Police Commissioners, that sought to represent it as a communist front, and discredit its work.
When Herbert Morrison expressed the view that the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 then meant that the FBU had to cut political links and limit union activities, Horner faced him down, based on Thompson's view that the Act meant no such thing as it stood.
Morrison then had William Mabane bring up the status of NFS firefighters in parliament, as close to members of the armed forces.
[77] That year, Owen Parsons (1913/4–1986), who had joined the firm in 1936 and qualified as a solicitor in 1939, left on bad terms, taking some of the trade union business as he set up on his own account.
