[1] Murphy helped with the family finances from the age of 7, initially selling his mother's baked goods before taking a job working as an assistant on a milk round.
[1] He was elected to the governing Executive Committee of the SLP, in which capacity he participated in unity discussions between the various revolutionary socialist groups which had emerged in the country.
In January 1920 Murphy travelled illegally to Soviet Russia, where he attended with John S. Clarke, Helen Crawfurd, Williie Gallacher, William McLaine, Sylvia Pankhurst,[2] Marjory Newbold, Tom Quelch, Dave Ramsay and Jack Tanner at the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern as delegate for the Shop Stewards Movement.
[1] Murphy also was a delegate to the First World Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU) in July 1921, which elected him a member of the organisation's executive committee.
He became a founder of and full-time organiser for the People's Front Propaganda Committee, which aimed to unite members of all parties against fascism and the British government's indifference to or appeasement of it.
[4] After the war, Murphy stopped all formal political activity, spending much of his time writing company histories, including one of Marks and Spencer and one of Sainsbury's.