Frank Glass

Cecil Frank Glass (born March 25, 1901 in Birmingham , died April 21, 1988 in Los Angeles ) was a British - South African Communist or Trotskyist who was also active in the Republic of China and the USA .

biography

Glass came to Cape Town with his parents and brother from England in late 1908 or early 1909 , shortly before the four colonies merged. From 1918 to 1921 he worked for various companies, first as an errand boy and later as an accountant.

Glass was the youngest delegate to the founding convention of the Communist Party of South Africa in 1921. He became the party's first full-time official.

In 1928 Glass became a Trotskyist. Also in the late 1920s he established close contacts with the Chinese in Johannesburg .

In 1931 Glass went to Shanghai , where he worked as a journalist for several English-language newspapers (including the China Weekly Review ) and as a radio reporter .

From 1934 to 1938 he was a leader in the Trotskyist movement in China and was considered an important China expert of the Fourth International .

In 1941 Glass went to the United States and became a prominent member of the American Socialist Workers Party .

monument

In Elysian Park in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles there is a memorial to Frank C. Glass and his partner Grace E. Simons, who campaigned for the preservation of the second largest park in the city.

Pseudonyms

Glass used u. a. the pseudonyms Li Furen (Li Fu-jen), Frank Graves and John Liang.

literature

• Baruch Hirson: The Restless Revolutionary . London: Porcupine Press, 2003; ISBN 0-9523648-6-7 .

Web links

• Frank Glass in the Marxists Internet Archive

Remarks

1. ^ Gregor Benton: China's Urban Revolutionaries . Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1996. p. 216. The data correspond e.g. Sometimes not the ones in Hirson's biography.