Candidate From South East St Pancras
The long drawn Meerut trial enabled the Communist Party to again run Usmani in the 1931 general election for St. Pancras South East against Tory South African mining millionaire, Sir Alfred Lane Beit. The candidature of Usmani was aimed by the Communist Party of Great Britain to ensure freedom for India, and to highlight the plight of the Meerut prisoners. In this election, the communists polled seventy five thousand votes, which was a 50% increase on the previous, 1929 General election figure. The party was dismayed at the result. Harry Pollitt, the new general secretary of the Party, had expected that between one hundred and fifty thousand and two hundred thousand would vote communist. He was shocked, and told a meeting of the British Commission of the Communist International that he could not understand why after two Labour Governments, and the betrayal of the General Strike, that still almost seven million workers could vote Labour.
Read more about this topic: Shaukat Usmani
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