Breaking The Fetters
@breakingfetters.bsky.social
Investigating the life of Scottish radical Bob Stewart and the lost world of British communism. Family history project by @laikaalan.bsky.social
www.breakingthefetters.com
www.breakingthefetters.com
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It’s Not My War. For Remembrance Sunday I wrote about my great grandfather Bob Stewart’s experiences as a conscientious objector in the First World War.
breakingthefetters.com/2025/11/09/i...
breakingthefetters.com/2025/11/09/i...
It’s Not My War.
Bob Stewart: Conscientious Objector. For Remembrance Sunday here’s something I wrote about Bob Stewart’s experiences as a conscientious objector during the First World War. On the day w…
breakingthefetters.com
November 9, 2025 at 11:11 AM
It’s Not My War. For Remembrance Sunday I wrote about my great grandfather Bob Stewart’s experiences as a conscientious objector in the First World War.
breakingthefetters.com/2025/11/09/i...
breakingthefetters.com/2025/11/09/i...
Reposted by Breaking The Fetters
Has anyone done this one yet?
November 9, 2025 at 9:48 AM
Has anyone done this one yet?
Reposted by Breaking The Fetters
Still writing the bloody thing but at least I’ve got the cover sorted.
November 9, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Still writing the bloody thing but at least I’ve got the cover sorted.
Reposted by Breaking The Fetters
Reposted by Breaking The Fetters
Having a closer look at Anthony Blunt’s MI5 files. Here he’s telling Peter Wright of Spycatcher fame that my great grandfather Bob Stewart knew the identities of Blunt, Kim Philby and Guy Burgess as Lizzie Philby passed their secrets on to him in the 1940s.
November 7, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Having a closer look at Anthony Blunt’s MI5 files. Here he’s telling Peter Wright of Spycatcher fame that my great grandfather Bob Stewart knew the identities of Blunt, Kim Philby and Guy Burgess as Lizzie Philby passed their secrets on to him in the 1940s.
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This Land Is Your Land: “After you’ve stopped the boats; after you’ve deported your neighbours; after you’ve waged war on woke, shrunk the state even further and redesigned the economy in the mould of Javier Milei what happens when people realise their lives are still shit?”
Here I ramble on about Caerphilly, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Woody Guthrie and Friedrich Engels. This Land Is Your Land.
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/28/t...
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/28/t...
This Land Is Your Land. (Night Off).
Gillian Welch, David Rawlings and Breakfast With Friedrich Engels. David Rawlings and Gillian Welch at Manchester 02 Apollo. Picture shamelessly nicked from The Guardian. I hadn’t realised quite ho…
breakingthefetters.com
October 28, 2025 at 9:12 AM
This Land Is Your Land: “After you’ve stopped the boats; after you’ve deported your neighbours; after you’ve waged war on woke, shrunk the state even further and redesigned the economy in the mould of Javier Milei what happens when people realise their lives are still shit?”
Here I ramble on about Caerphilly, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Woody Guthrie and Friedrich Engels. This Land Is Your Land.
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/28/t...
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/28/t...
This Land Is Your Land. (Night Off).
Gillian Welch, David Rawlings and Breakfast With Friedrich Engels. David Rawlings and Gillian Welch at Manchester 02 Apollo. Picture shamelessly nicked from The Guardian. I hadn’t realised quite ho…
breakingthefetters.com
October 28, 2025 at 9:05 AM
Here I ramble on about Caerphilly, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Woody Guthrie and Friedrich Engels. This Land Is Your Land.
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/28/t...
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/28/t...
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Wondered why I was getting so many views on my communist family history blog. Getting a lot more traffic than usual due to the Caerphilly By Election. Here’s Bob Stewart’s account of being the first communist Parliamentary candidate in 1921.
breakingthefetters.com/2022/12/14/b...
breakingthefetters.com/2022/12/14/b...
Breaking the Fetters Chapter 16: The Caerphilly By-election.
Election Poster 1921. This was the first parliamentary election ever to be contested by the British Communist Party. The decision to contest was taken by the Party Executive on July 16th 1921. The …
breakingthefetters.com
October 22, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Wondered why I was getting so many views on my communist family history blog. Getting a lot more traffic than usual due to the Caerphilly By Election. Here’s Bob Stewart’s account of being the first communist Parliamentary candidate in 1921.
breakingthefetters.com/2022/12/14/b...
breakingthefetters.com/2022/12/14/b...
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Looking forward to reading this. Claude McKay attended the same Communist Unity Conference in 1920 that my ancestor Bob Stewart did. Found this out after one of McKay’s poems was included in the GCSE syllabus. Can anyone pick him out of this photo?
October 16, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Looking forward to reading this. Claude McKay attended the same Communist Unity Conference in 1920 that my ancestor Bob Stewart did. Found this out after one of McKay’s poems was included in the GCSE syllabus. Can anyone pick him out of this photo?
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Oh man. Diane Keaton. Yes - the first two Godfather movies. But, come on, her performance as Louise Bryant in Reds is formidable and in a just world everyone would recognise this.
October 11, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Oh man. Diane Keaton. Yes - the first two Godfather movies. But, come on, her performance as Louise Bryant in Reds is formidable and in a just world everyone would recognise this.
NEW POST! Wartime Scrapbook (Marxist-Leninist).
New post from me on Breaking the Fetters. All about my grandfather not being called up to fight in the Second World War because he was a massive communist.
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/11/w...
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/11/w...
Wartime Scrapbook (Marxist-Leninist)
Despite growing up in the 1970s, The Second World War loomed large in my childhood. Probably due to a mixture of factors but mainly because the children who had grown up in its shadow were now the …
breakingthefetters.com
October 11, 2025 at 9:33 AM
NEW POST! Wartime Scrapbook (Marxist-Leninist).
Bob Stewart, Yvonne Kapp AND Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton!
A post about the unlikely friendship between great grandfather Comintern agent Bob Stewart & the bisexual, bohemian writer Yvonne Kapp. She called him ‘the finest human being I have ever known’ and dedicated a volume of her biography of Eleanor Marx to him.
breakingthefetters.com/2021/07/21/c...
breakingthefetters.com/2021/07/21/c...
Comrades: Yvonne Kapp
At the end of last year I was sorting through a large box of correspondence dating from the 1930s and onwards. In amongst them was a handful of letters addressed to Bill Stewart who was my grandfat…
breakingthefetters.com
October 3, 2025 at 5:28 PM
Bob Stewart, Yvonne Kapp AND Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton!
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NEW POST! ‘Harry Pollitt and the Chamber of Bastards’ in which I write about my great grandad Bob Stewart attempting but failing to do the right thing in the wake of Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939.
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/02/h...
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/02/h...
Harry Pollitt and the Chamber of Bastards.
When we started this project on our great grandfather Bob Stewart, my brother and I both agreed that we thought there was much to admire about the man but also much to criticize. Although I’ve trie…
breakingthefetters.com
October 2, 2025 at 11:35 AM
NEW POST! ‘Harry Pollitt and the Chamber of Bastards’ in which I write about my great grandad Bob Stewart attempting but failing to do the right thing in the wake of Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939.
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/02/h...
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/02/h...
NEW POST! ‘Harry Pollitt and the Chamber of Bastards’ in which I write about my great grandad Bob Stewart attempting but failing to do the right thing in the wake of Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939.
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/02/h...
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/02/h...
Harry Pollitt and the Chamber of Bastards.
When we started this project on our great grandfather Bob Stewart, my brother and I both agreed that we thought there was much to admire about the man but also much to criticize. Although I’ve trie…
breakingthefetters.com
October 2, 2025 at 11:37 AM
NEW POST! ‘Harry Pollitt and the Chamber of Bastards’ in which I write about my great grandad Bob Stewart attempting but failing to do the right thing in the wake of Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939.
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/02/h...
breakingthefetters.com/2025/10/02/h...
Reposted by Breaking The Fetters
Recommended Gornick’s The Romance of American Communism to someone last week. Just had a look at a piece I wrote on it a while back. Still quite pleased with it. Includes a gratuitous reference to Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile.
breakingthefetters.com/2022/07/28/b...
breakingthefetters.com/2022/07/28/b...
Books: ‘The Romance of American Communism’ by Vivian Gornick.
“The idea that market crashes can act as catalysts for revolutionary change has a long history on the far left, most notably in the Bolshevik theory that hyperinflation, by destroying the value of …
breakingthefetters.com
September 23, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Recommended Gornick’s The Romance of American Communism to someone last week. Just had a look at a piece I wrote on it a while back. Still quite pleased with it. Includes a gratuitous reference to Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile.
breakingthefetters.com/2022/07/28/b...
breakingthefetters.com/2022/07/28/b...
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Ridiculously pleased with the title of my forthcoming piece about how the Communist Party of Great Britain responded to Stalin’s pact with Nazi Germany in 1939. Ashamed to say great grandad Bob Stewart did not exactly cover himself with glory here.
September 20, 2025 at 6:45 PM
Ridiculously pleased with the title of my forthcoming piece about how the Communist Party of Great Britain responded to Stalin’s pact with Nazi Germany in 1939. Ashamed to say great grandad Bob Stewart did not exactly cover himself with glory here.
Reposted by Breaking The Fetters
More Tom Mann action in this post about our grandad Bill Stewart.
breakingthefetters.com/2022/06/13/b...
breakingthefetters.com/2022/06/13/b...
William Stewart and the National Unemployed March to London, 1929.
The 1929 National Unemployed March from Glasgow to London arriving at Hyde Park. Frankly, the 1920s do not seem very different to our own times. Huge inequality, increasing poverty and a government…
breakingthefetters.com
September 15, 2025 at 7:53 PM
More Tom Mann action in this post about our grandad Bill Stewart.
breakingthefetters.com/2022/06/13/b...
breakingthefetters.com/2022/06/13/b...
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This post on Tom Mann I did a while back is getting a lot of views this last month so thought I’d give it a boost.
breakingthefetters.com/2022/06/27/c...
breakingthefetters.com/2022/06/27/c...
Comrades: Tom Mann
Tom Mann addressing the crowds at Trafalgar Square. Possibly at the Sacco and Vanzetti protest in 1927. Few members of the public might recognise the name Tom Mann these days but, even though he di…
breakingthefetters.com
September 15, 2025 at 7:51 PM
This post on Tom Mann I did a while back is getting a lot of views this last month so thought I’d give it a boost.
breakingthefetters.com/2022/06/27/c...
breakingthefetters.com/2022/06/27/c...
Reposted by Breaking The Fetters
NEW POST- Investigating the picture of my great grandfather Bob Stewart, Grigory Zinoviev and Ho Chi Minh. The Tattered Red Flag of the Communards. Hope and despair!
breakingthefetters.com/2025/09/05/b...
breakingthefetters.com/2025/09/05/b...
Bob Stewart, Ho Chi Minh and the Tattered Red Flag of the Communards.
L-R: Bob Stewart, Unknown, Nikolai Antipov, Grigory Zinoviev, Kliment Voroshilov, Ho Chi Minh, Unknown. Partially visible behind L-R: Avel Yenukidze. One of the benefits of researching a distinctiv…
breakingthefetters.com
September 5, 2025 at 3:36 PM
NEW POST- Investigating the picture of my great grandfather Bob Stewart, Grigory Zinoviev and Ho Chi Minh. The Tattered Red Flag of the Communards. Hope and despair!
breakingthefetters.com/2025/09/05/b...
breakingthefetters.com/2025/09/05/b...
NEW POST INCOMING!
Been a while…
Been a while…
Will be posting a blog about the events in this painting later on this afternoon. You can just about see my great grandfather in the distance on the middle platform.
September 5, 2025 at 1:46 PM
NEW POST INCOMING!
Been a while…
Been a while…
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Repost with a group you’d love to hang out with.
August 25, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Repost with a group you’d love to hang out with.
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#OtD 22 Aug 1893 Dorothy Parker, US writer and victim of Hollywood blacklisting, was born. Radicalised by the executions of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, she later founded the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and helped Spanish civil war orphans. stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9447...
August 22, 2025 at 9:10 AM
#OtD 22 Aug 1893 Dorothy Parker, US writer and victim of Hollywood blacklisting, was born. Radicalised by the executions of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, she later founded the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and helped Spanish civil war orphans. stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9447...
Reposted by Breaking The Fetters
Every time you submit a large application for research funding the university should send a team to spring clean your house imo.
August 21, 2025 at 10:40 AM
Every time you submit a large application for research funding the university should send a team to spring clean your house imo.
Comrade ‘Robin’ is very much missed.
I share this one quite a lot but seeing as it would have been his birthday today here’s the times my father appears in MI5 files while they were keeping his dad (Bill) and grandfather (Bob Stewart) under surveillance for communist subversion.
breakingthefetters.com/2023/01/19/c...
breakingthefetters.com/2023/01/19/c...
Comrades: Michael Robin Stewart.
Michael Robin Stewart (1933-2018). Before it got dropped from the GCSE English Literature syllabus, I used love teaching ‘Before You Were Mine’ by Carol Ann Duffy. In the poem, Duffy describes a ph…
breakingthefetters.com
August 6, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Comrade ‘Robin’ is very much missed.