Charlie Hutchison was born in 1918 in Oxfordshire to a local white British woman and a Ghanaian father. Hutchison’s father, Charles Francis Hutchison, was a businessman and engineer from the Gold Coast, now Ghana, from a wealthy family. However, Hutchison did not grow up surrounded by wealth, as his father plunged the family into poverty when he did not return from Ghana on one of his frequent trips. Hutchison’s mother, unable to care for her five children, relinquished Hutchison and his sister into a National Children’s Home and Orphanage in Hertfordshire.
Aged 17 in 1933, Hutchison reunited with his mother in Fulham, London where he became a lorry driver, joining the Transport and General Workers’ Union. He also joined the Communist Party and its youth wing, the Young Communist League, soon being elected as his YCL branch’s chair. For many leading Black activists in Britain during the 20th century, the Communist Party was the hotbed of fighting racism, colonialism and poverty, which attracted notable figures including Hutchison, Claudia Jones, Dorothy Kuya and many more.
During the 1930s, fascism was growing across Europe, including at home with Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, funded by Hitler and Mussolini. In turn, the Daily Worker’s headlines spoke of “drowning the Blackshirts in a sea of working class activity” and the Communist Party was laying the groundwork to unite the working class against fascism through organising in workplaces and against slum landlordism.
In July 1936, fascist Franco’s attempted coup triggered the Spanish Civil War, demonstrating that fascism was a credible and growing threat.
Two months later, Hutchison joined over 20,000 other antifascists to prevent Mosley’s British Union of Fascists from marching through the East End of London, a largely Jewish area of London. The antifascists resoundingly defeated the fascists and Phil Piratin, future Communist Party MP, described how the workers carried themselves differently following the victory over fascism. The workers knew now that if the working class is organised, they can unite to defeat fascism. It was this confidence that led many at the Battle of Cable Street to volunteer in the Spanish Civil War against fascism.
Hutchison was one of these volunteers. Special Branch notes that he arrived in Spain in late November or early December 1936 to be a machine gunner. Among the first wave of volunteers from Britain and Ireland, Hutchison joined 2,500 British and Irish volunteers. He was one of the youngest, only 18 when he arrived, and also potentially one of the longest serving British volunteers. Notably, he is the only known Black British volunteer to fight in the war. He was sometimes mistaken for an African American as some of the files detailing his experiences in the Spanish Civil War were found in folders for the American volunteers.
Not only was fascism a real threat to the working classes of Europe, but it was also a personal threat to Hutchison, “I am half Black, I grew up in the National Children’s Home and Orphanage. Fascism meant hunger and war”.
Hutchison joined the International Brigades, groups of foreign volunteers who fought to defend the Spanish Republic against Franco’s fascist takeover of Spain. One of Hutchison’s first missions was part of an English-speaking unit of 145 antifascists, who were sent to Lopera to retake it from the fascists. Due to the fascists’ superior airpower and artillery, the Battle of Lopera was a catastrophe for the antifascists, killing 78 antifascists. Hutchison was seriously injured and following the battle, his superiors caught onto his age. They wanted to repatriate him for these reasons but Hutchison adamantly refused.
Instead, Hutchison was redeployed to transportation services and later became an ambulance driver, saving the lives of many injured antifascists in multiple battles. He was present at the Battle of Jarama and the military fronts of Ebro, Aragon and Teruel, as well as 12 other battles. He received high praise from his superiors and fellow antifascists, who praised him for being dedicated and hardworking. One captain remarked that both Hutchison’s work and political views were, “Good [and] for his age quite developed.”
Throughout his service in Spain, Hutchison was repeatedly injured due to frostbite and shrapnel wounds.
In early 1939, Hutchison returned to Britain and immediately joined an International Brigades Convoy alongside 20 other British veterans. They raised £5,000, equivalent to nearly £300,000 today, on a national speaking tour to raise funds for medical aid for the Spanish Republic. Unfortunately, the fascists would win the war in April 1939.
Decades later, when asked about his time volunteering in the Spanish Civil War, Hutchison stated, “The Brigaders came out of the working class, they came out of the battle of Cable Street, they came out of the struggles on the side turnings. They weren’t necessarily communists or socialists, but they were anti-fascists.”
There was no rest for Hutchison as the Second World War started, prompting Hutchison to join the British Army. He was stationed in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia before participating in the liberation of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Nazi Germany. He landed on the beaches of Normandy in June 1944 only a few days after D-Day. By September his unit had reached Belgium, next the Netherlands before arriving in Nazi Germany in April 1945, shortly before Hitler killed himself.
His unit established a base camp in Fallingbostel from which they aided survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp struggling against hunger and disease. Hutchison’s unit provided food and medical supplies to the survivors.
The liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Hutchison described as the worst day of his life. The pinnacle of the barbarism of the ideology he had been fighting continuously for nearly a decade had been truly exposed — unburied dead bodies littered the ground and survivors continued to die from disease and hunger due to the fatal conditions of the camp.
After nearly a decade of fighting fascism, Hutchison left the British Army in 1946, marrying fellow communist Patricia Holloway on his return. They had three children together and continued to fight for peace, jobs and socialism, notably campaigning in the anti-apartheid and nuclear disarmament movements. Hutchison outlived Franco’s fascist government and marched in the streets of Spain to celebrate the return of democracy. He also campaigned for the International Brigades memorial in Jubilee Gardens, London. He remained a lifelong trade unionist and Communist Party member, active until his death in 1993 at the age of 74.
Charlie Hutchison dedicated his life to fighting racism and fascism and is an inspiration to us all. Hutchison was witness to the horrors of fascism but never wavered in his dedication and commitment to the class struggle. Let us continue his legacy and celebrate his contributions to the YCL, Communist Party and the international antifascist movement in the class struggle for peace, jobs and socialism.
Georgina Andrews is General Secretary of the Young Communist League
