George Jelf
Born in December 1913, George Jelf was an engineering worker who lived and worked
all his life in Birmingham. A vigorous and almost successful local election candidate, he
was also the prospective Communist Candidate for the Small Heath (Birmingham)
Parliamentary Constituency, which he first contested in October 1964 .
It was often joked in the late 1960s that he was so successful in campaigning in Small
Heath on housing matters, re-housing many of his voters in the then newly developing
area of Chelmsley Wood, that he assiduously undermined his own vote every year!
A member of the AEU from 1937, and a workers at Joseph Lucas, he held many official
positions within his union, including the chair of the Birmingham East District Committee.
For many years, until the late 1970s, he was the Chairman of the Birmingham City Committee
of the Communist Party and a member of the Midlands District Committee.
In retirement, he was the chair and chief organiser of what had been the Clarion Communist Camp, a camping
seaside holiday site in Talybont, Mid-Wales. Under Jim Crump, Birmingham Communists had been organising
this from the end of the war; by the late 1970s, the camp’s ties with the Party became very much looser.
Sources: Communist Party election leaflets and GS personal knowledge
Below – an account of the CCC from 1983….
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