Cohen Jack

Jack Cohen

Born in 1906, Cohen was a member of the YCL EC in 1924-1925, when he was editor of Young Worker. 

Of Jewish background, he was especially active during the 1930s anti-fascist struggles and was a full time organiser for the Party in the Coventry area during the Second World War. His stamping ground, near to some key munitions factories, was in Barras Green Hotel, which was still being called `the Bolshie’ in the mid 1960s, in honour of Cohen’s holding daily court in the bar there during the war.  (See featured image.)

Although, to be fair, it was a reuse of an affectionate nick-name for the pub first acquired when it served in a similar capacity during the 1920’s tenant’s struggle, the spanned stuck for decades afterwards. 

By the 1960s Cohen was involved in Party education work, being a theoretician of some ability. Amongst other things, he was the original translator of some of Marx’s letters and lesser works, including the `Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations’, written in 1857-58 and first translated by Jack Cohen in 1964. He also translated parts of Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume 6 (1845-1848).

He was the chief Party representative at the conference of representatives of the British, American and Soviet Communist Parties in December 1969 that established the accord for the development of this wider publishing initiative.

Cohen left the Education Department in 1968, when Betty Matthews took over.