Jarvie Bob

 

Bob Jarvie 

Jarvie was an active Communist Party member in Croydon in the 40s and 50s. He stood for the "working class" constituency of  West Croydon in the 1950 general election. He wrote in World News in late 1949 that:

"The Croydon Communist Party, and I as their prospective candidate, will bring our policy and our leadership into the lives of the Croydonworkers in a way that has never been before done. We shall develop the campaign in the homes of the workers and the back streets. We will bring our policy to the workers inside and outside the factories we shall go to the rail depots, the trade union branches and to the co-operative movement, developing a great mass movement in Croydon on peace, wages, prices, homes, health, and education."

To this end the local Croydon Communist Party, then in the Surrey district of the Party, had developed an extensive housing policy which they had presented to the Council and at which no Tory or Labour councillor had opposed. They had organised 25 factory meetings and 30 street meetings, 3 indoor meetings and had spoken at 8 Co-op guild meetings and 3 trade union branches.

Local Communists had also organised support for the local building workers during their strike during the building of the new Croydon power station, organising steward delegations to meet councillors and MPs.

They had helped organise an International Peace Day at Croydon Civil Hall in 1949 at which 750 had attended. Jarvie himself had been elected by the local Croydon Peace group as delegate to the Committee and World Congress of Advocates of Peace in Paris on 20th April 1949.

This established a World Committee of Partisans for Peace, led by a twelve person Executive Bureau and chaired by Professor Frédéric Joliot-Curie, a Nobel Prize-winner. This was the event that Picasso's dove was chosen as an emblem of peace.

At the 1950 general election Bob Jarvie secured 336 Votes in Croydon West.

He is possibly the Jarvie who died in Croydon in 1988.