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Born                   Russia in 1910

Died                   Beijing, China on September 29, 1986

Nationality         British

Occupation        Journalist, Translator

Political Party    Communist Party of Great Britain

Spouses            (1)         Eileen Murray

                          (2)         Liu Jinghe

Children             3

Summary

Michael Shapiro (1910 – September 29, 1986) was born in Russia. His parents moved to London when he was very young and he was raised in Stepney with his four younger siblings.  In the late 1930’s and during the 1940’s he was active in tenants’ rights activities and became a Stepney councilor.  He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1934 and in 1950 was sent to China.  He became one of the long-term residents in Beijing, was involved in training journalists in the Xinhua News Agency and worked with the teams that translated Chairman Mao’s work.  Although he spent 5 years in Qincheng Prison during the Cultural Revolution he remained committed to the communist cause and after his release he spent the rest of his life in China.

Early Years

Michael’s father was Sender Chaim Shapiro and his mother was Rebecca (possibly Rachel) called Rivka.  They were both born in the late 1800s in Poland or Ukraine.  He had four siblings: one brother, Jack and three sisters, Annie, Edith, and Beatrice (Beattie), all born in England. [8]

Chaim and Rivka fled the pogroms in eastern Europe/Russia in the early 1900s and settled in Stepney in the east end of London.  Chaim taught in the temple and prepared boys for their bar mitzvah [8]. Rivka was fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish. Russian and English.  She taught local women how to use the recently introduced electric ovens and helped widows manage their finances [15].

Michael won a scholarship that enabled him to attend university.  He studied at the University of London and received a B.Sc. in Economics in 1931 from the London School of Economics [5] [10]. He later lectured in economics at the London School of Economics.

Michael and his younger brother Jack rejected all religious beliefs though their three sisters remained observant Jews all their lives.  They joined the Young Communist League in 1931 [5] and the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1934 [6].

Michael became an expert on housing questions and, under the name Michael Best, wrote about housing issues for the Daily Worker.  In 1936, he became Secretary of the Stepney Tenants Defense League.  Around 1939, he was instrumental in the formation of the National Federation of Residents’ and Tenants’ Associations.

Shortly before WWII, Michael went to Germany and gathered information about Nazi Germany for his journalistic writings [6].

World War II and 1940s

Michael was very keen to enlist and fight the Nazis. However, Herbert Morrison, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party (25 May 1945 – 2 February 1956) and the London County Council  (9 March 1934 – 27 May 1940), declared Michael un-British, a threat to the country, put him on the "forbidden list" as a dangerous communist and said that he should never be allowed to join the military. [8]

Between 1941 and 1949 Michael served as Secretary of the London District Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Secretary of the Party’s Stepney branch and Secretary of the Party’s Architects’ Committee [6].  After WWII, Michael was one of twelve Communist councilors elected in Stepney in 1945. [4]

In October 1941 he married Eileen Murray (daughter of Sir John Murray Murray, Chief Justice of Southern Rhodesia 1955-1961).  During WWII she worked for William Gallacher, a founding member of the CPGB who was elected to the House of Commons in 1935 to represent West Fife.  They divorced in 1945 because of his infidelities. [8]

At the end of 1949 (i.e., shortly after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China), at the invitation of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the CPGB sent Michael to China to help with reporting about the new China to foreign readers. [6] The CPGB sent a number of members to China, including Alan Winnington and Douglas (known as Dave) and Janet Springhall.  David and Isabel Crook had gone to China in 1947 with an introduction from the CPGB to the Chinese Communist Party to study land reform and were subsequently invited to stay and teach English.  [10] [11] [12]

Most foreigners stayed for only a few years.  However, Michael stayed in China and thus joined the other foreigners who lived in or moved to China to help with building the communist state. The group included Israel and Elsie Epstein, Anna Louise Strong, Rewi Alley, Solomon Adler, and Sidney Rittenberg.

1950s

Michael’s general political “significance” in the history of international communism was partly his close association with the CPGB. A CPGB party group was formed in the early 1950s with Michael as secretary.  He became the main contact between the CPGB and the PRC government - until he broke with the CPGB during the Sino-Soviet split. [11] [13]

In 1951 Michael twice joined the Chinese People’s Volunteers in Korea to report on the war [6].  While there, he tried to persuade British POWs to protest the war and assist Korea.  As a result of these activities, he was declared persona non grata by the UK government and his passport was not renewed [9].

In China, Michael served as an expert at the International News Bureau attached to the General Administration of the Press and at the Xinhua News Agency.  He helped train journalists in the fledgling Communist government, particularly those senior journalists assigned to the Agency’s overseas services.  He also reported for the Daily Worker in London and was part of the team that translated Mao Zedong’s works into English. He helped polish and finalize the English versions of volumes 2, 3 and 4 of the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi’s “How to Be a Good Communist” and the documents on the Eighth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party [6].

In August 1952 he married Liu Jinghe, who in 1950 received a doctorate in child development from Columbia University and worked as a psychologist specializing in child development and educational psychology [13].  She was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and was a deputy to the Third National People's Congress. She was one of the academic leaders of the psychology of child development and educational psychology in China. [R14] She died December 12, 2004.

Liu Jinghe and Michael adopted two boys, Solomon (born 1954) and Roger (born 1958).  In August 1981, Solomon married Xiao Yang (also called ShaSha or Daisy), the daughter of a high-ranking military official who was on the Long March with Mao Zedong.  Roger never married.

In 1958 Michael published “Changing China” (copyright Lawrence & Wishart).  His aim was to explain the purpose behind the seeming contradictions in the expanding and fast-moving life of the new society.

Michael and Jack were actively involved with the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist).  At the time of his death, Jack was its Honorary President [4].

1960s

In January 1967, with official government permission, about a hundred foreigners formed the Bethune-Yanan Brigade, a “rebel group” which met for rousing discussions of Maoist ideology [7]. Michael was one of the Brigade’s leaders.  The Brigade backed certain Red Guard factions that were later denounced [11].  In August 1967 Michael was one of the expatriates who observed the ransacking of the British Mission in Peking by the Red Guards[4] [16].

In February 1968, Sid Rittenberg, one of leaders of the Bethune-Yanan Brigade, was arrested and in March 1968 two other leaders, Israel Epstein and Michael were also arrested [7]. They were accused of being spies and were held in Qincheng Prison.  Most of those imprisoned were activists in the Brigade.  .  [11]  Conditions in the prison were quite difficult – solitary confinement, no outside contacts, little to read, frequent interrogations. [3] Michael was held for 5 years until his release in January 1973.

During the Cultural Revolution, on March 18, 1968 Liu Jinghe and her two sons were imprisoned for two years in a room in Qianmen, a Beijing hotel.  The Epstein and Rittenberg children were also confined in the top floors of the hotel. The windows were papered over and sealed, even during the suffocating summer heat in the city [3].  The boys were in their early teens at the time and it was very challenging being confined to a single room.  Liu Jinghe provided their education during that time. After they were allowed to leave, the boys spent time with family away from Beijing.

1970s, 1980s

In 1973, as the extremism of the Cultural Revolution declined [11], the imprisoned foreigners were released and restored to good standing.  Despite his travails, Michael remained loyal to Chinese Communism and continued working for the Xinhua News Agency.

Michael developed Parkinsons disease and other ailments.  It was speculated these resulted from the harsh conditions he endured during his imprisonment.  However, in 1977 he returned to work [6]. He died on September 29, 1986 of heart failure at the age of 76.  Michael was posthumously conferred the title of “Honorary Citizen of China” by the Beijing Municipal People’s Government [6]. Deng Xiaoping hailed him as “a staunch international soldier and sincere friend of the Chinese people.” [4]

After Michael’s death, his brother Jack established a prize for journalism students in Michael’s name. [4]

Publications

1.      Heartbreak Homes: An Indictment of the National Government’s Housing Policy (1935) [4]

2.      Changing China (Lawrence & Wishart, 1958)

References

1.      Beverley Hooper, Foreigners Under Mao: Western Lives in China, 1949-1976 (Hong Kong University Press, 2016)

2.      Tom Buchanan, East Wind: China and the British Left, 1925–1976 (Oxford University Press, 2012),

3.      Israel Epstein, My China Eye: Memoirs of a Jew and a Journalist (Long River Press, 2005) p.300

4.      Matthew Sweet, Michael Shapiro, from Stepney to Peking (Spitalfields Life, November 4, 2011)

5.      Neil Redfern, Michael_Shapiro_a_Communist_Life_in_Britain_and_China (https://www.academia.edu/4754354/)

6.      Speech at the Memorial Meeting for Michael Shapiro, October 21, 1986, Xinhua News Agency

7.      Michael Donohue, The Expatriate (The National, August 14. 2008)

8.      Eileen Shapiro comments

9.      Celebration and Social to Honour Comrade Jack Shapiro (Lalkar, September 1, 2007)

10.   SCRIBD.  Michael Shapiro, a Life (Uploaded by D. Chapman, on Dec 08, 2011)

11.   Beverley Hooper comments

12.   David Crook, Autobiography, Ch11, p.22

13.   Michael Crook comments

14.   Baidu entry for Liu Jinghe

15.   Susan Wright comments

16.   Times. 27 March 1971 (approx). Short article about a letter from Eileen Shapiro to Anthony Grey