Ralph Winston Fox

Ralph (Winston) Fox's name on the Oxford Spanish Civil War memorial. He along with five others with links to Oxfordshire were commemorated with this memorial, erected in 2017.

Ralph Winston Fox (30 March 1900 – 28 December 1936) was a British revolutionary, journalist, novelist, and historian, best remembered as a biographer of Lenin and Genghis Khan. Fox was one of the best-known members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) to be killed in Spain fighting against the Nationalist faction in the Spanish Civil War.

Biography Early years Fox was born 30 March 1900 in Halifax, Yorkshire, England, to a middle-class family. He knew James Crowther in his youth and helped stimulate Crowther's interest in Marxism. Fox studied modern languages at Oxford University's Magdalen College, where he was drafted into Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps. Although commissioned as a lieutenant, the war ended before Fox was sent to the front lines of World War I.

In 1919 Fox became active in the effort to halt British blockade and military intervention to overthrow the Bolshevik government which had assumed power in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Fox returned once again to England in 1932, going to work for the Daily Worker as a columnist and writing several pamphlets and books for the Communist press.

In 1936, with the goal of defeating fascism in the Spanish Civil War, Fox joined the International Brigades through the French Communist Party. When he arrived in Spain towards the end of the year, he was sent to Albacete for training, and was assigned to the XIVth Brigade. He worked for a time as a political commissar at the Albacete base for English people. He was then transferred to the front in one of the first operations in which the Brigades were involved.

Ralph Fox died at the Battle of Lopera in the province of Jaén on 28 December 1936. During the same fascist attack that killed Fox, his friend the Cambridge poet John Cornford was also killed. Some biographies state that Fox died on 3 January 1937, because it was the date that his death was first made public. However, historians have subsequently placed his death in late December. Additional tributes were collected and published in Ralph Fox: A Writer in Arms (1937).

The Marx Memorial Library holds many of Fox's papers and correspondence. Primary sources on Fox are available at the Working Class Movement Library at Salford, and at Halifax Central Library.

A bench with a plaque commemorating Fox is located outside Halifax Town Hall. Prior to 2019, it was located in the walled garden in Manor Heath Park, close to where Fox was born. The bench was erected in April 1950 by the Ralph Fox Memorial Committee, with the assistance of Marxist historian E. P. Thompson.

Fox's name is included on the Oxford Spanish Civil War memorial.

Works Captain Youth: A Romantic Comedy for All Socialist Children. London: C. W. Daniel, 1922. .Three-act play People of the Steppes. London: Constable, 1925. . A Defence of Communism: In Reply to H. J. Laski. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, 1927. . Storming Heaven. London: Constable, 1928. .Novel 1880-1914. London: Lawrence, 1932. . The Class Struggle in Britain in the Epoch of Imperialism. London: Lawrence, 1932-33. . Three volumes. Lenin: A Biography. London: Victor Gollancz, 1933. 1914–1923. London: Lawrence, 1933. . The Colonial Policy of British Imperialism. London: M. Lawrence, 1933. Essays in the History of Materialism. London: John Lane, 1934. . . Translated by Fox. Aspects of Dialectical Materialism. London: Watts, 1934. . Co-authored with Hyman Levy, John Macmurray, R. Page Arnot, J. D. Bernal and E. F. Carritt. Communism and a Changing of Civilisation. London: John Lane, 1935. Marxism and Modern Thought. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935. . Translated by Fox. France Faces the Future. New York: International Publishers, 1936. Genghis Khan. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936. Portugal Now. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1937. . (posthumous) This Was Their Youth. London: Secker & Warburg, 1937. (posthumous) Marx, Engels and Lenin on Ireland. New York: International Publishers, 1940. (posthumous) The Novel and the People. New York: International Publishers, 1945. (posthumous, first published by Lawrence & Wishart in 1937)