Phil Piratin

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Philip Piratin (15 May 1907 – 10 December 1995), known as Phil Piratin, was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and one of their few Members of Parliament.

Piratin was the son of a small local tradesman. He became a Communist activist, anti-fascist and defender of tenants' rights, a leading member of the Stepney Tenants Defence League. A Jew himself, he was a leader of the opposition to Oswald Moseley's anti-semitism and his British Union of Fascists' marches through East London. Piratin was elected to Stepney Borough Council in 1937 and was Chairman of the borough's Communist Party. During World War II, he gained further notoriety by leading 100 people to shelter in a London Underground station, a practice which then became widespread.

Piratin was elected to represent Mile End, Stepney in the 1945 General Election. In Parliament, he worked with several left-wing Labour MPs, some of whom would be expelled by their party as crypto-communists and form the Labour Independent Group. He was defeated when he stood for re-election in 1950 in Stepney (Mile End having suffered extensive boundary changes). The only two other Communist MPs elected in Britain were Shapurji Saklatvala and Willie Gallacher.