19 Facts About Peter Fryer

Peter Fryer was an English Marxist writer and journalist.

Peter Fryer was born near Hull on 18 February 1927.

Peter Fryer was awarded a scholarship to attend Hymers College in 1938.

In 1945, Fryer became a member of the Communist Party.

In 1948, Peter Fryer joined the staff of the Daily Worker, becoming its parliamentary correspondent and covering foreign affairs.

In October 1956, Peter Fryer was sent to Hungary to cover the uprising.

Peter Fryer's dispatches, including a description of the suppression of the uprising by Soviet troops, were either heavily censored or suppressed.

Peter Fryer wrote a book about the uprising, Hungarian Tragedy.

Peter Fryer was expelled from the Communist Party for criticising Hungarian Tragedy's suppression in the "capitalist" press.

Peter Fryer then became the editor of The Newsletter, the journal of The Club, a Trotskyist organisation led by Gerry Healy, and with Healy was a founder member of the Socialist Labour League.

Peter Fryer soon parted company with Healy and worked away from organised politics until 1985, when he wrote a weekly column for the Workers Press.

Peter Fryer maintained a long standing interest in black history and music.

Peter Fryer went away convinced that the larger story needed to be told.

Subsequent publications on the same theme by Peter Fryer include: Black People in the British Empire, Aspects of British Black History, The Politics of Windrush, and Rhythms and Resistance.

Peter Fryer received some criticism for being a white man writing a substantial work on black history.

At the time of his death, Peter Fryer was working on a study of life in Mississippi in the 19th and 20th centuries, under the working title Behind the Blues.

Peter Fryer intended this book to rework black American history and hoped that it would be as influential as Staying Power had been.

Peter Fryer had just found out that he was to be honoured by the Hungarian government, in recognition of his "continuous support of the Hungarian revolution and freedom fight".

Peter Fryer was posthumously awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary at a reception at the Hungarian Embassy in London.