“AS A child of eight I came to the United States from Port of Spain, Trinidad, British West Indies. My mother and father had come to this country two years earlier in 1922. Like thousands of the West Indian immigrants, they hoped to find their fortunes in America where ‘gold was to be found on the streets’ and they dreamed of rearing their children in a ‘free America.’ This dream was soon disabused. Together with my three sisters, our family suffered not only the impoverished lot of working-class native families and its multi-racial populace, but early learned the scourge of indignity stemming from Jim-Crow national oppression.”

These words, written by Claudia Jones, encapsulate the experiences of many migrants seeking a new life in capitalist countries over many years.

They also express the exploitation and racism experienced by the whole working class under capitalism which seeks to divide and rule. Claudia Jones understood the only way to combat and overcome was through the unity of migrants and the working class.

On the eve of her deportation to Britain in December 1955 she wrote the above words at the request of William Z Foster, chair of the Communist Party USA to provide him and his comrades with a short autobiography.

This invaluable memoir gives an insight into the experiences that took her from a black immigrant child to one of the leaders of the party Foster led.

Jones was a most gifted woman who could have used her skills particularly as a newspaper editor to have a life of relative ease.

However another excerpt from her autobiography gives an insight into her political development: “I joined the party in February 1936 and was assigned to work in the YCL shortly after. I got a job in the business department of the Daily Worker. This job coincided with my application for a $150-a-week job in the field of dramatics with the Federal Theatre Project. I took the job at the Worker for $12-15 a week instead.”

In the almost 20 years from her joining the Communist Party to her being deported from the country she had lived in since the age of eight, Jones devoted her life to the struggle for complete emancipation for the working class, including women, black people and other minorities.

She edited journals, became educational director of the Young Communist League, appointed secretary of the women’s commission of the Communist Party and eventually was elected by the membership to the national committee of the party itself. All this, despite ill health.

Jones was hospitalised for a year while still at high school with tuberculosis, brought on by poor living conditions. She also had heart problems, having to be admitted to hospitals both in the US and during her years in Britain.

During the period of McCarthyism from the late 1940s onwards, most of the leadership of her party was put on trial and given stringent prison sentences.

Although constantly harassed by the authorities and continually threatened with deportation, because she was always denied US citizenship because of her politics, she travelled the country tirelessly, speaking on behalf of her imprisoned comrades and campaigning for black liberation, women’s rights and, above all, against US involvement in the Korean war, calling for peace.

Eventually she and the rest of the party leadership, were arrested and tried for “thought crimes.” All 13 defendants spoke for themselves in court and in one of her finest hours Jones made her famous statement, beginning with these words: “Your Honour, there are a few things I wish to say. For if what I say here serves only one whit to further dedicate growing millions of Americans to fight for peace and to repel the fascist drive on free speech and thought in our country, I shall consider myself rising to speak worthwhile indeed. Quite candidly, Your Honour, I say these things not with any idea that what I say will influence your sentence of me. For even with all the powers Your Honour holds, how can you decide to mete out justice for the only act to which I proudly plead guilty, and for one, moreover which by your own prior rulings constitutes no crime — that of holding communist ideas, of being a member and officer of the Communist Party of the USA.”

Jones’s words are as relevant today as they were in 1953. Then, the US and British bloody aggression in Korea, now the genocide in Gaza supported by the same governments. Anti-war protesters falsely arrested and peaceful climate activists given harsh prison sentences.

As Jones went on in her speech to mention, millions spent on war while working-class people struggle with continuing austerity, the comparisons are clear to see as the common denominator is capitalism.

Following her term of imprisonment after the trial, Jones was deported to Britain because she was a UK subject due to being born in a British colony. She joined the Communist Party of Great Britain on arrival and underwent further hospitalisation due to her poor health.

Although serving on important party committees, the leadership failed to fully utilise her outstanding politics and skills, so she became an activist in migrant communities. Realising the importance of a newspaper, her most important act in Britain was to found and edit West Indian Gazette from 1958 until her death.

This was a most important and influential newspaper, covering racism and civil rights at home and support for the anti-colonial struggle internationally. The paper was staffed by young black women and men volunteers who were attracted by her charisma and anti-racist stance.

She began the idea of Caribbean carnivals in London to showcase West Indian and African culture and history, but all were held indoors and none took place in Notting Hill, unlike the later more famous event.

Claudia Jones died in the early hours of Christmas Day, 1964, aged just 49. Her importance cannot be stressed strongly enough, she was a migrant, who suffered much of the intolerance and hatred aimed at migrants. As a black woman, she had to deal with racism and as a woman she had to fight misogyny.

She realised early in life that these were used by the ruling class in capitalist societies to divide working-class people and until her last days she strive for unity of a multiracial working class with the aim of socialism.

On Sunday February 23 at 12 noon, the Communist Party commemorates the life of Claudia Jones who was born 110 years ago on February 21 1915 and made her defiant speech to the McCarthyite court in February 1953. All are welcome to celebrate her life at her graveside which is next to the grave of Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery, Swain’s Lane, London N6 6PJ.