Sidney Percival Bunting (1873-1936)
Sidney Percival Bunting (1873–1936)
(From ‘Sidney Percival Bunting’, South African History Online: www.sahistory.org.za)
Sidney Bunting[1] was the son of the social reformer and Gladstonian Liberal, Sir Percy William Bunting (1836–1911),[2] and Mary Hyett (1840–1919), who shared her husband’s interest in social reform. Both were staunch Methodists. He matriculated in October 1892 as a Demy in Classics, was awarded a 1st in Classical Moderations in 1894, graduated in 1896 with a 1st in Literae Humaniores, and won the Chancellor’s Latin Essay Prize in 1897. He went out to South Africa and served as an officer in the colonial irregular forces during the Second Boer War, and after settling there, he became a lawyer and, together with his cousin, set up in business and exploited land owned by his mother’s family.
Although at this time he was very much a man of the Empire, he joined the whites-only South African Labour Party (SALP), and the violent suppression of the white miners’ strike in 1913 accelerated his move to the left in politics. In 1914 he was one of a minority in the SALP who formed the War-on-War League, a group of anti-war critics who broke from that Party in 1915 in order to form the International Socialist League, and this, in turn, metamorphosed into the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in 1921. Although Bunting went on to attend meetings of the Comintern Congress in Russia, his views clashed with those of the Comintern since he was interested in a broadly-based worker’s party regardless of colour, whilst the Comintern wanted to establish a purely black Republic. In 1931 Bunting was expelled from the CPSA, partly because of his privileged background.
Bunting’s son, however, the journalist Brian Bunting (1920–2008),[3] joined the CPSA and in 1952 was elected to the South African Parliament as one of the three native representatives (who had to be white). After experiencing many problems, he left South Africa for England in 1963, where his London home became a meeting point for exiled South African dissidents. But he returned to South Africa in 1991 and in 1994 he was elected as one of the African National Congress Members of Parliament.
Had Sidney Bunting not emigrated to South Africa, he would almost certainly have become a conscientious objector, though for political reasons. Consequently, he would have been unlikely to gain exemption from military service and would have been imprisoned.
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[1] Allison Drew, ‘Bunting, Sidney Percival (1873–1936)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP, May 2006); on-line edn (May 2010): http://ezproxy.ouls.ox.ac.uk:2117/view/article/92891 (accessed 27 March 2014).
[2] J.E.G. de Montmorency, ‘Bunting, Sir Percy William (1836–1911)’, rev. Tim Macquiban, ODNB (OUP, 2006); on-line edn (May 2006): http://ezproxy.ouls.ox.ac.uk:2117/view/article/32171 (accessed 27 March 2014).
[3] Denis Herbstein, ‘Brian Bunting: South African activist and editor who stayed true to communism’ [Obituary], The Guardian (9 July 2008).