Peter Fryer

Peter Fryer (1926-2006) was a writer best known for the book Hungarian Tragedy which covered the Soviet Union's invasion and repression of Hungarian uprising in 1956.

He joined the Young Communist League in 1943 and the Communist Party in in 1945.

He became a reporter for the Yorkshire Post after leaving school in 1943. He left in 1947 after refusing to cancel his membership of the Communist Party and joined the Daily Worker, becoming their parliamentary correspondent.

In 1948 he was sent to Hungary to cover the show trial of László Rajk, falsely accused of being Titoist spy. Rajk was executed in 1948 and Fryer felt guilty at his what he saw as his 'acquesence' in this.

He was sent back to Hungary in 1956 to cover the 'counter-revolutionary' uprising against the Soviet Government. Held up at a border town on the road from Viena to Budapest, Fryer saw his first dead bodies - 80 people shot during a demonstration. It was a turning-point. An apology that "we have absolutely no experience of electing people" at a workers council meeting was the last straw - so much for 'people´s democracy'.

His reports, describing the popular uprising of students and workers being brutally suppressed by the Stalinist regime, were suppressed - causing him to leave the paper.

He published Hungarian Tragedy shortly after his return to England. The book caused a split in the Communist Party and large numbers of people to leave. Fryer moved on to edit The Newsletter, a publication of the Trotskyist group The Club. He spent the next quarter of a century writing widely; on Portugal, censorship, Black British experience, and music. In the late 1980s Fryer to return to political dialogue, writing a column for the weekly Workers' Press.

This article is based on a public domain article in Freedom, Anarchist Fortnightly article published on 2006 November 4

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