James Gibb used to wonder whether his piano teacher, Mabel Lander, ever suspected how many of her pupils were members of the Communist party. While she was giving lessons to the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, she was also teaching Jimmy Gibb, Geraldine and Mary Peppin, David Ellenberg and Alan Bush, all members of the Unity Theatre orchestra and active in the Hampstead Communist party branch in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
According to Jimmy, at one point there were so many musicians in the CP that "it got around the profession that it was not a good thing to be outside the party if you wanted to get on, so they put me on a cadre committee to vet musicians who were applying to join the party!" It was, he thought, the only time in history that membership of the Communist party was dependent on passing an audition.
