1912–13. He co-authored its report. He was a prominent member of the Union of Democratic Control during the First World War and stood unsuccessfully as a Labour Party candidate in the 1918 general election. He subsequently toured central Europe and his graphic accounts of life in the defeated countries appeared in his books Across the Blockade (1919) and After the Peace (1920). Brailsford went to Soviet Russia in 1920 and again to the USSR in 1926, publishing two books on the subject. He was editor of the New Leader, the ILP newspaper, from 1922 to 1926. He left the ILP in 1932 and through the 1930s was a regular contributor to Reynold's News and the New Statesman. Brailsford was an outspoken critic of Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. His books in the 1930s include the anti-colonialist classic Rebel India (1931) and the anti-militarist Property or Peace? (1934). In the late 1930s, he was one of the few writers associated with the Left Book Club, the New Statesman and Tribune who was consistently critical of the Soviet show trials. Following the Soviet invasion of Finland, Brailsford published a hostile essay about Stalin in the left-wing Reynold's News: Stalin ... has compelled us to pass the judgement we had hitherto refused to register. His Russia is a totalitarian state, like another, as brutal towards the rights of others, as careless of its plighted word. If this man ever understood the international creed of socialism, he long ago forgot it. In this land the absolute power has wrought its customary effects of corruption. During the Second World War, Brailsford penned a weekly column in Reynold's News. He also continued to write books, the most important being Subject India (1943) and Our Settlement with Germany (1944). After his retirement from journalism in 1946, he wrote a history of the Levellers, which was unfinished at the time of his death. Paul Foot described Brailsford as "perhaps the best socialist writer in Britain at the time". Personal life He married a former student, the women's activist Jane Esdon Malloch in 1898 at his insistence. She denied him children and regarded the marriage as demeaning. They separated but she refused him a divorce. In 1928 he met the artist Clare Leighton and they lived together for several years. His wife died in 1937 after years of drinking, and whereas this removed any legal obstacle to the couple