Born, 1879, East Stonehouse, Plymouth; attended Plymouth church and national schools, and Ottershaw School, Chertsey; married James William Henry Ganley, a tailor's cutter, July 1901; lived in Westminster before settling in Battersea, raising two sons and a daughter; active in left-wing politics in opposition to the Second South African War, and in response to the poor social conditions of the working-class communities in which she lived; joined the Social Democratic Federation in 1906, campaigned for the suffrage, and was instrumental in setting up a socialist women's circle in Battersea and developing it into a branch of the Women's Labour League (later the Labour Party women's sections); in 1914 she was involved in the British Committee of the International Congress, anti-war suffragists who detached themselves from the more patriotic National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies to work with European women for peace. After the war, she continued to campaign for citizenship rights; joined the Co-operative and Labour parties, and in November 1919 won a seat on Battersea Borough Council; chaired the health committee, and it was mainly through her efforts that a well-equipped maternity home was opened in Battersea in 1921; became one of the first women magistrates in London, 1920, and for twenty years sat in juvenile courts; served as a London County Councillor and as a member of the London County Education Committee; in the 1930s sought nomination as a Co-operative Party candidate; elected Co-operative-Labour MP for Battersea South; defeated in 1951 general election; CBE in 1953; re-elected to Battersea Borough Council, 1953-1965; widely active within the co-operative movement and was an elected director of the West London Society from 1918, and after its merger with the London Society in 1921, of the London Co-operative Society, which position she retained until 1946; became the first woman president of the London Co-operative Society, 1942; belonged to the Lavender Hill branch of the Women's Co-operative Guild and held a number of official positions in the Guild's national committee structure including a place on the south-eastern sectional council; died, Battersea, Aug 1966.
Jacob (Jack) Gaster was the twelfth of the thirteen children born to Moses Gaster, the Chief Rabbi of the Sephardic Community of England, and his wife, Leah (daughter of Michael Friedlander, Principal of Jews' College). Rumanian by birth, Moses Gaster was a distinguished scholar and linguist. He was also keenly active in early twentieth century Zionist politics.
Never attracted by Zionism and from 1946, a supporter of a "one state" solution to Israel/Palestine, Gaster still never broke with his father, merely with his father's ideas, becoming acutely aware of working class politics (and conditions of life) during the General Strike in 1926. While his favourite brother, Francis actually worked as a blackleg bus driver, Jack Gaster sided with the strikers. It was at this time that he joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP), then headed by James Maxton. Despite his admiration for Maxton (who remained with the ILP), as a leading member of the Revolutionary Policy Committee (RPC) within the ILP, Jack Gaster led the 1935 "resignation en masse", taking a substantial group within the ILP with him to join the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
In the immediate post war period, Jack Gaster was elected (as one of just two Communist councillors) to the London County Council (LCC). Representing the working class area of Mile End, Stepney, he immersed himself in the bread and butter issues of housing, employment and transport, while in 1952, (along with seven other representatives of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers) he made an illegal journey at the height of the Korean War to North Korea. The prime mission was to discover if the United Nations was using any biological weapons (germ warfare) against the North Korean civilians. On his return to Britain, Jack Gaster published a 38- page dossier, Korea… I Saw the Truth, indicting Washington not only for their use of germ, but other barbaric forms of warfare in North Korea. Jack Gaster was denounced by the patriotic press and there were serious calls for him to be indicted for treason.
A solicitor by profession, for some sixty years Jack Gaster was deeply involved with the legal aspects of political struggle, representing communists, trades union, civil rights and peace activists and also individuals of the left as different in temperament and ideology as Joe Slovo and Tariq Ali. He was for many years the Communist Party's principle legal adviser. A member of the CPGB until its dissolution, he had no sympathy with those who left the party over Hungary or Czechoslovakia, he viewed the Paris events of 1968 and the New Left as "subjectively progressive and objectively reactionary". He was totally opposed to Revisionism and the destruction of the CPGB seeing with absolute clarity that the fall of the Soviet Union would result not in a "Peace Dividend", but in new and more brutal "Imperialistic" wars.
In the 1990's Jack Gaster joined the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) headed by Arthur Scargill; though in his very ultimate years he was in no political party, he remained a vice-President of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers.
The General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) is a national trade union centre in the United Kingdom. It has 35 affiliates with a membership of just over 214,000 and describes itself as the "federation for specialist unions". In the 1890s, the development of socialist organisations and socialist thinking also found expression in the British trade union movement. Many of the new unions formed during that period were committed to the socialist transformation of society and were critical of the conservatism of the craft unions. The debate revolved around concept of building "one-big-union" which would have the resources to embark on a militant course of action and even change society. This thinking gained strength after the 1897 Engineering Employers Federation lockout which resulted in a defeat for engineering workers. The view that it was necessary to develop a strong, centralised trade union organisation by forming a federation, which had been rejected only two years earlier, was now endorsed at the Trades Union Congress of September 1897. This resulted in the establishment of the General Federation of Trade Unions at a special Congress of the TUC in 1899, the principal objective of which was to set up a national organisation with a strike fund which could be drawn upon by affiliated trade unions. The GFTU participated in the foundation of the International Federation of Trade Unions at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam in July 1919. The GFTU now concentrates on servicing the needs of specialist unions. It does this by providing courses, undertaking research for its affiliated Unions and administering a Pension Scheme for officials and staff of affiliated Unions. In keeping with its original objectives, the Federation pays dispute benefit in appropriate cases to affiliated Unions. The Governing Body is the Biennial General Council Meeting, attended by delegates from affiliated Unions, at which policy and rule changes are debated and an Executive Committee of 14 members elected to meet on a monthly basis between Biennial General Council Meetings.
Born, Coventry, 1900; apprenticed to a pharmacist on leaving school; gave up his trade, joined engineering firm; after the war, he took an active part in the Labour movement, and following a period in the car industry he moved to Leicester where he became a machine knitting expert; this gave him the opportunity to travel widely in Europe, but he returned to Coventry in 1936 and became an aircraft fitter; after the Second World War, he became self-employed, but later went back to the engineering industry as an 'ideas man'; wrote on the Labour movement within the engineering industry, producing articles and pamphlets under the pseudonyms Reg Wright and Dwight Rayton, and a play entitled The Gaffer, describing a Coventry strike.
Charles William Frederick Goss was born in Denmark Hill in 1864, and at the age of 16 moved to Birkenhead, where he became a junior assistant in the local public library; at the age of 23 he was appointed sub-librarian at Newcastle upon Tyne Public Library, and in December 1890 was chosen from among nearly 300 applicants as first librarian of Lewisham, where he took up the post in February 1891; took an active interest in Library Association affairs and, intensely disatisfied with the existing leadership of James Duff Brown, Goss and several London colleagues formed the Society of Public Librarians in 1895. Following a dispute with a local dignitary over public library services in Lewisham, Goss was forced to resign and shortly after in August 1897 became the librarian of the Bishopsgate Institute. In 1901 Goss installed the indicator system of closed access within the lending library after years of thefts and was involved over following years in a bitter 'Battle of the Books' conducted in the pages and correspondence columns of library periodicals between advocates of closed and open access public libraries. The Society of Public Librarians and Goss remained firm advocates of closed access. He also built the collections at the Institute library and remained a keen and active local historian. His publications included Crosby Hall: a chapter in the History of London (1908), The London Directories, 1677-1855 (1932) and A Descriptive Bibliography of the Writings of George Jacob Holyoake (1908). Goss retired as Librarian of the Institute in 1941 and died in 1946.
Tony studied painting at the Royal College of Art. After getting his degree he earned his living as a portrait painter, but soon decided he didn’t want to continue doing one-off original paintings that only the affluent could afford. Instead he worked as a graphic designer, illustrator and political cartoonist. In the early 1960s he moved from Ealing, where he had been brought up, to Hackney, where he spent the rest of his life, taking photographs of the area.
James Hemming was born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, had a sporadic formal education, but he earned a BA through a correspondence course at Birkbeck College, London. He taught in schools in Bristol, Bournemouth and lastly at Isleworth grammar school, Middlesex. When the Second World War broke out, he stayed at Isleworth and taught English and PE. He started a campaign to get the cane abolished in schools, bringing considerable odium from the educational establishment.
His first book, The Child is Right - a Challenge to Parents and Other Adults (1947), was written in collaboration with Josephine Balls. Instead of God is subtitled 'A Pragmatic Reconsideration of Beliefs and Values'; The Betrayal of Youth tackles the secondary educational system, warning against an overemphasis on academic values. He gave much time and energy to the British Humanist Association, serving as its President between 1977 and 1980. His other books included Problems of Adolescent Girls, Individual Morality, Sex Education in Schools, Sex and Love, and You and Your Adolescent.
Hemming appeared as a defence witness in the Penguin Books obscenity trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960 and was a regular panel member on the 1970s BBC programme If You Think You've Got Problems. During the 1980s and 90s, he was a humanist representative on the Religious Education Council of England and Wales, an honorary associate of the Rationalist Association and a vice-president of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association.
Holyoake, George Jacob (1817-1906), freethinker and co-operator, was born in Birmingham in April 1817, the second of thirteen children and eldest son of George Holyoake (1790–1853), a printer, and Catherine Groves (1792–1867), a horn-button maker. He received a basic education at a dame-school and Carr's Lane Sunday school. For thirteen years until 1839 he worked at the Eagle Foundry, becoming a skilled whitesmith, and in 1836 joined the Mechanics' Institute, where he developed an interest in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and phrenology. On his marriage on 10 March 1839 to Eleanor (Helen) Williams (1819–1884), daughter of Thomas Williams, a small farmer from Kingswinford, he looked for a teaching post. Despite his experience as an assistant at the Birmingham Mechanics' Institute, he found promotion there and elsewhere blocked by his association with Robert Owen, to whom he had been attracted in 1836. He therefore sought employment from the Owenite Central Board, which appointed him stationed lecturer at Worcester in October 1840, moving him on to Sheffield the following May. The couple's first child, Madeline, was born in May 1840, and a second daughter, Helen (Eveline), followed in December 1841.
In November 1841, Charles Southwell, the Bristol social missionary, started a weekly atheistic publication, the Oracle of Reason. A month later he was arrested for blasphemy and Holyoake volunteered to edit the paper. On his way to visit Southwell in Bristol gaol in May 1842 he stopped in Cheltenham to lecture on Owenite socialism. A flippant reply to a question about the place of religion in the proposed socialist communities led to his prosecution for blasphemy at the assizes in August 1842, where he was sentenced to six months in Gloucester gaol. The death of Madeline in October 1842 put an emotional seal on his intellectual conversion to atheism.
On release Holyoake taught and lectured among the Owenites in London until May 1845, when he went to Glasgow for a year. Two sons were added to the family at this time, Manfred (1844) and Maltus (1846). As Owenism collapsed with the failure of the Queenwood community, remnants of the movement looked to Holyoake's obvious organizational talents to provide a new lead. He had already edited The Movement (1843–1845) and the Circular of the Anti-Persecution Union (1845) but his greatest achievement was The Reasoner, which ran weekly from June 1846 until June 1861 and intermittently thereafter. Around this paper he developed the social teachings of Owen into a new movement which in 1851 he called secularism.
Holyoake's public image at this time was far more extreme than the reality. In London he was moving among those advanced liberals who wrote for and supported Thornton Hunt's Leader and were associated with the free-thinking South Place Chapel. His acquaintances now included John Stuart Mill, George Henry Lewes, Francis Newman, and Harriet Martineau, while some former colleagues accused him of prevarication in religious and political matters. Although still an atheist, he wished secularism neither to deny nor assert the existence of God. Those who believed religion a barrier to progress thought this a betrayal of principle. For Holyoake the sole principle was individual freedom of thought and expression without interference from state, church, or society.
In 1849 Holyoake, with his brother Austin Holyoake, established a printing firm which in 1853 took over James Watson's publishing business, conducted by the brothers at 147 Fleet Street until 1862. Here in 1855, as members of the Association for the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge, they helped secure—through defiance of the law—the repeal of the Newspaper Stamp Act. The Reasoner collected funds to support European republicanism, and in 1860 Holyoake was secretary of the committee formed to send volunteers to assist Garibaldi in Italy. In politics he was a member of nearly every leading society for reform from the revived Birmingham Political Union in 1837 to the Reform League in 1867, including the last executive of the National Charter Association in 1852. Through his correspondence and personal acquaintance with Liberal MPs he began to build those bridges which created the popular Liberal alliance of the 1860s. Above all, collaborating with former Owenites and Christian socialists, he worked to establish the co-operative movement. His most effective propaganda, Self Help by the People (1858), told the story of co-operation in Rochdale since 1844 and largely created the myth of the Rochdale Pioneers.
In 1861, after twenty years of writing and provincial lecture tours, Holyoake was physically and emotionally exhausted. Many secularists were turning to the more vigorous leadership of Charles Bradlaugh. He had family responsibilities and social and intellectual aspirations beyond his limited means. His wife, who retained her religious beliefs and took little part in his public life, was bronchitic and in the mid-1860s moved out to Harrow, while her husband retained lodgings in London. They had three further children: Maximilian Robespierre (1848–1855), Francis George (b. 1855), and Emilie (b. 1861), of whom only the last was later to join him in his public work.
Increasingly Holyoake's life was spent in journalism, writing and lecturing for Liberalism and the co-operative movement. He offered himself for parliament in 1857 (Tower Hamlets), 1868 (Birmingham), and 1884 (Leicester), but each time withdrew before the poll. He was acquainted with most of the leading Liberals of the day, and in 1893 was made an honorary member of the National Liberal Club. As a consistent supporter of co-operation he was elected to the first central board in 1869, published a two-volume History of Co-Operation (1875, 1879), and presided over the Co-operative Congress at Carlisle in 1887. He was a staunch advocate of co-partnership in industrial production and of the international co-operative movement, attending the inaugural congresses of the French and Italian movements in Paris (1885) and Milan (1886) respectively. He also visited North America in 1879 and 1882 to collect information for a settlers' guide book.
Though no longer fully active in the secularist movement Holyoake continued to champion moderation against what he interpreted as Bradlaugh's dogmatic atheism, debating the subject with Bradlaugh in 1870 and reiterating his position in The Origin and Nature of Secularism (1896). When Bradlaugh republished the Fruits of Philosophy in 1877 Holyoake supported Charles Watts and the British Secular Union, and in 1899 became first chairman of Charles Albert Watts's Rationalist Press Association.
Holyoake died on 22 January 1906 in Brighton, Sussex.
Born, 1833, Wrington; due to financial reversals and a ruinous lawsuit against a defaulting contractor, the Howell family to was reduced to penury and as a result Howell's formal education was both sporadic and rudimentary, ending before he was twelve; at the age of eight he began working as a ploughboy, later moving to assist his father as a mortar boy and, in 1847, he became apprenticed to a Wrington shoemaker; largely self-taught, he was to become a voracious reader, notably of religious tracts and radical periodicals. After enrolling in a local Chartist group in 1848, he underwent conversion to Wesleyan Methodism and taught at Sunday school.
At the end of his apprenticeship in 1851, Howell moved first to Weston-super-Mare and then to Bristol, finding employment as a shoemaker and becoming involved in a Methodist improvement society and the local YMCA. In 1853, Howell was forced to return to the building trade, due to the move of his parents back to Bristol, although as a bricklayer rather than a mason; moved to London, 1855, and rose to the position of deputy foreman and began to become involved in politics spurred by acquaintance with former Chartists and political exiles, including Mazzini, Kossuth, and Marx.
Following the nine-hours dispute in the building trades (1859-1862), Howell joined the London order of the Operative Bricklayers' Society where he came into contact with the other London trade unionists including William Allan, Robert Applegarth, Edwin Coulson, George Odger, and George Potter; through his involvement with the bricklayers' strike committee, Howell played a major part in the reorganization of the union on amalgamated principles and launched the Operative Bricklayers' Society Trade Circular in 1861; following leadership disputes with Edwin Coulson, ending with his resignation from the London order, and blacklisting by London builders, Howell moved to Surrey, where he found employment as a foreman with a former employer, a position he retained until he abandoned bricklaying for radical politics in 1865.
In May 1861, Howell was elected to the executive of the London Trades Council, promptly becoming secretary and serving in that position until July 1862 when ill health and Coulson's enmity forced him to resign; whilst serving as secretary, Howell came into regular contact of the General Neapolitan Society of Working Men, affirming the solidarity of the London Trades Council with Italian nationalists; became a member of the National League for the Independence of Poland in 1863, the Garibaldi Reception Committee in 1864, and the International Working Men's Association from 1864 to 1869; between 1865 and 1869, served as secretary of the Reform League, the first national organization to mobilize urban artisans for franchise reform since the Chartist campaign. During the 1868 general election he administered a special fund to mobilize new working-class voters on behalf of Liberal candidates in marginal constituencies.
In 1869 he launched an abortive Liberal Registration and Election Agency with funds provided mainly by Samuel Morley and James Stansfeld and he was closely involved with the futile effort of the Labour Representation League to devise an arrangement whereby Liberals would endorse working-class candidates in selected boroughs in return for league support for official Liberals elsewhere; between 1868 and 1874 Walter Morrison hired him as paid secretary of the Representative Reform Association, which advocated proportional representation; he was also paid secretary of the Plimsoll and Seamen's Fund Committee from 1873 to 1875 and financial agent for the Land Tenure Reform Association. In addition he chaired the Working Men's Committee for Promoting the Separation of Church and State and served on the councils of both the National Education League and the Liberation Society. Between 1870 and 1871 Howell launched the Adelphi Permanent Building Society to provide money to enable workers to purchase homes. In 1869, Howell attended the Birmingham trades union congress as unofficial representative of the Conference of Amalgamated Trades and, in 1871, emerged as secretary of the parliamentary committee of the TUC, using his office to promote the repeal of the Master and Servant Act and the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1871.
After retiring from the TUC, Howell never again attained his former eminence in radical and trade union politics; served successively as secretary of London school board election committees and as parliamentary agent of the Women's Suffrage Committee but failed to obtain an appointment as a school or factory inspector. Unable to secure regular employment, he turned increasingly to writing as a source of income, contributing to the labour journal the Bee-Hive in the 1870s and publishing A Handy Book of the Labour Laws, a guide to recent legislation in 1876. He also published an interpretive study of trade unionism, The Conflicts of Capital and Labour (1878). During this time, Howell also served as London business agent for a Manchester coal merchant and, in 1881, briefly edited the labour weekly Common Good. Howell made several attempts to enter parliament, contesting Aylesbury in 1868 and 1874 and Norwich in 1871, before becoming MP for North-East Bethnal Green in 1885 which he held until 1895. While in parliament Howell continued to rely on journalism for his livelihood, although he was also briefly employed by the National Home Reading Union. He published Trade Unionism New and Old in 1891 and, after 1895, he withdrew entirely from political life, devoting himself to writing. His biography of Ernest Jones, serialized in the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle in 1898, never appeared in book form. His final work, Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour Leaders, was published in 1902, Howell died (of Bright's disease and cardiac failure) on 16 September 1910.
Born, 1833, Wrington; education was both sporadic and rudimentary, ending before he was twelve; at the age of eight he began working as a ploughboy, later moving to assist his father as a mortar boy and, in 1847, he became apprenticed to a Wrington shoemaker; largely self-taught, he was to become a voracious reader, notably of religious tracts and radical periodicals; enrolled in a local Chartist group, 1848, and underwent conversion to Wesleyan Methodism and taught at Sunday school. At the end of his apprenticeship in 1851, Howell moved first to Weston-super-Mare and then to Bristol, finding employment as a shoemaker and becoming involved in a Methodist improvement society and the local YMCA; returned to the building trade, due to the move of his parents back to Bristol, 1853; moved to London, 1855, and rose to the position of deputy foreman and began to become involved in politics spurred by acquaintance with former Chartists and political exiles, including Mazzini, Kossuth, and Marx. Following the nine-hours dispute in the building trades (1859-1862), Howell joined the London order of the Operative Bricklayers' Society where he came into contact with the other London trade unionists including William Allan, Robert Applegarth, Edwin Coulson, George Odger, and George Potter; through his involvement with the bricklayers' strike committee, Howell played a major part in the reorganization of the union on amalgamated principles and launched the Operative Bricklayers' Society Trade Circular in 1861; following leadership disputes with Edwin Coulson, ending with his resignation from the London order, and blacklisting by London builders, Howell moved to Surrey, and worked as a foreman with a former employer, a position he retained until he abandoned bricklaying for radical politics in 1865; elected to the executive of the London Trades Council, 1861, becoming secretary and serving in that position until July 1862 when ill health and Coulson's enmity forced him to resign; whilst serving as secretary, he came into regular contact with the General Neapolitan Society of Working Men, affirming the solidarity of the London Trades Council with Italian nationalists; became a member of the National League for the Independence of Poland in 1863, the Garibaldi Reception Committee in 1864, and the International Working Men's Association from 1864 to 1869; between 1865 and 1869, served as secretary of the Reform League, the first national organization to mobilize urban artisans for franchise reform since the Chartist campaign. During the 1868 general election he administered a special fund to mobilize new working-class voters on behalf of Liberal candidates in marginal constituencies. In 1869 he launched an abortive Liberal Registration and Election Agency with funds provided mainly by Samuel Morley and James Stansfeld and he was closely involved with the futile effort of the Labour Representation League to devise an arrangement whereby Liberals would endorse working-class candidates in selected boroughs in return for league support for official Liberals elsewhere; between 1868 and 1874 Walter Morrison hired him as paid secretary of the Representative Reform Association, which advocated proportional representation; he was also paid secretary of the Plimsoll and Seamen's Fund Committee from 1873 to 1875 and financial agent for the Land Tenure Reform Association. In addition he chaired the Working Men's Committee for Promoting the Separation of Church and State and served on the councils of both the National Education League and the Liberation Society. Between 1870 and 1871 Howell launched the Adelphi Permanent Building Society to provide money to enable workers to purchase homes; attended the Birmingham trades union congress as unofficial representative of the Conference of Amalgamated Trades, 1869, and emerged as secretary of the parliamentary committee of the TUC, 1871, using his office to promote the repeal of the Master and Servant Act and the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1871. After retiring from the TUC, Howell never again attained his former eminence in radical and trade union politics; served successively as secretary of London school board election committees and as parliamentary agent of the Women's Suffrage Committee but failed to obtain an appointment as a school or factory inspector. Unable to secure regular employment, he turned increasingly to writing as a source of income, contributing to the labour journal the Bee-Hive in the 1870s and publishing A Handy Book of the Labour Laws, a guide to recent legislation in 1876. He also published an interpretive study of trade unionism, The Conflicts of Capital and Labour (1878). During this time, Howell also served as London business agent for a Manchester coal merchant and, in 1881, briefly edited the labour weekly Common Good. Howell made several attempts to enter parliament, contesting Aylesbury in 1868 and 1874 and Norwich in 1871, before becoming MP for North-East Bethnal Green in 1885 which he held until 1895. While in Parliament Howell continued to rely on journalism for his livelihood, although he was also briefly employed by the National Home Reading Union. He published Trade Unionism New and Old in 1891 and, after 1895, he withdrew entirely from political life, devoting himself to writing. His biography of Ernest Jones, serialized in the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle in 1898, never appeared in book form. His final work, Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour Leaders, was published in 1902; died 1910.
Peter Hunot was born in Winchester in August 1914 and, shortly after, left to Morocco to join his father, Architect and British Vice-Consul.. He was educated at boarding school in Bexhill-on-Sea, Dartmouth Naval College and Kings School, Canterbury. After another brief spell in Morocco, Hunot entered Guy’s Hospital as a dental student. During this time, he became influenced by the writings of H.G.Wells, joined the H.G.Wells Society (later renamed The Open Conspiracy, and even later, Cosmopolis) and soon became the Society’s paid full-time secretary, which enabled him to give up his dental career. During this time, Hunot also became involved with the National Peace Ballot and volunteered with the National Council for Civil Liberties.
Prior to the Second World War, Hunot, with a friend in Battersea, established the Civil Defence journal, Maroon, and at the outbreak of war he joined the Battersea Civil Defence Services. Due to his progressive influences, Hunot became a conscientious objector during the war and edited an unofficial monthly journal for the Civil Defence Services, the ARP and NFS Review. He also became a representative for Civil Defence workers on the Central Board for Conscientious Objectors, chaired by Fenner Brockway and provided administrative facilities by the Society of Friends, and became involved with the Citizen’s Guild for Civil Defence.
Shortly after the war, Hunot took part with several surveys conducted by Mass Observation and became active in the Engineers Study Group on Economics. He was also introduced, with Eyvind Tew, to the Union of International Associations (UIA) in Brussels, an organisation originally formed in 1910 by Otlet and La Fontaine to work in the field of the growing number of international bodies being created at the turn of the century. Hunot worked with the UIA and studied organisations in London, Paris and Brussels; co-editing the first yearbook of International Organisations. In later years, he edited The Ethical Record, the journal of the South Place Ethical Society, and continued his involvement with a variety of progressive organisations, including the Society for Innovation Research, the Future World Society, the Association of Humanistic Psychologists and the republican movement, Republic.
Hunot died in January 1989.
Launched in 1976 by historian Raphael Samuel and others involved in the History Workshop movement – which focused on 'history from below' or the social history of everyday life, the History Workshop Journal is published by Oxford University Press. The Journal publishes a wide variety of reports, reviews and essays on subjects including local history, economics and geopolitics.
James Ince and Sons, umbrella manufacturers, were founded in 1805 and remains a family business; originally, in the 1820s, main products included parasols for ladies, very often exclusive 'one-offs'; in the 1860s the firm quickly expanded into wholesaling and exports and, by the early 1900s, the company had started producing garden furniture, although in a limited way. Trade now lies in producing promotional umbrellas, golfing umbrellas and garden sun shades and furnishings. James Ince and Sons also produces umbrellas, both historic and modern, for film, television and theatre productions. The company was situated at 298-300 Bishopsgate for a number of years and also used business properties in The Oval and Norton Folgate. James Ince and Sons now resides in Hackney.
For the last 18 months that the Fruit and Vegetable Market existed in Spitalfields, photographers Mark Jackson and Huw Davies set out to record the life of the market that operated on the site for more than 300 years, before it closed forever in 1991. As recent graduates, Mark was working in a restaurant at the time and Huw was a bicycle courier. Without any financial support for their ambitious undertaking, they saved up all their money to buy cameras and rolls of film, converting a corner of their tiny flat into a darkroom.
During the 1970s she had been a member of the International Marxist Group and active in the NUT in Westminster and London wide and nationally and the Socialist Teachers Alliance. At that time she was squatting in Stepney and, inter alia, involved in anti-racist campaigns in Tower Hamlets. She stood as a Socialist Unity candidate in a local council by-election in Spitalfields in 1977. In 1978 together with Dave Lawrence, a teacher at the Robert Montefiore school, she stood in Tower Hamlets for the GLC. By the 1980s Hilda had moved to Hackney and joined the Labour Party. She was a member of West Down ward in Hackney South constituency. She was asked to stand for the council and was elected to the New River Ward in North Hackney (comparing the Woodberry Down estate and also a mainly orthodox Jewish area in surrounding streets) together with David Clark and former Labour MP Maureen Colquhoun. At that time, the Labour Party was moving to the left and in London had been encouraged in this direction by the election of the GLC with the new leader of Ken Livingstone in 1981. There was a mood generally around campaigning against unemployment and for campaigns within the Labour party to encourage democracy, including making elected representatives such as MPs and councillors accountable. In 1982 the new council in Hackney was led by Anthony Kendall who was in favour of decentralisation of services – an idea drawn from community politics and also based on such a venture in Walsall. However this strategy was not implemented: inter alia there were difficulties with the unions and tenants associations.
In 1983 the council was involved in a dispute with NALGO Social workers since the leadership of the council opposed implementing a national agreement on pay. Accordingly within the Labour Party there was a move to stand a candidate against Anthony Kendall for leader. Significantly the leader, deputy, and chairs of committees were not voted for simply by the Labour group but the 2 General Committees or the LP and the Local Government Committee since the Party generally in Hackney was trying to implement democracy. The left slate was eclectic including Patrick Kodikara, a black activist and former Hackney social worker and head of Social Services in Camden. Hilda was elected as leader but most of the 'left' slate were not. The deputy leader was Andrew Puddephat from the Anthony Kendall slate. The two of them, however, worked well together. During the council year 1984-1985 much of the focus was on opposition to Conservative government’s rate-capping. It was also the year of the miners’ strike and miners from South Wales were given facilities in the town hall. Nationally there were meetings of Labour leaders about how to oppose the Tories. There was much discussion around 'the three noes' no to rent rises, rate rises and cuts. The argument being that it wasn’t enough to oppose the capping as such but to get money from central government. Hackney council resolved not to set a budget until the government gave them money. This was overturned by the courts saying refusing to do this until money was given was unlawful. This was unprecedented. Until this court decision there was no set time for setting a rate. There were various council meetings and in May 1985 an alliance of a minority of the Labour group- including Charles Clarke future Home secretary – and Liberals and Tories set a rate with cuts in the budget. Hilda Kean and Andrew Puddephat, having consulted with the 2 GCs, resigned their posts. Mourad Fleming, a SDP member who stood unsuccessfully in a by-election to the council, took the council i.e. officers and councillors to court claiming wilful misconduct. Unlike the position in Liverpool and Lambeth he was not successful and eventually the case was dropped – it fell before it reached the high court mainly because Fleming had included council as well as councillors and because the rate was set only 2 months later than usual and therefore it was difficult to show that there had been a pecuniary loss. In 1985 Hilda stood unsuccessfully for the Labour seat in Hackney North held by the elderly socialist Ernie Roberts. Diane Abbott was promoted by Patrick Kodikara for various reasons. Diane Abbott was selected. In the election of 1986 Hilda Kean did not stand for the council but Andrew Puddephat did and was elected leader. She remained active in the Labour Party until the mid 1990s.
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The Hall-Carpenter Archives, named in honour of the lesbian novelist Marguerite Radclyffe Hall and Edward Carpenter, the writer on social and sexual reform, exist to publicise and preserve the records and publications of gay organisations and individuals. The Hall-Carpenter Archives had their roots in the Gay Monitoring and Archive Project established by the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) in 1980 with the purpose of scrutinising the media for evidence of discrimination and caring for material deposited with CHE by earlier gay rights organisations. The Gay Monitoring and Archive Project later became separate from CHE, and spent some time in the care of one of its founders, Julian Meldrum, who was employed on a part-time basis by a Manpower Services Commission grant. It was incorporated in 1982 as a limited company under the name of the Hall-Carpenter Memorial Archive Ltd, with a remit of recording and documenting the history of gays and lesbians in Britain. The first Directors were either librarians and information scientists, journalists working for gay publications, or gay rights campaigners interested in maintaining a historical resource. Charitable status was granted in 1983. During this period the Archives were given office space at the National Council for Civil Liberties. From 1984 to 1989, the Hall-Carpenter Archives were housed in the London Lesbian and Gay Centre, and were staffed mainly by volunteers, who collected archives, journals and ephemera, indexed and sorted press cuttings, wrote publications and ran archival projects. Funding was provided by various grants, most notably from the Greater London Council. GLC funding was withdrawn in 1986, and despite approaches, no replacement funding was available, forcing the Archives to leave the LLGC, and be housed at various locations.
The press cuttings collection was moved [in 1988] to the offices of SIGMA (an organisation conducting sexual research in relation to HIV) in Brixton, South London. Their transfer to the Greenwich Lesbian and Gay Centre was arranged by Mark Collins in the late 1990s. In February 1997, the collection was transferred to the Collections Room of the Cat Hill campus of Middlesex University on a ten-year loan. On 2nd June 1998 the collection was formally opened by a Member of Parliament, Evan Harris (standing in for Stephen Twigg MP). The collection was renamed the 'Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive' in 2001 and was transferred to Bishopsgate Institute, London, in January 2011.
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Diana Leonard (1941-2010) was a feminist academic and activist who established the Centre for Research on Education and Gender (CREG) at the Institute of Education, University of London, in 1984.
Peace campaigner, community worker and writer, Muriel Lester was born in 1883 at Gainsborough Lodge, Leytonstone, Essex, the third daughter of a wealthy businessman, Henry Edward Lester, and his third wife, Rachel Mary Goodwin. In 1908 Muriel and her sister Doris moved to Bow (now Bromley by Bow) in London's East End and became active in providing social and educational activities in the community. The sisters were joined by their younger brother, Kingsley, who died in 1914. The following year, with financial help from their father, the sisters bought a disused chapel as a 'teetotal pub' to give local people,evening meeting place. It was named Kingsley Hall, in memory of their brother. Muriel and Doris then set up the first purpose-built 'Children's House' in London. Designed by Charles Cowles Voysey according to the ideas of Maria Montessori, it was opened in 1923. From 1922 to 1926, Muriel served as an Alderman on George Lansbury's radical Poplar Borough Council, chairing the Maternal and Child Welfare Committee. In 1928 Cowles Voysey designed a new, purpose-built Kingsley Hall for the sisters, combining the functions of a community centre and place of worship. Muriel herself took on the role of vicar. In 1929 the sisters set up a second Kingsley Hall was on the vast new Becontree Estate in Dagenham, Essex, where many Bow residents had been relocated as part of the slum clearance programme. Muriel took a pacifist stance in 1914 and was a founding member of the Christian pacifist organization, the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR). She travelled to India in 1926 to meet M K Gandhi: this was the start of a warm friendship. In 1931, attending the Round Table Conference on Indian independence in London, Gandhi stayed at Kingsley Hall in Bow. In 1934 Muriel Lester began her work as travelling secretary for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. Over the next years she carried a message of Christian non violence into the very heart of conflict situations all over the world. She had a large following in the USA. The success of her anti-war speeches there led to her detention in Trinidad in 1941. She mixed easily with the humble but impressed many influential figures, among them Clement Attlee, George Lansbury, Lord Lytton, Lord Halifax, Gandhi, Nehru, Kenyatta, Mandela, H G Wells, Eleanor Roosevelt, Madame Chiang Kaishek, Sybil Thorndike, and Vera Brittain. Muriel Lester was an exponent of practical Christianity, but her writings also reveal deep spirituality. In addition to copious Travel Letters, She wrote numerous articles and had over twenty works published, including two autobiographical accounts, It Occurred to Me (1939) and It So Happened (1947). During More formal recognition of her work came in 1964 when Muriel was awarded the freedom of the borough of Poplar. She died on 11 February 1968 at her home, Kingsley Cottage, Loughton, Essex. A thanksgiving service was held at Kingsley Hall, Bow, on 4 April; her body was donated to science.
The London History Workshop Centre was established in 1982 as a spin-off from the national History Workshop events and History Workshop Journal. The Centre aimed to gather material on all aspects of London life, organise and conserve such material and encourage participation and involvement by Londoners in recording and using the city's history. The Centre also offered an educational service, ran events, such as the LCC/GLC Centenary, and produced a number of publications. A major part of its work was a sound and video archive which collected stored and made accessible audio and video recordings about and by Londoners. The Centre closed in 1992.
The Liverpool Street Station Campaign (LISSCA) was formed in 1974 and campaigned for conservationist redevelopment at Liverpool Street Station, in opposition to British Rail's proposals to demolish all the buildings and replace them with a new development. Along with public meetings, petitions and publications, the Campaign also prepared alternative schemes for the rationalisation and expansion of Liverpool Street Station, while maintaining the complex of historic Victorian railway buildings. The Campaign's president was Sir John Betjeman, with Vice-Presidents including Spike Milligan, Patrick Cormack and Andrew Faulds.
The London Co-operative Society was formed in September 1920 by the amalgamation of the Stratford Co-operative Society and the Edmonton Co-operative Society, two of the largest societies in the London Metropolitan area. In 1921, the LCS was also joined by the West London Society, the Kingston Society and the Co-operative Brotherhood Trust. In addition, the LCS also took over 2 branches of the Staines Co-operative Party. The consolidation of co-operative societies in the Greater London area continued until 1938, with the absorption of Hendon Co-operative Society in 1925, the North West London Co-operative Society in 1928, the Epping Co-operative Society in 1929, the Yiewsley Co-operative Society in 1931, the Willesden Junction Railway Society in 1935 and the Radlett Co-operative Society in 1938. Hence, the LCS was able to extend its area of the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Hertfordshire and Surrey.
The LCS played a large part in the national co-operative movement and was a member of the national and regional organisations, chief of which being the Co-operative Union to which the LCS subscribed. The LCS was also a shareholding member of the English Co-operative Wholesale Society, generally known as the CWS, a federal wholesaling organisation for co-operative societies in England and Wales. By 1952, the LCS and its associated co-operative organisations, the major being the London Co-operative Chemists Limited, had over 550 establishments of sales and services, varying from large department stores to small grocery shops. These establishments consisted of grocers, butchers, fruit, vegetable and flower sellers, coal depots, furniture sellers, drapers, tailors, footwear sellers, chemists, laundries, estate agencies, funeral services and even guesthouses. The LCS also administered many manufacturing and processing establishments. The Society was amalgamated with the Co-operative Retail Society in 1981.
Politically, the LCS has also had a major impact. In the interwar years, the LCS Political Committee played an important role in winning Londoners over to the Labour Party, mobilising people behind co-operative ideals, and shaping policy at a national level. At the 1945 election, all 11 LCS sponsored candidates were elected, including Don Chater in Bethnal Green North East, Percy Holman in Bethnal Green South West and C.S.Ganley in Battersea South. Alf Barnes, also elected for East Ham South, even became a Cabinet Minister in the Attlee administration after 1945. In the post-war world, it has continued as an important campaigning force, providing key organisational backing for mass movements like CND, supporting the fight against the Vietnam War and campaigns during the miner's strikes, and generally at the forefront of the campaign for peace, co-operation and socialism. A political presence was also maintained in the House of Commons through the work of MPs, such as Stan Newens, Alf Lomas and Laurie Pavitt.
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