Philip Qipu Vundla was born in Healdtown, Cape Province, South Africa in 1901. His father was one of the first registered African voters in Cape Province. After leaving school he worked as a domestic servant in East London for a short time, before he was recruited to work as a clerk in the gold mines in Johannesburg. He left the mines after giving evidence to a Commission of Inquiry into native mine wages and working conditions, and became a full time organiser of the African Mineworkers Union. After a strike in 1946 the South African Government passed a law prohibiting Africans from holding gatherings on mine ground, Vundla joined the Defiance Campaign, and the African National Congress. In 1948 he was Chairman of the Anti-Tram Fare Increase Committee, and organised a major boycott of tram system. He was later a member of the National Executive and Chairmman of the Western Region of the ANC, 1952-1955. He left active politics in 1953 and became a journalist. He died in 1969.
Kenneth Vundukayi Manyonda was born in 1934 in Buhero, in Southern Rhodesia. After completing his education he worked in various jobs in the industrial and commercial sector. He became a member of the African National Congress of Rhodesia not long after its formation, and then joined the National Democratic Party after the banning of the ANC, becoming the local branch secretary of the NDP in Gwelo. After a short period working in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia, Manyonda returned to Gwelo in 1962, where he was asked to become chairman of the Gwelo branch of ZAPU. Also at this time, Manyonda first became involved in trade union activity. He obtained a post as an accounts clerk for Charles W Hall Ltd., a hosiery manufacturing company, and when workers at the factory decided to form themselves into a branch of the Textile Workers' Union of Rhodesia, Manyonda was elected their chairman. At a national meeting in Gatooma, the Union's name was changed to the United Textile Workers Union of Rhodesia, and Manyonda was elected President.
Following the split in ZAPU and the formation of ZANU in 1963, Manyonda joined the latter organisation. He became vice-chairman of the Gwelo branch, and was increasingly involved in both political and trade union activities. In 1966 he was arrested and began what turned out to be over two years of detention. On his release in 1968, he found himself unemployable in industry. Instead, he obtained a full-time position with his union, first resigning his presidency which had continued during his detention. Manyonda organised the publication of a union newspaper, which led to his election as Publicity Secretary for the African Trades Union Congress. However, he then made the decision to leave Rhodesia, having obtained a British Government grant to study industrial relations in the UK. He arrived in Britain in 1970, with his two young sons, and wrote the autobiographical account while there.
At some date after the writing of this account, Manyonda returned to Rhodesia and ultimately became involved in the Government of the independent Zimbabwe, latterly holding the position of Provincial Governor of Manicaland.
Richard Jebb was born in 1874. His father was a landowner in Wales and Shropshire and his uncle, Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, was a renowned classical scholar, historian and MP - the identities of the two Richards were sometimes confused. Educated at Marlborough College and New College, Oxford, he was going to enter the Indian Civil Service but the deaths of his father and brother made him financially independent. He had demonstrated an early interest in the Empire and, following a period (1897-1901) travelling overseas, visiting many of the colonies, he began his career as an Empire'publicist' and journalist on his return home in 1902.
Though originally a Free Trader and advocate of Imperial Federation, his first major article, 'Colonial Nationalism' in Empire Review (Aug 1902) rejected both in favour of a system of mutual preference in trade and a political arrangement that recognised the colonies' own sense of nationhood and for autonomy. He continued this theme, calling for 'alliance' rather than federation, in his first and most influential book, Studies in Colonial Nationalism (1905), which aimed to give Britons a true account of opinion in the self-governing colonies. The book was enthusiastically received in Australia and Canada. Jebb declared himself a follower of Joseph Chamberlain and Tariff Reform and became increasingly involved in this cause.
He wrote on imperial matters for the Morning Post, and developed contacts with Conservative and colonial politicians. Both activities continued during his second tour of the empire in 1905-1906; interest in the ideas put forward in Studies in Colonial Nationalism brought Jebb meetings with senior figures in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. On his return, he continued writing and campaigning, and visited the West Indian colonies in 1909. In the general election of January 1910 he fought a bitter campaign in East Marylebone, London, as a Tariff Reform candidate against the official Unionist Conservative candidate. Despite support from Dominion politicians, Jebb came last amid a degree of public ridicule, from the Daily Express in particular. He withdrew from party politics, convinced that 'influence' was a more effective means of advancing his views. In 1911 he resigned from the Morning Post following its decision to pursue a less pro-Tariff Reform line.
In 1911 Jebb published the two-volume The Imperial Conference (the Jebb Papers include a draft of a third volume), in which he argued for the need to turn the conference into a permanent body to develop foreign and economic policy. In his next book, The Britannic Question (1913), he countered the idea of an Empire Parliament, suggested by Lionel Curtis's Round Table Group, with his own proposal for a 'Britannic Alliance' managed through a permanent Imperial Conference.
The outbreak of war in 1914 effectively ended Jebb's career in public life. A new system of imperial arrangements was quickly developed and Jebb had no opportunity for involvement. He served in Britain as an instructor for most of the war, following which he returned to live in the family home in Ellesmere, Shropshire, taking an active role in local affairs. He continued to write on imperial matters, especially at the time of Imperial Conferences. In The Empire in Eclipse (1926) he reiterated his views, but they were no longer influential. Richard Jebb died in Ellesmere on 25 June 1953.
Julius Chigwendere b 1939, Chilmani Reserve, Rhodesia; educated at Government Schools in Gwelo and St Francis Xavier's College, Kutama; returned to Gwelo to work, 1959, had a succession of six jobs in a year; became involved in trade union activity when employed at Charles W Hall (hosiery manufacturers) 1959; National Organising Secretary, Tailors and Garment Workers' Union in Bulawayo, Jan 1961; Minutes Secretary at inauguaral meeting of Southern Rhodesia Trades Union Congress (SRTUC), Apr 1961; appointed Disputes Secretary of SRTUC, 1961; became a member of Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), c 1962; also involved with the formation of Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), 1963; awarded International Labour Office scholarship to Switzerland, the UK and Sweden, 1963; arrested and detained by Rhodesian Government, Aug 1963; in prison until Sep 1964, then left for the UK; unofficial ZANU representative 1970-1973; official ZANU representative from Sep 1973.
Michael Crowder was born in London on 9 June 1934 and educated at Mill Hill School. During his national service he was seconded to the Nigeria Regiment (1953-1954). He gained a 1st class honours degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) at Hertford College, Oxford University in 1957. He returned to Lagos to become first Editor of Nigeria Magazine, 1959-1962, and then Secretary at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ibadan. In 1964-1965 he was Visiting Lecturer in African History at the University of California, Berkeley, and in 1965-1967 was Director of the Institute of African Studies at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone.
From 1968 to 1978 he was based in Nigeria again, first as Research Professor and Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ife, then from 1971 as Professor of History at the Ahmadu Bello University (also becoming Director of its Centre for Nigerian Cultural Studies, 1972-1975) and finally as Research Professor in History at the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Lagos, 1975-1978. He returned to London in 1979 to become editor of the British magazine History Today and is credited with making a significant contribution to the survival and then success of the magazine as it now is. He remained a Consultant Editor up to his death.
He returned to the academic world as Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Studies at the LSE, 1981-82, and then as Professor of History at the University of Botswana, 1982-85. From 1985 until his death he was Joint Editor of the Journal of African History. In 1986 he became Visiting Professor in Black Studies at Amherst College, Massachusetts, USA and Honorary Professorial Fellow and General Editor of the British Documents on the End of Empire Project at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICS). His death on 14 August 1988 was marked by obituaries in the four major daily London newspapers and in many academic journals.
For a bibliography [incomplete] of Crowder's works, see J.F. Ade Ajayi & John D.Y. Peel (eds.), People and Empires in African History: Essays in Memory of Michael Crowder (London, Longman 1992) pp.x-xiv. His major publications include: The Story of Nigeria (1962, 4ed. 1977); West Africa under Colonial Rule (London, Hutchinson 1968); jt.ed., The History of West Africa (London, Longman 2 vols 1971-74, 2 ed. 1985-87); West African Resistance (London, Hutchinson 1971); Nigeria: an Introduction to its History (London, Longman 1979); ed. Cambridge History of Africa, vol. VIII (CUP 1984);'I want to be taught how to govern, not to be taught how to be governed': Tshekedi Khama and the opposition to the British administration in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1926-30 (University of Malawi 1984); The Flogging of Phinehas McIntosh: a tale of colonial folly and injustice - Bechuanaland, 1933 (New Haven, Yale University Press 1988); with N. Parsons, eds., Monarch of All I Survey: Bechuanaland Diaries, 1929-37 by Sir Charles Rey (Gaborone and New York 1988).
Wyndraeth Humphreys Morris-Jones: b 1918; educated at University College School, Hampstead, London School of Economics (LSE) and Christ's College Cambridge; served Indian Army, 1941-1946, Lt Col Public Relations Directorate, 1944; Constitutional Adviser to Viceroy of India, 1947; Lecturer in Political Science, LSE, 1946-1955; Prof. of Political Theory and Institutions, University of Durham, 1955-1965; Prof. of Commonwealth Affairs and Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 1966-1983; Editor, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics (formerly Commonwealth Polit. Studies), 1964-1980.
Publications: Parliament in India, 1957; Government and Politics of India, 1964, 4th edn 1987; (with Biplab Dasgupta) Patterns and Trends in Indian Politics, 1976; Politics Mainly Indian, 1978
The Barbados Workers' Union is a general workers union and was registered on 4th October 1941. It has a membership of 25,000 persons covering all areas of employment in Barbados.
Not known
Called to the Bar, Lincoln's Inn, 1938. Judicial Service. HM Overseas Judiciary: Jamaica, 1941; Magistrate, Turks and Caicos Islands, 1944-1947; Assistant to Attorney-General, and Legal Draftsman, Barbados, 1947-1949; Magistrate, British Guiana, 1949-52; Nigeria, 1952-62: Magistrate, 1952-54; Chief Magistrate, 1954-56; Chief Registrar, High Court, Lagos, 1956-1958; Judge of the High Court, Lagos, 1958-62; retired. Temporary appointment, Solicitors Department, General Post Office, London, 1962-63; served Northern Rhodesia (latterly Zambia), 1964-1967; Judge of the High Court, Uganda, 1967-1971; Deputy Chairman, Middlesex Quarter Sessions, July-Aug., 1971; Chief Justice, Belize, 1973-74; Judge of the Supreme Court, Anguilla (part-time), 1972-1976; part-time Chairman, Industrial Tribunals, England and Wales, 1972-1985.
Not known
From Independence until 1987, Fiji was governed by the Alliance Party, which was pledged towards policies of multiracialism. The only challenge to its rule occurred in 1977, when Fijian voters were attracted by Fijian nationalist candidates. This led to the Alliance Party losing ground in the April General Election, and the Indian-dominated National Federation Party obtaining 26 of the 52 seats in Parliament, with 24 seats for the Alliance Party. However, owing to a leadership dispute the NFP split into factions, and the Governor-General in a surprise move, asked the Alliance Party leader and former Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, to form a minority administration. These events caused considerable political debate in the press, and increased factionalism in the FNP. A further General Election was held in September of the same year, and the Alliance Party was restored to power with a substantial majority.
Canon Leslie Gready was born in 1933, educated at Southampton University and Wells Theological College, and ordained priest in 1957. After working in Liverpool, 1956-1959, he was based in Isandhlwana, South Africa, 1959-1960, and subsequently worked as a priest in Rhodesia ( he was Director of Training in Matabeleland, 1961-1973). In 1966 he photographed two policemen beating a black african in the Lukampa Rest Camp. He had a conversation with the local police troop commander, and reported the incident to the Ministry of Justice.
Sir (William) Keith Hancock was born in Melbourne, Australia on 26 June 1898. and obtained his BA at Melbourne University. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, 1922-1923, and obtained a BA with 1st class honours in modern history. In 1923 he was the first Australian to be awarded a Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, and in 1924 he returned to Australia to be professor of modern history at Adelaide University. He was professor of modern history at Birmingham University from 1933-1944, and professor of economic history at Oxford University, 1944-1949. He was appointed to the War Cabinet Offices as Supervisor of Civil Histories, 1941, and thereafter editor of series. In 1949 he became the first director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, and professor of British Commonwealth affairs, London University. In 1954 he headed an inquiry into constitutional problems in Buganda. The Report was published by HMSO in 1954 as Cmd 9320, Uganda Protectorate Buganda [Namirembe Conference].
In 1957 he became director of the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University (ANU), and was created the first University Fellow of ANU on his retirement in 1961. He was knighted in 1953, and awarded the KBE in 1965.
Publications: Ricasolo 1926), Australia (1930), Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs (1937, 1940 and 1942), Politics in Pitcairn (with M M Gowing) (1947); British War Economy (1949), Country and Calling (1954), War and Peace in this Century (1961), Smuts: The Sanguine Years, 1870-1919 Vol 1 (1962), The Fields of Force, 1919-1950 Vol 2 (1968), Discovering Monaro(1972), Professing History (1976), Perspective in History(1982), Testimony(1985).
Not known
2nd Lt H M C Ledger, the son of Horace and Kathleen Ella Ledger, and husband of Ellinor Ledger was commissioned in the Indian Army Reserve of Officers, and served initially in a Regiment of the Egyptian Army before training as an Observer in the Royal Flying Corps. In 1915 he was attached to the French Seaplane Squadron in Palestine. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre in Nov 1915 and twice mentioned in the Commanding Admiral's 'Ordre du Jour'. He was shot down and killed near Beersheba on 22 Dec 1915.
Leonard T Burgess was a member of the Irrigation Department, Ceylon. No other biographical details are available.
Anthony McAdam was a Lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences, University College, Rhodesia in the 1960s and early 1970s. He later taught at Stirling University.
Guy Mainwaring, Senior Superintendent of Polce, North Western Province, Ceylon, 1931.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born at Qunu, near Umtata on 18 July 1918. His father, Henry Mgadla Mandela, was chief councillor to Thembuland's acting paramount chief David Dalindyebo. When his father died, Mandela became the chief's ward to be groomed to assume high office. However, influenced by the cases that came before the Chief's court, he determined to become a lawyer. After receiving a primary education at a local mission school, Mandela matriculated at Healdtown Methodist Boarding School and then started a BA degree at Fort Hare. As a Student Representative Council member he participated in a student strike and was expelled, along with Oliver Tambo, in 1940. He completed his degree by correspondence from Johannesburg, did articles of clerkship and enrolled for an LLB at the University of the Witwatersrand.In 1944 he helped found the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League, whose Programme of Action was adopted by the ANC in 1949.
Mandela was elected national volunteer-in-chief of the 1952 Defiance Campaign. He travelled the country organising resistance to discriminatory legislation. He was given a suspended sentence for his part in the campaign. Shortly afterwards a banning order confined him to Johannesburg for six months. By 1952 Mandela and Tambo had opened the first black legal firm in the country, and Mandela was both Transvaal president of the ANC and deputy national president. A petition by the Transvaal Law Society to strike Mandela off the roll of attorneys was refused by the Supreme Court.In the 1950s after being forced through constant bannings to resign officially from the ANC, Mandela analysed the Bantustan policy as a political swindle. He predicted mass removals, political persecutions and police terror.
When the ANC was banned after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, he was detained until 1961 when he went underground to lead a campaign for a new national convention. Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the ANC, was born the same year. Under his leadership it launched a campaign of sabotage against government and economic installations. In 1962 Mandela left the country for military training in Algeria and to arrange training for other MK members. On his return he was arrested for leaving the country illegally and for incitement to strike. He conducted his own defence. He was convicted and jailed for five years in November 1962. While serving his sentence, he was charged, in the Rivonia trial, with sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Shortly after his release on Sunday 11 February 1990, Mandela and his delegation agreed to the suspension of armed struggle. He was inaugurated as the first democratically elected State President of South Africa on 10 May 1994. Nelson Mandela retired from public life in June 1999. He currently resides in his birth place - Qunu, Transkei.
Joel Joffe was born in 1932, and educated at Marist Brothers' College, Johannesburg and Witwatersrand University. He became a solicitor in 1956 and a barrister in 1962. He worked as a human rights lawyer, 1958-1965, and acted as Nelson Mandela's instructing solicitor in the Rivonia Treason Trial, 1963-1964. He was Director and Secretary of Abbey Life Assurance, 1965-1970, and Director, Joint Managing Director and Deputy Chairman of Allied Dunbar Life Assurance, 1971-1991. He was appointed Chairman of Oxfam in 1995, and created a life peer as Baron Joffe in 2000.
Walter Edward Guinness was born in Dublin on 29 March 1880, the 3rd son of the 1st Earl of Iveagh. From Eton he volunteered for service in the South African war, where he was wounded and mentioned in despatches. In 1907 he was elected to Parliament as conservative member for Bury St Edmunds, which he continued to represent until 1931. During World War One Guinness again served with distinction in the Suffolk Yeomanry in Egypt, and at Gallipoli. In 1922 he was appointed Under Secretary for War, the first of several political appointments which culminated in his term of office as Minister of Agriculture, Nov 1925-Jun 1929.
After the Conservative defeat in 1929 he retired from office and was created Baron Moyne of Bury St Edmunds. He was now able to indulge his love of travel and exploration, and he was also frequently called upon to chair commissions of enquiry - the Financial Mission to Kenya, 1932, the Departmental Committee on Housing, 1933, the Royal Commission on the University of Durham, 1934 and the West India Royal Commisson, 1938-1939.
During World War Two he again took political office, becoming Secretary of State for the Colonies and Leader of the House of Lords in 1941. In August 1942 he was appointed Deputy Minister of State in Cairo, and in January 1944 Minister Resident in the Middle East. On 6 November 1944 he was assassinated in Cairo by members of the Stern gang.
The West India Royal Commission was a comprehensive investigation of the social and economic condition of all the British territories in the Caribbean. Led by Lord Moyne, the Commission held public hearings throughout the region, and recommended sweeping reforms in everything from employment practices and social welfare, to radical political change. The full findings of the commission were not published until 1945 but an immediate start was made upon the implementation of less controversial recommendations. The British government decided to make substantial increases in the amount of money available for colonial development of all kinds and set about creating a framework for change.
Miles Anthony Pedder was Honorary Secretary of the United Federal Party, Rhodesia from 1955-1962. He left politics following the victory of the Rhodesia Front in the General Election, Dec 1962.
Michael Roberts is a Sri Lankan Australian whose secondary and university education was undertaken in Sri Lanka where he graduated with honours in History at the University of Peradeniya before proceeding to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. Completing his doctorate on British agrarian policies in 19th century Ceylon, he taught at the Department of History, University of Peradeniya from 1966 to 1975. He has been teaching at the Department of Anthropology, University of Adelaide since 1977 and has held a position of Reader since 1984.
The Royal Commonwealth Society was founded in 1868 as the Colonial Society. It was renamed the Royal Colonial Institute in 1870 and the Royal Empire Society in 1928. It adopted its current name in 1958. It is a pan-Commonwealth Non-Governmental Organisation, supported by a world-wide membership, working to inform and educate about the Commonwealth.The RCS Library contains about 300,000 printed items and over 70,000 photographs. At the beginning of the 1990's, it appeared that the Society would be forced to break up and sell the collection. A £3 million appeal launched in 1992, saved the Library for the nation and enabled it to be moved to Cambridge University Library, where it remains on permanent deposit.
The Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, was founded in 1949 to promote advanced study of the Commonwealth.
James McInroy came to Demerara in 1782, and planted or acquired a sugar plantation soon after his arrival. By 1790 he was joined by Samuel Sandbach, Charles Stewart Parker and George Robertson, and the company, McInroy Sandbach & Co. was founded. At first the head office was in Glasgow under the name McInroy Parker & Co., and in 1804 a branch was founded in Liverpool, which later became the company headquaters. In 1813 Philip Tinne was taken into the partnership and the company became known as Sandbach, Tinne & Co in Liverpool, and McInroy Sandbach & Co in Demerara (in 1861 changed to Sandbach Parker & Co). They were importers and exporters, shipping and estate agents, mainly concerned with sugar, coffee, molasses and rum, but also in 'prime Gold Coast Negroes' (J Rodway: 'History of British Guiana', 1893). The families intermarried and the sons and sons-in-law entered the business.
The earliest accounts available at Companies House are for 1948. These show Parkers, a Sandbach and later a Tinne still involved in the company. However they are a part of a larger group Demerara Co. Ltd. In the early 1960s the company experienced its first losses, and several shake ups in the Board of Directors followed. Business continued to go badly, and by 1969 the Company had been taken over by Jessel Securities. Sandbach Industries went into liquidation in 1969, and K R Hunt Ltd and Sandbach Export Ltd were sold off.The company was wound up in 1972, and Jessel Securities itself later went into liquidation.
The Parliament of South Africa was established by the Act of Union of 1910. There are two houses: the Senate and the House of Assembly. On the outbreak of World War One the Government of South Africa declared war on Germany and her allies, and invaded German South West Africa. There was an anti-British rebellion in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
The Southern Rhodesia African National Congress was founded in 1957 under the leadership of Joshua Nkomo. It was banned by the Government in 1959, and several prominent members were arrested and detained. The detainees were released early in 1961. Their claim for compensation does not appear to have been successful.
Between 16 and 24 June 1976 there was widespread rioting in the African townships of South Africa, the worst since the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. The disturbances began in Soweto, the immediate cause was the compulsory use of the Afrikaans language as the medium of instruction in Bantu schools. The rioting quickly spead to other townships. The official death toll was put at 176. The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution condemning the South African Government for 'massive violence against and killings of the African people including schoolchilden and students and others opposing racial discrimination'.
In 1959 the South African National Party Government passed the extension of University Education Act which prohibited the admission of any person not classed as 'white' to universities, other than those established specifically for them, without a permit from the Minister of State. This legislation was strenuously opposed by the University of Cape Town and others. Following an inquiry into education, the Government published the Universities Amendment Bill in 1983, which altered the rules in that rather than a permit system, universities were to be prohibited from admitting black students beyond a quota to be stipulated annually by the Minister. Once again there was considerable opposition to the proposed new legislation, and the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Cape Town sent copies of material to contacts in the UK, for use in campaigning against the Bill. The papers in this collection comprise a set of this material
Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett was born in Brooklyn in 1849, of American parents. He was educated at Torquay and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated with 1st class honours in Law and Modern History in 1872 and was President of the Union, defeating H.H. Asquith in a famous contest. He was an examiner of the Education Department, 1874-80. He was called to the bar in 1877. In the same year he founded the Patriotic Association, which aimed to counter pro-Russian feeling in the country. His obituary in the Times (20 Jan 1902) reported that he was a fine orator and attracted large crowds - for a time his popularity "with provincial audiences" was second only to that of Lord Randolph Churchill - though his style was not so suited to the House of Commons, where he was often regarded as an eccentric figure. He was MP (Con) for Suffolk (Eye) - a seat in the gift of Lord Beaconsfield - from 1880 to 1885, and for Ecclesall Division, Sheffield, from 1885 until his death in 1902. He was Civil Lord of the Admiralty in Lord Salisbury's governments in 1885-86 and 1886-1892 and was knighted in 1892.
Throughout Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett's political career his main theme was Britain's imperial role; he believed that Turkey's security was crucial to the Empire and was well known as a supporter of Turkish interests. Another long-term concern was that Swaziland should become a British, rather than Boer, territory. In 1880 he began to publish a weekly newspaper, England, which lasted until 1898 but was never very successful - its demise led to bankruptcy proceedings that were only settled in 1901. In April-May 1897 he travelled to Greece and Turkey with his son (see below) as a guest of the Sultan; he observed events in the Graeco-Turkish War, and described them in The Battlefields of Thessaly (1897).
Who Was Who 1897-1915 (London, 1935) records that he served in the South African war in 1900, but it was his son who served there in the Bedfordshire Regiment, though Sir Ellis was at one time a Lieutenant in the West Yorkshire Regiment, a militia unit. He did, however, visit South Africa and Swaziland (where he had been negotiating with rulers) in 1900-01, meeting his son by chance in Bloemfontein's main street (A/2/1/71). He died on 18 January 1902.
Publications: Shall England keep India? (W. H. Allen & Co.: London, 1886); Union or Separation ... Also an Analysis of Mr. Gladstone's "Home Rule" Bill (7ed., National Union: London, 1893); British, Natives & Boers in the Transvaal ... The appeal of the Swazi people (McCorquodale & Co.: London, 1894); The Transvaal Crisis. The case for the British-Uitlander-residents in the Transvaal (3ed., Patriotic Association: London, 1896); The Battlefields of Thessaly. With personal experiences in Turkey and Greece, etc. (John Murray: London, 1897).
Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett was the eldest son of Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett (1849-1902). Born in 1881, he was educated at Marlborough College. In 1897, at the age of 17, he accompanied his father to Turkey as the guest of the Sultan and followed the Turkish army in its campaign against the Greeks. At one point the party was arrested by the Greeks as spies. Ashmead-Bartlett had begun studying to become a barrister when he left with his regiment for the South African War in February 1900. At the end of May he was taken ill, sent home and spent 7 months in hospital. By early in 1901 he was in Marseilles and Monte Carlo, supposedly for recuperation (A/3), and in May 1901 he returned to London to stay with his uncle and aunt, the Burdett-Coutts, and continued his legal studies.
It was not until 1904 that he began his career as a war correspondent by covering the siege of the Russian port of Port Arthur by the Japanese, entering the city with the victors. His account, Port Arthur: the siege and capitulation (London 1906) was well received. For the next few years he mixed a full social life in London and the country and in Paris (as described in his diaries) with periods as a war correspondent and writer and a developing political career. As Reuters' special correspondent he accompanied the French army in Morocco (1907-08), the Spanish in Morocco (1909) and the Italians in Tripoli (1911). At home he fought the safe Labour seat of Normanton in Yorkshire for the Conservatives in January 1910 and the Liberal seat of Poplar in December 1910. He was then employed by the Daily Telegraph to be its correspondent in the Balkans and he covered the two Balkan wars of 1912-1913.
At the outbreak of war in 1914 Ashmead-Bartlett returned from Bucharest to volunteer for his old regiment, but was turned down for medical reasons. He was selected by the National Press Association (Lord Burnham, proprietor of the Daily Telegraph, was the chairman) as the London Press representative on the Dardanelles Campaign, which began in March 1915. He was soon critical of the conduct of the campaign by the Allied commander Sir Ian Hamilton and the General Staff. Returning to London in June 1915 (having survived the sinking of the 'Majestic' on 26 May) he discussed the campaign with senior ministers and politicians (Asquith, Balfour, Carson, Bonar Law, Churchill, Kitchener) and presented a memorandum on the subject to the cabinet.
Ashmead-Bartlett returned to the Dardanelles at the end of June, his equipment now including a movie camera which he used to make the only moving pictures of the campaign. Further disastrous landings and assaults in August and, in his view, the continued mismanagement of the campaign led him to make another attempt to influence the government, by sending a letter to the Prime Minister with Australian correspondent Keith Murdoch. Though the letter was seized by the military authorities, Murdoch wrote another version from memory, and this was delivered to Asquith via the Australian PM Fisher. Ashmead-Bartlett was dismissed as a war correspondent in the Dardanelles on 30 September 1915 (he had already unsuccessfully applied to the NPA to be relieved).
Exactly how much effect his interventions had will probably remain unclear, but Ashmead-Bartlett might have been partly responsible for the withdrawal from Gallipoli in 1915 and the subsequent resignation of Churchill. The issue of Ashmead-Bartlett's role in the campaign continued to be raised well after it ended. He was invited to give evidence to the Dardanelles Commission in 1917 and the publication of his books, Ashmead Bartlett's Despatches from the Dardanelles (1916) and The Uncensored Dardanelles (1928), and those of Sir Ian Hamilton and others usually caused a flurry of articles and letters in the press. Even in 1933, after his death, his family were prompted to defend him in the Daily Telegraph following more allegations from Hamilton (E/30). (For an account of his involvement in the Dardanelles campaign and its aftermath, see K. Fewster, 'Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett and the Making of the Anzac Legend' in Journal of Australian Studies No.10, June 1982, pp.17-30)
Ashmead-Bartlett claimed that the War Office persecuted him after his dismissal and in 1916 attempted to prevent him delivering a series of lectures on the Dardanelles campaign in England, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Certainly he was never permitted to accompany British or Dominion troops again, and on his return to Britain he worked for the Daily Telegraph as one of the British Press group attached to the French Army at the headquarters of Marshal Joffre. In 1918 he sought a post as a correspondent with the American Army in France, but was rejected, apparently as a result of War Office objections.
In 1919 Ashmead-Bartlett was again employed by the Daily Telegraph, reporting on events in Central Europe. He spent several months in Austria, Poland, Romania and Hungary, and was horrified by the threat of Bolshevism in the region. In Budapest he became directly involved in political intrigue during the Hungarian revolution, working with an anti-Bolshevik faction and lobbying British ministers on their behalf.
Despite being based in Paris he re-entered British politics and was narrowly defeated by the Labour candidate in North Hammersmith in 1923, but won the seat in 1924. As an MP his main concern was foreign policy. In 1926 he was obliged to resign his seat because of bankruptcy. He returned to work as a special correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, reporting on, inter alia, the civil war in China in 1927, Soviet Russia in 1928, Palestine in 1929, and India in 1930. At the same time he continued to publish books based on his newspaper writings.
He became ill while covering the Spanish Revolution and died at Lisbon on 4 May 1931.
Publications: Port Arthur: the siege and capitulation (W. Blackwood & Sons: Edinburgh & London, 1906); The Immortals and the Channel Tunnel. A discussion in Valhalla (W. Blackwood & Sons: Edinburgh & London, 1907); Richard Langhorne. The romance of a Socialist (W. Blackwood & Sons: Edinburgh & London, 1908); The Passing of the Shereefian Empire (W. Blackwood & Sons: Edinburgh & London, 1910); in collaboration with Seabury Ashmead-Bartlett, With the Turks in Thrace (William Heinemann: London, 1913); Ashmead Bartlett's Despatches from the Dardanelles (George Newnes: London, 1916); Some of my Experiences in the Great War (George Newnes: London, 1918); The Tragedy of Central Europe (Thornton Butterworth: London, 1923); The Uncensored Dardanelles (Hutchinson & Co.: London, 1928); The Riddle of Russia (Cassell & Co.: London, 1929).
Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett's younger brother and Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett's uncle was Rt. Hon. William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett Burdett-Coutts (1851-1921). He married Angela, Baroness Burdett-Coutts (1823-1906), and assumed her surname. He was also an MP (Con, Westminster, 1885-1921).
Hugh Russell Tinker was born in 1921 in Essex, and educated in Taunton School and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He served in the Indian Army 1941-1945, and was then employed in the Indian civil administration until 1946. Thereafter he followed an academic career as a historian, as Lecturer, Reader and Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1948-1969; Director of the Institute of Race Relations, 1970-1972; Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1972-1977; and Professor of Politics, University of Lancaster, 1977-1982, of which he was Emeritus Professor until his death. In addition, he held brief overseas professorships, at Rangoon in 1954-1955, and Cornell, USA, 1959. As an active member of the Liberal Party, Tinker stood as a candidate in general elections, for Barnet in 1964 and 1966, and for Morecambe and Lonsdale in 1979. He was involved in the party's immigration and race relations panel in the early 1970s. He was also Vice-President of the Ex- Services Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Tinker wrote numerous books, mainly on topics reflecting his academic interests: the history and politics of the Indian subcontinent, and Indians overseas. His publications included: The Foundations of Local Self-Government in India, Pakistan and Burma (1954); The Union of Burma: A Study of the First Years of Independence (1957); India and Pakistan: A Political Analysis (1962); Ballot Box and Bayonet: People and Government in Emergent Asian Countries (1964); Reorientations: Studies on Asia in Transition (1965); South Asia: A Short History (1966); Experiment with Freedom: India and Pakistan 1947 (1967); (Ed) Henry Yule: Narrative of the Mission to the Court of Ava in 1855 (1969); A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830-1920 (1974); Separate and Unequal: India and the Indians in the British Commonwealth 1920-1950 (1976); The Banyan Tree: Overseas Emigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (1977); Race, Conflict and the International Order: From Empire to United Nations (1977); The Ordeal of Love: CF Andrews and India (1979); A Message from the Falklands: The Life and Gallant Death of David Tinker (1982); (Ed) Burma: The Struggle for Independence (1983-1984); Men who Overturned Empires: Fighters, Dreamers, Schemers (1987); Viceroy: Curzon to Mountbatten (1997). A Message from the Falklands was based on the letters of Tinker's son David, who was killed there while serving as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Hugh Tinker died in 2000, survived by his wife Elizabeth and their two elder sons.
R M G Moneypenny retired as Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Labour, Housing and Social Services in Ceylon on 24 November 1958. No other biographical details are available.
St Kitts-Nevis comprises the islands of St Kitts or St Christopher, in 1623 the first West Indian island to be settled by the British, and Nevis which was colonised in 1628. The two islands, together with Anguilla were united in 1882, and became an independent state in association with the United Kingdom in 1967. There were objections by Anguilla to the administration, which it considered to be dominated by St Kitts, and independence was declared by Anguilla later that year. Negotiations to resolve the dispute failed, and after being placed directly under British control in 1971, Anguilla was granted its own constitution in 1975 and union with St Kitts and Nevis formally severed in 1980.
There was a Constitutional Conference in London in 1982 to discuss the independence of St Kitts and Nevis. Despite disagreements over special provisions for Nevis in the proposed constitution, the independence process continued and was formally achieved on 19 September 1983. The objections came principally from the Labour Opposition, which until recently had dominated the administration and was still the largest party. Since 1980, however, the Government had consisted of a coalition of the People's Action Movement and Nevis's Reform Party, which held the balance of power and which the Opposition felt was instrumental in achieving Nevis's strong position in the new constitution.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, significant numbers of Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe, Russia and elsewhere, to South Africa. The numbers from Russia, escaping extreme persecution, were particularly high. Many were attracted by the potential wealth from the gold mines, but success was not guaranteed and a struggle to become established was experienced by most settlers. However, in due course strong Jewish communities emerged in Johannesburg, Pretoria and elsewhere, and some found considerable financial success. Matters were interrupted by the South African War of 1899-1902, during which many Jews were forced to leave, but the influx resumed when peace was restored. In 1903 the Jewish Board of Deputies was established to provide for the welfare of new immigrants.
The records collected together here are a small sample of source material for the history of these events, and include a list of Jews resident in Johannesburg in c1915-1917, compiled by the Board of Deputies' War Relief Committee for the purpose of raising funds for East European Jewish immigrants; copies of memoirs and biographical accounts of a small number of Jewish immigrants from the period; and copies of articles on the history of Jews in South Africa.
In contrast to its brief period of political unity the Caribbean region has produced pressure groups of a more enduring nature. The Caribbean Conference of Churches is an ecumenical body founded in 1971 and concerned with problems of human rights and poverty in the region, whilst the Caribbean Youth Conference was an organisation bringing together national youth organisations for educational and exchange purposes. This collection holds a small quantity of materials from the 1980s dealing with these groups and their aims.
The majority of the materials held here relate to the 1974 coup in Cyprus and the subsequent Turkish military intervention. Both Greek and Turkish Cypriot expatriate groups are represented, and there is also older material arguing for an independent Cyprus.
Dominica passed between French and British hands several times in its colonial history and this, coupled with the early emergence of land-owning ex-slaves meant the island developed along different political lines to the big sugar colonies such as Barbados and Jamaica. By 1961 a Democratic Labour Party government had been elected, and it was this party which led Dominica first to associated statehood in 1967 and then to full independence eleven years later. 1980 saw the election of the Caribbean's first female prime minister, Eugenia Charles (Dominica Freedom Party), and although she had to survive coup attempts during her fifteen-year premiership subsequent peaceful transfers of power appeared to indicate that Dominica's political system was still functioning. The two disparate groups whose materials are held here constitute on the one-hand an old-fashioned organisation representing producers' interests (the Dominica Peasant Proprietors' Union) and on the other a classic pressure group seeking to prevent a miscarraige of justice in the case of Desmond Trotter, a black political activist accused of the murder of an American tourist. This latter group produced materials both in Dominica and in London in their successful efforts to overturn the death sentence passed on Trotter.
Part of the British Windward Islands Federation until 1958, Grenada then joined the West Indies (Federation) and when that dissolved in 1962 was made part of a further federation comprising Great Britain's remaining East Caribbean dependencies. After achieving "associated statehood" in 1967 it finally became independent in 1974, with Eric Gairy of the Grenada United Labour Party (GULP) becoming the country's first Prime Minister. The emergence in the 1970s of the New Jewel Movement (NJM) posed a challenge to Gairy that was met by an increasingly authoritarian approach. The NJM took power in a 1979 coup and established a people's revolutionary government (PRG) with Maurice Bishop at its head, but differences between Bishop and the more radical wing of the government led by Bernard Coard led to the death of the revolutionary leader in an armed fracas and the subsequent invasion of the island by the United States. Elections following the invasion saw the return of the New National Party (NNP), and this party or offshoots of it have governed the country ever since. The materials held here concentrate almost exclusively on the invasion of Grenada by the United States in 1983 and the situation of those convicted in relation to the death of People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) leader Maurice Bishop just prior to this. Foremost amongst the defendants at this trial was Bishop's former deputy prime minister Bernard Coard and his wife and fellow ex-Central Committee member Phyllis Coard.
The period of military rule in the 1970s is the primary focus of the small amount of material held here, with groups attempting to pressurize the government into accepting the need for a return to civilian rule.
The pressure group materials held here vary from labour market analyses produced by the Caribbean Employers' Federation to broad critiques of Trinidad and Tobago's political and economic system from a variety of groups, including the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) and the New Beginning Movement (NBM). The majority of the materials date from the 1970s and 1980s, the period in which the ruling People's National Movement increasingly lost credibility with civil society.
In the course of the 1960s three major guerrilla organisations emerged in opposition to Portuguese rule over Angola. The MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola) had its headquarters in Zambia and was Marxist in outlook whilst the FNLA (Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola) was based in the Congo. The other group, founded in 1966 under the leadership of Jonas Savimbi, was UNITA (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola). Materials from all of these parties are held here, relating primarily to their roles in the liberation struggle (before the 1974 coup in Portugal hastened its departure from its colonies), but also dealing with their part in the civil wars and repeated foreign interventions which have subsequently dogged Angola.
In 1901 the previously self-governing colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania came together to form the Commonwealth of Australia, and the struggle for authority between these states (and the later admitted Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory) and the federal centre has remained an issue ever since. Other issues that have dominated the post-war political scene include debates over republicanism, the perennial emergence of third party forces to challenge the hegemony of the ALP and the Liberal-National Party coalition and the fear of the other, most often evoked by immigration but also by the perceived threat of communism pre-1989. Possibly the most controversial episode of the recent political past was the 1975 Whitlam dismissal crisis, which provoked still unresolved arguments over the constitution and the relationship between the House of Representatives and the Senate. All of these issues are raised, referred to and discussed within the materials here held.
The gradual extension of the franchise in the decades prior to independence led to the marginalisation in the House of Assembly of parties such as the Progressive Conservatives, which represented the interests of the planter class (although they maintained their dominance in the Legislative Council), while at the same time the contest for dominance in the democratic arena polarised into a struggle between Grantley Adams' Barbados Labour Party (BLP) and the more radical Democratic Labour Party (DLP) led by Errol Barrow, who was eventually to become Barbados's first post-independence Prime Minister. There was also a vigorous debate over the role and value of the short-lived West Indies Federation (1958-1962) which was strongly supported by Adams. The materials held here deal with these issues in detail as well as covering the electoral struggle between the two main parties after 1966.
Although the Falkland Islands are now most famous for the 1982 war the materials held here do not deal directly with that conflict. However there are indications of early islander opposition to the prospect of Argentinian sovereignty in descriptions of the 1968 visit by Lord Chalfont which sought to faciliate the transfer of the islands, and of British efforts throughout the 1970s to tie economic investment to closer political co-operation with the Argentines. The items from the 1989 election are also interesting in this respect, showing that the war, whilst still an issue, is less significant than the need to ensure continuing economic stability. The shortage of political party materials can to an extent be ascribed to the Falklands' tradition of non-partisan candidates standing in elections.
After a ten year political campaign by the Convention Peoples' Party (CPP) the Gold Coast became independent Ghana on the 6th March 1957, the first of Britain's African colonies to make this transition. Its first Prime Minister and dominant political figure Dr. Kwame Nkrumah led it through independence to become a republic and a one-party state, and was also a prime mover in the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAS). His removal in a 1966 coup ushered in a period of characterised by military interventions in government, which may have ended with the election of John Kufuor in 2000. He was the first elected president to succed another elected president. The material here dates from the independence movement onwards, and is of particular interest with regard to Nkrumah's socialism, his pan-Africanist orientation and the arguments over his legacy following his death in 1972.
The majority of the material held here relates to the first two elections held under full adult suffrage in Lesotho. In 1965 the Basotho National Party (BNP) under the leadership of Leabua Jonathan won the first of these amidst accusations of interference on its behalf by the Catholic Church and the South African government. Independence followed in 1966, but when the opposition Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) appeared to have won the elections in 1970 Jonathan annulled them and suspended parliamentary government, remaining in power until deposed by the first of a series of military coups in 1986.
Mauritius was a British colony from its capture from the French 1810 until its independence in 1968, but it maintained both its Napoleonic institutions and its Franco-Mauritian business elite. Other ethnic groups on the island include a Creole population descended from the French plantation owners and their slaves and both Muslim and Hindu Indo-Mauritians who arrived as indentured labourers from 1835 after the abolition of slavery. Since the country's first elections in 1947 Hindu-led parties have monopolised power, with the Parti travailliste (Mauritius) ruling the country until 1982 before being supplanted by an alliance of the Mouvement militant mauricien (MMM) and the Mouvement socialiste mauricien (MSM).
The former French colony of Martinique became an Overseas Department of the French Republic in 1946. Political parties tend to be departmental counterparts to those of metropolitan France. The only party represented here is the Parti communiste martiniquais.
Malawi, formerly Nyasaland, became independent in 1964 under the government of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) led by Hastings Kamuzu Banda. Banda was to rule the country for the next thirty years, presiding over the transition to republic status in 1966 and appointing himself president for life in 1971. Violent protests against the governing party in 1992 following a severe drought led to a referendum the following year which paved the way for the end of one-party rule, and Banda lost the 1994 election to Bakili Muluzi.
The materials predating independence from Portugal in 1975 include reports detailing the progress of the conflict, appeals for international solidarity and letters and statements relating to the intercine disputes within the movement. Later items include reports from party congresses and legislative documents issued jointly by party and state. Also contained here are materials critical of FRELIMO issued by other Mozambican anti-colonialist movements.