Alfred Wiener was a German Jew, born, 1885; trained as an Arabist; Middle East, 1909-1911; fought in the First World War, winning the Iron Cross 2nd Class; high-ranking official in the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, CV), 1919; created the Büro Wilhelmstrasse of the CV, which documented Nazi activities and issued anti-Nazi materials; fled to Amsterdam, 1933; founded the Jewish Central Information Office (JCIO, later the Weiner Library), 1933; In 1939 he and the JCIO transferred to London; USA, 1939-1945; returned to London in 1945 to transform the JCIO into a library and centre for the scholarly study of the Nazi era. Died 1964.
Selmar Biener was born into a Jewish family in Magdeburg in 1906. Her brother, David, was born in 1904. The two of them entered into a business partnership in Magdeburg in 1935, an electrical components wholesalers. David had already worked at their parents' firm, also in Magdeburg, but having demonstrated 'an outstanding business sense' it was decided to start out on their own. In 1937 David went to Holland and from there to Palestine. Nothing is known of his fate after this period. Selmar came to London sometime before Oct 1942. The parents remained in Magdeburg. Their fate is not known.
Heinrich Richard Albrecht Kraschutski, was commander in the German navy, 1914-1918, becoming a prominent figure in the pacifist movement in Germany after the First World War, and co-editor of the pacifist weekly, Das Andere Deutschland, the publication of which was regarded as particularly pernicious and treacherous by the Reichswehr because of its disclosures of violations of the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. He went to Majorca and together with a small group of other anti-Nazi refugees opened a little workshop of arts and crafts at Palma. When the Franco coup succeeded in Majorca the Royal Navy brought most anti-Nazi exiles to safety but local German Nazis managed to prevent the rescue of Kraschutski, who was forbidden by the Spanish police from embarking. After 1940 any trace of Kraschutski was lost until early 1944 when he was discovered to be in a Spanish jail.
The Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP (AO) was an umbrella organisation of Nazi party groups abroad, founded in 1930 on the initiative of Bruno Fricke, from Paraguay, and Gregor Strasser, who at the time was in charge of the Nazi Party organisation in Germany. In May 1933 Ernst Wilhelm Bohle became its director. The organisation provided Nazi Party members abroad with political and ideological instructional propaganda material; it also organised travel in the Reich and set up sister-city arrangements. Although the AO proclaimed its strict non-intervention in the affairs of host countries, it used its connections for espionage and political pressure.
The Nazi party disseminated information to the regional and area offices such as NSDAP Westfalen-Nord.
Otto Weil was imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp on 24 Jun 1938 and released on 10 August 1939.
During World War Two, Karl Wittig was a political prisoner in a number of Nazi concentration camps including Sachsenhausen. In the early 1950s Wittig was a key witness in the trial of Otto John, head of the West German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz), 1950-1954. John was found guilty of spying for the communists as a result of Wittig's evidence.
Dorrith Sim (née Oppenheim) came to England on the Kindertransport, 26 July 1939. Her parents worked for the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland, c 1943, they were eventually pronounced verschollen in Auschwitz. Julius Oppenheim was the grandfather of Dorrith.
Waltraut and Ingeborg Sandberg traveled to Great Britain on the Kindertransport.
The Sekretariat Warburg was a charitable and cultural centre for Hamburg Jews, 1938-1941, whose objective was to assist Jews in Hamburg during the Nazi era and was funded by the Warburg banking family. Robert Solnitz was the head of the organisation.
Jersey's Masonic Temple was sacked by the Nazis, 27 Jan 1941 and the Jersey Masonic Temple Co (1920) was forcibly liquidated by the Occupying Powers.
Maria Nermi-Egounoff, opera singer, was born in Budapest in 1899 where she graduated from the Franz Liszt Academy. She was a member of the former Royal Opera House in Budapest, Volksoperhaus in Vienna and Staatopersänger in Germany until 1933. She came to London, December 1937 and married in 1940.
Lilli Segal, a German Jew, was born in Berlin in 1913. Segal fled to France after the Nazi seizure of power, where she engaged in illegal courier work to Germany and was finally arrested and deported to Auschwitz.
She managed to escape and fled to Switzerland. In the 1980s and 1990s she was involved in research into the history of Nazi medicine.
Publications: Die Hohenpriester der Vernichtung: Anthropologen, mediziner und Psychiater als Wegbereiter von Selektion und Mord im Dritten (Reich, Dietz Berlin, 1991) and Vom Widerspruch zum Widerstand: Errinerungen einer Tochter aus gutem Hause.
During World War Two, Lingfield Race Course, Surrey, was converted into an internment camp.
Hitahadut Olej Germania was founded at the beginning of 1932 with the objective of providing advice and support to would-be emigrés from Germany to Palestine. The character of the organisation changed with the huge increase of emigrants during the great 'Alijah' [1933] after which it became more involved with issues around settlement, and the economic and cultural life of the new immigrants.
The mother organisation, Mifleget ha-Avodah ha-Ziyyonit, was the Socialist Zionist party formed in 1920 by the union of Palestine Workers' Party, Ha-Po'el ha-Za'ir, with a majority of the Ze'irei Zion groups in the Diaspora. The latter groups had been formed in Russia at the beginning of the 20th Century by young Zionists who espoused the views of Ha-Po'el ha-Za'ir and intended to join the party upon their settlement in Erez Israel. The programme of Ze'irei Zion, announced at its second congress in Petrograd, in 1917, postulated the necessity to establish a Jewish labour commonwealth in the land of Israel and redirect the Jewish masses in the Diaspora to productive occupations.
Wilhelm Freyhahn was an inmate at Buchenwald concentration camp, until July 1938. Freyhahn was a representative of the Jewish community in Breslau, and guest of Max Bollag.
The Abraham family lived in Berlin. Leopold Abraham, the father, a plumber by trade, and his wife Frieda were deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp some time in 1943. Max Abraham, the son, came to England with his wife, Hanni, in 1939, where he worked as a technical teacher at the ORT school in Leeds. He had previously worked as a technical teacher in the ORT school in Berlin. Hanni's parents and brother and sister all perished in Auschwitz. Frank Russell, one of the correspondents in the later letters, was a former pupil of the ORT school in Leeds.
This collection consists of two unrelated items, both of which document the sympathetic attitudes of two ordinary German women to the Nazis and their Führer.
Created (or rather re-activated) in 1942 by the Comité international de la Croix-Rouge, the Commission des prisonniers, internés et civils (Commission PIC) was mandated to deal with all questions relating to the treatment of POWs and civilian internees (which included victims of racial persecution and political detainees). It was incumbent upon the PIC to pass on all necessary instructions to those around the world tasked by the CICR to deal with POWs and internees. The PIC acted in the name of the CICR with respect to the practical execution of the latter's directives. It also had to take initiatives in numerous cases where conventional arrangements either no longer existed or had become inooperatve. During the Second World War the PIC worked closely in collaboration with the Division d'assistance spéciale (DAS) to provide material and moral assistance to victims of racial persecution not protected by the Geneva Convention.
In effect up to 1942-1943, questions relating to the persecution of Europe's Jews as well as hostages and political detainees had been dealt with by a variety of different agencies. From 1942 the PIC was charged with the principal questions relating to victims of racial and political persecution. Its activities continued up to the immediate post war period where it became involved with repatriation of deportees.
In addition the Service des colis aux camps de concentration (Service CCC) was created in 1943 and integrated into the DAS in 1944. This organisation worked specifically towards providing assistance for Jews and other civilians in Nazi concentration camps.
The Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief was founded in the early months of 1933 by a group of Anglo-Jewish community leaders, in response to the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on a political platform of anti-Semitism. Among the founders were Anthony de Rothschild, Leonard G. Montefiore and Otto Schiff.
The fund has been through many name changes in its lifetime. It started out as the Central British Fund for German Jewry, then became part of the new Council for German Jewry in 1936 along with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the American United Palestine Appeal. On the outbreak of World War Two in 1939 the fund changed its name to the Central Council for Jewish Refugees, and in 1944 changed again to the Central British Fund for Jewish Relief and Rehabilitation. After many years as the Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief, the organisation is now known as World Jewish Relief.
The Fund's mission, according to its Memorandum of Association, was 'to relieve or assist Jewish Refugees in any part of the world in such manner and on such terms and conditions (if any) as may be thought fit'. In this work the fund was aided by various organisations, including the Jewish Refugees Committee (JRC) which was founded by Otto Schiff in 1933, the Children's Refugee Movement (established by the JRC and the Inter-Aid Committee), and the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad, which was established in 1943 and financed by the Central Council for Jewish Refugees (as the Central British Fund (CBF) was then known).
Rose Henriques was born in London in 1889, the daughter of James Loewe, a well-known figure in Jewish communal life. Her brother achieved standing as Reader in Rabbinics at Cambridge University.
Rose Loewe came from a comfortable middle class background and had a love of music, performing regularly on the harmonium at her local synagogue in St John's Wood. She studied piano in Breslau. Returning at the outbreak of the First World War, she met Basil Henriques, who persuaded her to join him in a venture to establish a Jewish boys' club in the East End of London. The Oxford and St George's Club dominated the lives of the couple for decades. Rose initially took charge of the girls' section, eventually managing the boys' section as well when Basil went off to do his patriotic duty. The couple married in 1916.
They lived on the premises of their club from which base they undertook a wide range of welfare work involving not only youth work but mother and baby welfare, help for the aged and the promotion of education, participation in Jewish religious life and in the arts. Eventually Berner street, on which the home was situated, was renamed Henriques Street in her honour.
The Nazi persecution of Germany's and Europes's Jews roused the interest and compassion of Rose at an early stage. In 1943 she found the opportunity to become actively involved in planning for the end of the war by joining the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad (JCRA) which was formed by the Joint Foreign Committee of the Anglo Jewish Association and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The JCRA had as one of its chief goals the establishment of the Jewish Relief Unit (JRU)- an active service unit carrying out welfare work among the surviving remnant of European Jewry in Germany. Rose Henriques served as head of the German department of the JCRA. She was part of the second team to arrive at Bergen Belsen after its liberation and based herself at the nearby town of Celle.
Rose Henriques remained preoccupied with welfare work in displaced persons' camps until 1950 when Bergen Belsen was closed and most Jewish DPs emigrated to Israel or to the USA.
In the post-war era Rose Henriques became actively involved in the British ORT organisation (ORT are the Russian initials of the Society for Spreading Artisan and Agricultural Work among Jews). She also served as chair of the British Society for the Protection of the Health of Jews; established work rooms for the elderly in East London; presided over the League of Jewish Women, the Association for the Welfare of the Physically Handicapped; the Whitechapel Art Gallery and the Jewish Research Unit.
When Basil Henriques was knighted in 1955, Rose became Lady Henriques. She died in 1972.
The roots of the London College of Printing (LCP) lie in the City of London Parochial Charities Act of 1883, which aimed to provide better management of these charitable funds, and inter alia, benefit the inhabitants of these parishes by improvement of education and employment prospects. The need for improved technical education of workforce was clearly felt against a background of changing technologies and foreign competition, and particularly so in the field of printing. The Act established the St Bride Foundation Institute Printing School, which opened in Nov 1894. In the same year the Guild and Technical School opened in Clerkenwell Road to improve the craft skills of apprentice and journeymen engravers and lithographers, and then moved the following year to Boult Court, where it became known as the Bolt Court Technical School. The School was subsequently renamed the London County Council School of Photoengraving and Lithography.
In 1921, the Westminster Day Continuation School (the forerunner of the College for the Distributive Trades) opened. In 1922 St Bride's School moved to larger premises at 61 Stamford Street and now under LCC control was renamed the London School of Printing and Kindred Trades (LSPKT). In 1949 the Bolt Court School of Photoengraving and Lithography merged with the LSPKT to form the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts (LSPGA). The LSPGA was renamed the London College of Printing in 1960. New premises at the Elephant and Castle were opened in 1964, and the North Western Polytechnic Department of Printing merged with LCP in 1969. On 1 Jan 1986, the LCP joined Camberwell School of Arts and crafts, the Central School of Art and Design, Chelsea School of Art, the College for the Distributive Trades (CDT), the London College of Fashion and St Martin's School of Art to form the London Institute.
The LCP and CDT subsequently merged in 1990, and the LCP was renamed the London College of Printing and Distributive Trades.
The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene was established in 1915 following the amalgamation of the Ladies' National Association and 'British Continental and General Federation for Abolition of Government Regulation of Prostitution' (which later became the International Abolitionist Federation). Josephine Butler founded the Ladies' National Association in the 1860s when she led her campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts in Great Britain. These Acts applied to certain garrison towns and seaports, and attempted to preserve the health of servicemen by arrest and compulsory medical examination of women found within these areas who were suspected of being there for immoral purposes. The Acts were repealed in 1886. Josephine Butler also made contact with abolitionists in Europe and established the International Abolitionist Federation in Mar 1875. The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene is a gender-equality pressure group independent of any political party, philosophical school or religious creed. Its aims were: To promote a high and equal standard of morality and sexual responsibility for men and women in public opinion, law and practice; To secure the abolition of state regulation of prostitution, whatever form it may take, and to secure the suppression and the punishment of third party profiteering from prostitution (eg brothel-keeping, procuring); To examine existing or proposed legislation dealing with health (eg treatment of venereal disease) and public order (solicitation laws) and to oppose any laws or administrative regulations which are aimed at or may be applied to some particular section of the community; To study and promote such legislative, administrative, social, educational and hygienic reforms as will tend to encourage the highest public and private morality; To keep these principles continually before Government departments. Its basic principles were: social justice; equality of all citizens before the law; a single moral standard for men and women. It produced its own journal The Shield. Sir Charles Tarring held the Chair at the first Executive Committee meeting on 5 Nov 1915. Helen Wilson was first honorary secretary and Alison Neilans, assistant secretary. Neilans later became General Secretary, a position she held until her death in 1942. Like its predecessors, the Association continued to oppose state regulation of prostitution. This was seen in its campaigns to repeal the provisions of the Defence of the Realm Acts in the First and Second World Wars (Sections 40D and 33B respectively), and against 'solicitation laws' by introducing Public Places (Order) Bills, Street Bills and Criminal Justice Bills between the 1920s and 1940s. It also made representations to the Wolfenden Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution 1954-1957 and was very critical of the Street Offences Act 1959, which was in part a product of the report emanating from that Committee. The Association became concerned with a wide range of issues relating to sexuality: for example, sex education, sex tourism, sexual offences and age of consent, traffic in women and children, and child prostitution. In 1962 the Association changed its name to the Josephine Butler Society.
The Josephine Butler Society (1962-fl.2008) was formed in 1962 when the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene was renamed. Its objectives were: To promote a high and equal standard of morality and sexual responsibility for men and women in public opinion, law and practice; To promote the principles of the International Abolitionist Federation in order to secure the abolition of state regulation of prostitution, to combat the traffic in persons and to expose and prevent any form of exploitation of prostitution by third parties; To examine any existing or proposed legislation on matters associated with prostitution or related aspects of public order and to promote social, legal and administrative reforms in furtherance of the above objectives. Its basic principles were: social justice; equality of all citizens before the law; a single moral standard for men and women. (Taken from membership and donation form 1990.) The Josephine Butler Society was a pressure group not a rescue organisation. It wished to prevent the exploitation of prostitutes and marginalisation of those who could be forced into this activity by poverty and abuse, and it believed these problems should be addressed by changes in the law. It believed that more should be done to prevent young people from drifting into prostitution, to help those who wished to leave it, and to rehabilitate its victims. Its work in the early 21st century took two main forms: to make representation to various departments of the UK Government on prostitution and related issues an; to liaise and network with other agencies both statutory and voluntary who worked in related areas. As at 2008 it was still active.
Josephine Elizabeth Butler [née Grey] (1828-1906) was born on 13 Apr 1828 (7th of 10 children of John Grey and Hannah née Annett). In 1835 the Grey family moved to Dilston near Corbridge, Northumberland after her father's appointment in 1833 as agent for the Greenwich Estates in the north. On 8 Jan 1852 Josephine married George Butler at Corbridge, Northumberland. He had been a tutor at Durham University, and then a Public Examiner at Oxford University. In 1857 they moved to Cheltenham following husband's appointment as Vice-Principal of Cheltenham College. In 1866 they moved to Liverpool following husband's appointment as Head of Liverpool College. Josephine took up plight of girls in the Brownlow Hill workhouse and established a Home of Rest for girls in need. In 1868 Josephine became President of North England Council for Promoting Higher Education of Women, and in the following year she was Secretary of Ladies' National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (extended by legislation in 1866 and 1869). In 1875 she established the International Abolitionist Federation in Liverpool. In 1883 the Contagious Diseases Acts were suspended. In 1885 the age of consent was raised to 16 which Josephine fought for. The Contagious Diseases Acts were repealed in 1886. From 1888 until Oct 1896, Josephine edited Dawn a quarterly journal. From 1882-1890 Josephine lived in Winchester where Rev George Butler was appointed canon. In 1890 George Butler died. Josephine moved to London and continued campaigning against state regulation abroad. In 1894 she moved to her son's home in Galewood within Ewart Park near Milfield. In 1898-1900 Josephine edited and wrote Storm Bell. In 1906 Josephine moved to Wooler where she died on 30 Dec and was buried at Kirknewton.
: Frank Short was born on 19 June 1857, at Wollaston, Worcester, the only son of Job Till Short, engineer, and his wife, Emma Millward. Leaving school at the age of thirteen, Short trained as an engineer, and was an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers from 1883 until his resignation in 1904. For a short time he attended evening classes in the Stourbridge School of Art and then, after a period of engineering work in London, abandoned this profession and entered the National Art Training School (later the Royal College of Art), South Kensington, also attending a life class at the Westminster School of Art, under Frederick Brown.
While still a student at South Kensington in 1885 Short won high approval from John Ruskin for some of his mezzotints after Turner's Liber Studiorum'. With Ruskin's encouragement he devoted much of his life to the reproduction of Turner's paintings, and mezzotinted forty plates of theLiber', including thirty based on unpublished plates or unengraved drawings.
Short revived mezzotint and made it a new and living art in his translations not only of Turner, but of Reynolds, Constable, De Wint, Watts, and other painters. He showed new possibilities for the medium in using its qualities of tone and mass for his original landscapes, such as The Lifting Cloud' (1901), andWhen the Weary Moon was in the Wane' (1894). Entirely his own, too, was his work in aquatint, another method which he revived and developed. Using his engineering skills he made his own tools and invented new ones.
His early work as an etcher won praise from J A M Whistler who, from 1888 to 1900, frequently visited Short's studio for help with matters of technique or of printing. Short's etched work in bitten line, or dry-point, or soft-ground, was a direct interpretation of nature by means of straightforward, frequently outdoor, work upon the plate. Like Rembrandt and Whistler, he believed firmly in purity of line and clean printing, as may be seen in such plates as Sleeping till the Flood' (1887),Low Tide and the Evening Star and Rye's Long Pier Deserted' (1888), and `A Wintry Blast on the Stourbridge Canal' (1890).
Short's outstanding powers led to his appointment in 1891 as teacher of etching at South Kensington; he later became professor of engraving, and retired in 1924.
He was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI) in 1917, but although he was interested in painting, and produced scholarly and poetic water-colours throughout his life, his main work lay in etching and engraving. He had been elected a fellow of the (Royal) Society of Painter-Etchers in 1885, and he succeeded Sir F Seymour Haden as second president in 1910, retiring in 1938. He was elected A.R.A. in 1906, the R.A. (the first engraver to reach the higher rank) in 1911; and was treasurer of the Royal Academy from 1919 to 1932. He was awarded gold medals for engraving at Paris in 1889 and 1900; and was master of the Art-Workers' Guild in 1901. He was knighted in 1911.
Short married in 1889 Esther Rosamond Barker (died 1925), and had one son, who died on active service in 1916, and one daughter. He died at Ditchling, Sussex, 22 April 1945.
The system of "minuting" papers submitted to the Postmaster General by the Secretary to the Post Office for a decision (ie numbering the papers, and separately copying a note of the paper as a "minute" into volumes indexed by subject) was introduced in 1793. It remained in use by the Post Office Headquarters registry until 1973.
Until 1921, several different major minute series were in use with telecommunications and postal issues within the same filing system for England and Wales (POST 30), Ireland (POST 31) and Scotland (POST 32).
In 1921, the several different minute series were replaced by a single all-embracing series (POST 33). This was suspended in 1941 as a wartime measure when a Decimal Filing system came into use (POST 102), but was resurrected in 1949. In 1955 the registration of Headquarters files began to be decentralised under several local registries serving particular departments, although the "minuting" of cases considered worthy of preservation, and the assimilation of later cases with earlier existing minuted bundles, continued until 1973.
Following the decentralisation of the registry in 1955, the previous minuted papers sequence was closed and a new sequence set up for the listing of both the central registry's files and the decentralised registries' files from 1955 (POST 122). In addition, there are two classes which reflect later creations of classes to accomodate papers which had, for various reasons, not been assimilated into the main classes (TCB 2 and POST 121).
Assistant Lecturer in Latin, Victoria University, Manchester, 1927; Assistant Lecturer in Classics, University College, London, 1927-1930; Lecturer in Greek, University College, London, 1930-1940; Reader in Classics and Tutor to Arts Students, University College, London, 1940-1945, Professor of Latin, UCL, 1945-1951; Dean of Faculty of Arts, University of London, 1950-1951; appointed Master of Birkbeck College, 1951; Public Orator, University of London, 1952-1955; Chairman of Collegiate Council, 1953-1955; Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of London, 1954-1955; Vice-Chancellor, 1955-1958; appointed Member of Court of University of London, 1955; Chairman of following: Secondary School Exams. Council, 1958-1964; Working Party on Higher Education in East Africa, 1958; Grants Committee on Higher Education in Ghana, 1959; West African Examinations Council, 1960-1964; Voluntary Societies' Committee for Service Overseas; Committee on Development of a University in Northern Rhodesia, 1963; Committee on Univ. and Higher Technical Education in Northern Ireland, 1963-1964; Member of following: US Education Commission in UK, 1956-1961; Commission on Post-Secondary and Higher Education in Nigeria, 1959-1960; Council of Royal College of Art, 1960; Council of Overseas Development Institute, 1960-1965; University of Wales Commission, 1960-1963; Council of Royal College, Nairobi, 1961-1965; UNESCO-International Association of Universities Study of Higher Education in Development of Countries of SE Asia, 1961-1965; Provisional Council, University of Zambia, 1964.
The Aeronautical Engineers' Association (AEA) was founded in 1943. It was formerly part of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.
J H Stevenson (b 1915) was General Secretary of the AEA, 1944-1958.
Margaret Bondfield was born in Chard, Somerset, the 14th child of William and Anne Bondfield. Her father worked in the textile industry and was known for his radical political views. She was educated at the local school but by 1887 she was working as an apprentice in a draper's shop in Brighton where she met Louisa Martindale, a champion of women's rights. In 1894 Bondfield moved to London, there she again worked in a shop, joined the National Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks, of which she was Assistant Secretary for ten years from 1898, and began contributing articles to The Shop Assistant. In 1898 she published a report, commissioned by the Women's Industrial Council, on the pay and conditions of shop workers. This established her as an authority and she gave evidence to Select Committees in 1902 and 1907. In 1908 Bondfield became Secretary of the Women's Labour League and was also active in the Women's Co-operative Guild. In 1910 she served on the Advisory Committee on Health Insurance and was instrumental in getting maternity benefits included. In 1910 and in 1913 she stood as an Independent Labour Party candidate for the London County Council in Woolwich. As Chairperson of the Adult Suffrage Society she supported universal suffrage for women.
Bondfield was opposed to the 1914-1918 war and supported a negotiated peace. Her first post-war assignment was as a member of the joint delegation of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the Labour Party to the Soviet Union in 1920 with which she travelled widely in Russia. The delegation's report covered all aspects of social and political life and, whilst critical of the system, remained opposed to Western intervention there and had an important impact on shaping attitudes to Russia.
In 1923 she was elected Member of Parliament for Northampton and became Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour, in the following year she lost her seat in the general election, but was again elected in 1926 for Wallsend. In 1929 she was appointed Minister of Labour becoming the first woman Cabinet Minister but in the 1931 crisis she supported Ramsey MacDonald's National Government and lost her seat in the general election. Bondfield retired from full-time trades union work in 1938 but chaired the Women's Group on Public Welfare between 1939 and 1945. Margaret Bondfield died in London in 1953.
The National Union of Printing, Bookbinding and Paper Workers was the product of a complex series of amalgamations. The Vellum Binders Society was founded in 1823, and the Bookbinders Consolidated Union and the London Consolidated Lodge of Journeymen Bookbinders were founded in 1840, these merged to form the National Union of Bookbinders and Machine Rulers in 1911. The National Amalgamated Society of Printers' Warehousemen and Cutters was formed in 1900, and the National Union of Printing and Paper Workers in 1914. These merged with the National Union of Bookbinders to form the National Union of Printing, Bookbinding, Machine Ruling and Paper Workers in 1921. This became the National Union of Printing, Bookbinding and Paper Workers in 1928 and the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT) in 1972. SOGAT merged with the National Graphical Association to form the Graphical, Paper and Media Union (GPMU) in 1991.
Fred Bramley: born Peel, near Otley, Yorkshire, 1874; 'practically self educated'; served apprenticeship as cabinet maker; lecturer on social and economic quesions; Organising Secretary, Furnishing Trade Association; member, Parliamentary Committee, Trades Union Congress (TUC), 1916-1917; Secretary, TUC, 1923-1925; died Sep 1925.
The Painting Brush Makers Provident Society was an unregistered union, established as the Brushmakers Benefit Society in 1842. It changed its name to the Painting Brush Makers Provident Society in 1868, and was wound up in 1952.
The National Union of Domestic Workers was established on 29 June, 1938. It was administered by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Women's Officer, and never really operated as an independent union. The policy body was a Joint Board, with representatives from the TUC and lay members. The membership reached a peak of 805 in June 1939. The last meeting of the Joint Board was held in May 1953.
Dorothy Elliott: born 1895; educated at Reading University College (BA Modern Languages); munitions work at Kynoch's Aston, Birmingham, 1916-1917; Organiser, National Federation of Women Workers, Woolwich Arsenal, 1918-1921; Organiser, General and Municipal Workers Union, Lancashire, 1921-1924; London, 1924-1938; Chief Women's Officer, GMWU, 1938-1945; Chairman, National Institute of Home Workers, 1945-1959.
During the Second World War, a governmental committee, chaired by Violet Markham was set up to examine the implications of the severe shortage of domestic help, particularly where professional women were carrying a 'double burden.' Shortly after the war, Markham established the National Institute of House Workers to promote domestic service as a skilled craft. (Lewis 1984)
The National Federation of Women Workers (NFWW) was formed in 1906 by Mary Macarthur. The Federation had close links with the Women's Trade Union League, with Gertrude Tuckwell serving as president of both organisations from 1908. The NFWW saw strikes as the chief means of unionising unorganised workers and probably did more than any other organisation (including trade unions) to unionise women especially during the mass strike wave of 1910-1914. The Federation was entirely unself-seeking, in that its efforts were purely for the benefit of the unions rather than its own prestige. Although its membership had risen to 20,000 by 1914, its leaders never intended that the NFWW should remain permanently as a women's union. In fact in 1921 it quietly merged with the National Union of General Workers (now the GMB). The Federation, along with many of the other women's organisations, campaigned to expose the evils of the sweated trades. Their propaganda was very effective and played a major part in inducing the Liberal government to pass the 1909 Trade Boards Act which was an attempt to fix minimum wages in certain of the most exploitative trades, usually the ones in which women predominated. (This administrative history was written by Professor Mary Davis, Centre for Trade Union Studies, London Metropolitan University c 2008.)
The Greater London Council (GLC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council (LCC) which had covered a much smaller area.It had a number of sub-committees. The Women's Committee was set up in 1982 under Ken Livingston's administration. The first Chair was Valerie Wise appointed 11 May 1982.
The London Trades Council (LTC) was founded in 1860 as one of the first Trades Councils in the country. It was instrumental with other Trades Councils, particularly Manchester and Salford, in setting up the Trades Union Congress. It had a prominent role in the various working class struggles in the capital and nationally. In the 1860s it assisted in the set-up of the International Working Men's Association (the "First International"). It became closely involved in the struggles of New Unionism - particularly in the docks, the match girls, and gas workers. It took a leading role in opposing the use of troops in industrial disputes.
Through all the struggles of the 1900s, the LTC took a leading role - including the period of intense struggle from 1919 to the General Strike of 1926 - and on in to the 30s, 40s and 50s. In the Second World War it campaigned for equal pay for women workers mobilized for the war effort. It promoted increased production in combination with a greater say for workers in organizing production. In 1941 it organized a rally in Trafalgar Square supporting the Soviet Union, thus laying the foundations for the Second Front campaign. In the post-war period it campaigned for the nationalization of the mines, electricity supply and transport. In the 1950s the LTC was in conflict with the TUC and the London Federation of Trades Councils was set up.
The Greater London Association of Trade Union Councils was formed in 1974 to succeed the London Federation, and remains active.
The Amalgamated Society of Operative House and Ship Painters was founded in Manchester in 1856. It became the National Union of Painters in 1941, and the Amalgamated Society of Painters and Decorators in 1961. The Society's engagements were transferred to the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers in 1970, (now part of the Union of Construction and Allied Trade Technicians).
The Polytechnic of North London was the result of a merger of the Northern and North Western Polytechnics in 1971. Its degrees were awarded by the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA). In 1992, the Polytechnic gained University status (by the Further and Higher Education Act of the same year) and with that the power to award its own degrees and diplomas. In 2002, the University of North London merged with London Guildhall University to form the institution as it is known today, London Metropolitan University.
The Union was founded in 1906 as the Eastern Counties Agricultural Labourers and Smallholders Union. Its objects were to enable the agricultural labourer to secure 'proper representation on all local bodies...protection from political persecution and better conditions of living', and by 1910 it had 4000 members. In 1912 the name was changed to the National Agricultural Labourers' and Rural Workers' Union. It had 180,000 members by 1920 and the name was changed yet again, to the National Union of Agricultural Workers. It became the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers (NUAAW) in 1968 in recognition of its interest in industries ancillary to agriculture. In 1981 the NUAAW amalgamated with the Transport and General Workers Union.
Ernest Green (1885-1977) was Secretary of the Yorkshire District of the Workers' Education Association (WEA) from 1923 to 1928 when he moved to London to take up the post of national Assistant General Secretary. In 1931 he became the Organising Secretary with responsibility for dealing with WEA districts, branches, affiliated societies and the Workers' Education Trade Union Committee (WETUC). He was appointed General Secretary in 1934 and retired in 1950.
The Workers' Education Trade Union Committee (WETUC) was founded in 1919 by the Workers' Educational Association (WEA) and the Iron and Steel Trade Union Confederation to strengthen and give cohesion to the WEA's education work with the trade unions. WEA provided the secretariat at district and national level whilst trade union representatives formed the majority of the Committee.
By the mid 1930s there was a general interest throughout the labour movement in film propaganda. A Joint Film Committee from the Labour Party, the TUC and the Co-operative Movement first met in January 1938. The Committee recommended the establishment of a joint film organization, to be known as the Workers' Film Association (WFA). Joseph Reeves was appointed Secretary-Organizer, and the organization seems to have started its operations in October 1938. At an early stage contacts were made with Labour organizations, and the WFA decided to assist the Labour Party with election propaganda. A free film service was to be provided to marginal constituencies, together with short films of the party leaders. The Association developed an extensive library and distribution service, films were produced, distributed and exhibited, and film equipment was sold. During World War Two, the activities of the Association continued, but were were seriously curtailed. In 1946 the Association merged with the Co-Operative Movement's National Film Service, to form the National Film Association.
In 1917 when the Cambridge University diploma in Medical Radiology and Electrology was proposed there was no medical body to inaugurate and sponsor the teaching in London, so a medical society - the British Association for the Advancement of Radiology and Physiotherapy (BARP) - was formed. It was composed chiefly of medical members of the Röntgen Society and members of the Electro-therapeutic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine.
In 1921, BARP was incorporated, and in 1922, acquired premises at 32 Welbeck St. In 1924 it changed its name to the British Institute of Radiology (BIR). It worked in collaboration with the Röntgen Society whose meetings were held at the same premises, until 1927 when the two societies amalgamated to form The British Institute of Radiology incorporated with the Röntgen Society. The Society of Radiographers (founded in 1920) also became affiliated with the Institute at this time. The BIR received its Royal Charter of Incorporation in 1958.
X-rays were discovered on 8 Nov 1895, by Professor Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, of the Institute of Physics of the University of Wurzburg, Bavaria. The first radiological society - the X-ray Society - was formed in London in March 1897, by a group of medical men interested in Röntgen's discoveries. They drew up a code of rules for consideration by a larger committee meeting, and in June the same year, the name was altered changed to the Röntgen Society. The first General meeting of the Society was held in June 1897, and Professor Silvanus Thompson, was elected its first president. Members of the Society were more strongly representative of the field of physics than of medicine. In 1917 when the medical members of the Society, joined with the Electro-therapeutic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine to form the British Association for the Advancement of Radiology and Physiotherapy (BARP).
The Röntgen Society worked in collaboration with BARP and its successor the British Institute of Radiology (BIR). In 1927 it amalgamated with the BIR.
The Transport History Collection consists largely of two substantial bequests relating to British railway history, namely the Clinker collection and the Garnett collection. Charles Ralph Clinker was born at Rugby in 1906 and joined the Great Western Railway from school in 1923 as a passenger train runner. By the time of the outbreak of World War Two he had risen to become liaison officer for the four major railway companies with Southern Command HQ, and as such was involved in the planning and execution of the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940 and the D-Day Landings in 1944. He left railway service in 1946 and devoted the rest of his life to research and lecturing on railway history, a taste for which he had acquired when seconded to assist E T MacDermot in the preparation of his History of the Great Western Railway (London, 1964), and which Clinker subsequently revised for publication in 1982. Clinker wrote numerous books and pamphlets on railway history; his Clinker's Register of closed passenger stations and goods depots in England, Scotland and Wales, 1830-1977 (1963, revised 1978) is widely regarded as his magnum opus. He died in 1983.
David Garnett was born near Warrington in 1909 and as young man qualified as a chartered electrical engineer, soon afterwards completing his training at the Brush works in Loughborough. He then worked at the lift manufacturer Waygood-Otis, and during World War Two served with the National Fire Service, then at the Admiralty. In the 1950s he began to build a collection of railway and other maps which at the time of his death in 1984 was one of the finest such collections in the country.
Chris Wookey was born on 2 Aug 1957 and was a student at Brunel University, 1975-1979, obtaining an honours degree in Applied Biochemistry. He was a keen railway photographer and Chairman of the Brunel University Railway Society for two years. After leaving Brunel he taught Chemistry for almost ten years at Ryden's School in Walton-on-Thames. He died in 1989.
The Independent Force was established by the Royal Air Force on 6 June 1918 to conduct a strategic bombing campaign against Germany, concentrating on strategic industries, communications and the morale of the civilian population. The Independent Force was formed out of the Royal Flying Corp’s Forty-First Wing which commenced operations in October 1917. This initiative was partly in response to German airship and aeroplane raids on England but it also built upon earlier, small scale attempts at strategic bombing by the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps. As its name implied, it operated independently from the land battle and struck at targets in central Germany including Cologne, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Bonn, and Mannheim. It was also intended to operate independently of the control of the Allied Supreme Commander, Marshal Foch, although this was later changed.
The Independent Force was commanded, reluctantly at first, by Major-General Hugh Trenchard who was gradually converted to the idea of strategic bombing by the operations of the Independent Force. The squadrons were based on airfields in the Nancy region, well to the south of the British sector of the Front Line. Although the effort appears miniscule compared to later bombing campaigns, four day and five night bomber squadrons dropped just 550 tons of bombs during 239 raids between 6 June and 10 November 1918, the effect on the German war effort was remarkable. The main targets were railways, blast furnaces, chemical factories that produced poison gas, other factories, and barracks to which had to be added airfields in an effort to reduce attrition from enemy fighter aircraft.
The effect on morale was out of all proportion to the size of the bomber force or the material damage caused and the air raids resulted in the movement of German air defence units away from the Front Line. Trenchard ordered statistics and records to be kept to demonstrate the work of the Independent Force and the role of strategic bombing in modern war.