The White Dog Benevolent Society was formed in 1783 at the White Dog public house, Widegate Street, Bishopsgate, and subsequent meetings continued to be held there. The aim of the organisation was to grant aid to the poor during the Winter months by the distribution of bread and coals purchased through membership subscriptions, contributions, admissions and fines. The Society also gave relief to distressed members, their widows, or children through the same funds on the approval of subscribers and members.
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Born, 1756, Devon; married John Huxtable (1760-1838), South Molton, Devon, in November 1784; John Huxtable acquired Narracott, a farm in George Nympton parish, in 1806 and the family moved into the property in 1811; the couple had eight children, six sons and two daughters; Elizabeth Huxtable died in South Molton in July 1851, aged 94.
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The Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Company was a philanthropic model dwellings company, formed in London in 1885, during the Victorian era. In 1952, it was renamed the Industrial Dwellings Society (1885) Ltd. and is today known as IDS. The IDS manages over 1,400 properties in the London Boroughs of Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Southwark, Redbridge and Barnet. Its president is Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, a descendent of the banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who founded the Society.
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Born, October 1876, Barton in the Clay, Bedfordshire; by 1890, the family had moved to Luton, where the father worked as a corn and flour dealer; in 1894, just before his eighteenth birthday, Arthur began work as a footman for Clements Robert Markham of 21 Eccleston Square, London; in subsequent years, Arthur would work as a footman for many other gentlemen, including Sir Jabez Edward Johnson-Ferguson, Count Edmund de Baillet and Sir Arthur Otway.
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Born in Winchester in 1815; when Butler was four years old, the family moved to London in search of employment and in later years, he learned the family trade of boot and shoemaking; ran a shop in Ben Jonson Road, Stepney (formerly Rhodeswell Road); married, lived in Baker Street, Stepney, and had nine children, of which two boys and three girls reached adulthood; around 1850, Butler found religion and became an active member of the Open Air Mission, working together with City missionaries to offer material and spiritual support to the disadvantaged in the East End; died in March 1884 while living in Stepney Green and was buried in Tower Hamlets Cemetery as a non conformist in unconsecrated ground and in a public, unmarked grave.
The Society for Photographing Relics of Old London originated in the wish of a few friends to preserve a record of the 'Oxford Arms' Inn, threatened with destruction in 1875, and actually demolished a few years later. The project, mentioned in The Times, was so well received, that it enabled the Society to follow up the first issue, and later on to double the annual number of photographs. By the twelfth years issue, published in April 1886, it was considered the project had reached its completion.
The National Standard Theatre, located in Shoreditch High Street, was originally built in 1837 with a horse shoe auditorium seating 3,400 but was destroyed by fire in 1866; rebuilt and reopened December 1867 with a seating capacity of 3000; rebuilt for a third time by Bertie Crewe with a capacity of 2,463; by November 1926 it was in use as a cinema called The New Olympia Picturedrome; building demolished in 1940.
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Black Sections, the Labour Party movement for African Caribbean and Asian people, was established in 1983. Four Black Sections members were propelled into the House of Commons four years after the demand for greater representation was first tabled at the Labour Party conference in 1983.
Robert Leckie Marshall was born in 1913, in to a Lancastrian mining community. Marshall flourished at school, and went on to study English Literature at the University of St. Andrews. His education was supported by Carnegie Foundation grant, a miners' scholarship and a university bursary. After graduating in 1935, Marshall travelled to America and gained a Masters in Politics from Yale University.
Returning to England in 1937, Marshall was commissioned to the Royal Army Services Corps after the outbreak of the Second World War. In May 1940, Marshall was injured at Dunkirk. After returning home, he joined the Royal Army Education Corps. During his posting at the Home Office, Marshall produced a series of booklets named The British Way and Purpose: an Army handbook of elementary citizenship. This led to his appointment to Commandant at the Army School of Education with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and was appointed OBE (Military) in 1945.
Marshall's successes within education system continued when he was headhunted for the position of Principal of the Co-operative and Chief Education Officer of the Co-operative Union. Marshall built partnerships with Nottingham University and other educational institutions to expand the college's curriculum and provide accreditation for the college awards. Marshall became heavily involved in the Co-operative movement, regularly giving speeches and looked to promote co-operative ideals aboard. Marshall went on several Co-operative missions, including those to Tanganyika, Nigeria, India, Kenya, and Thailand. Marshall's enthusiasm and commitment brought him respect and admiration from the over 3,000 students that passed through the Co-operative College during the 30 years he was Principal.
Marshall's association with the Co-operative extended much further than his work with the College; he was elected president of the Co-operative Congress in 1976 and served as editor of the Journal of Society for Co-operative Studies from 1967 to 1995. Marshall went on to serve on many public bodies, including the advisory council (1973-77), and the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (1976-82).
Photographer Phil Maxwell has been photographing the East End of London, and in particular Brick Lane environs, since he moved to the area from Liverpool in 1981.
Mavis Middleton (nee Bidgood) was born July 28, 1922, and from the age of one grew up at Wensley House, a home school on the edge of the forest at Epping. She attended the Loughton County High School and then Bedford College, London, where she gained a certificate in Social Studies. As part of her training she worked for a time at the Stepney Green Jewish Girls Club and Settlement House, a place she loved and remained in contact with for many years. Her first job was as a club leader for the National Council of Girls Clubs in Rugby, Warks. There she met her husband, 'Middy' Middleton, who was working for BTH (British Thompson Houston), and they were married on January 29, 1944. Four and a half years later, they moved to Cambridge where Middy had been offered the post of university lecturer in electrical engineering. Two of their children were born in Rugby and two in Cambridge. As a young wife and mother, Mavis was fortunate enough not to have to go out to work, but she never lost her strong commitment to social causes. During the early 1950s she joined in the efforts of the International Help for Children to find foster homes for refugee children from the Balkans. She and Middy were active in the local Liberal Party, and once hosted a fundraising garden party opened by Jo Grimmond. During the 1960s as their children grew older, her voluntary activities increased. For more than a decade she was an elected council member of the South Cambridgeshire Rural District Council. She was an active founder member of the Cambridge Law Surgery, the Cambridge Association for the Advancement of State Education and the Cambridge Association for the Prevention of Drug Addiction. From the late 1960s as their own children left home, she and Middy fostered a family of five children with whom they remained in touch for the rest of their lives. As a result of this experience, Mavis became involved with The Voice for the Child in Care, and later helped, both practically and financially, to establish a refuge for battered women in Cambridge. She was employed for a year as a welfare support worker for students at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. During the course of the 1970s, Mavis became increasingly active with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the Cambridge and the East Anglia groups and then on the national committee. In June 1982, she and Middy attended the United Nations Second Special Session on Nuclear Disarmament in New York, and in October 1983, on behalf of CND, she went to lobby US senators in Washington, DC. In 1987, after 40 years in Cambridge, Mavis and Middy moved to Whittlesey, Cambs. Mavis became a volunteer general adviser for the Peterborough CAB (Citizens Advice Bureau), and then for DIAL Peterborough (Disability Information and Advice Line). She continued to do this to the end of her life. Middy died in 1994, aged 88, and Mavis died on New Year's Day, 1999.
Eric Moonman was born in Liverpool in April 1929. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Billericay 1966-70 and Basildon 1974-1979. Moonman was educated at Liverpool and Manchester Universities and became a senior research fellow in the Department of Management Science at Manchester University. He was a councillor on Stepney Borough Council, serving as Council Leader until 1965, and on the London Borough of Tower Hamlets from 1964.
Moonman contested Chigwell in 1964 without success and was elected for Billericay in the 1966 general election, losing the seat four years later. He then was elected for Basildon at the February 1974 election, but again lost his seat at the 1979 general election. In the 1980s, he joined the short-lived Social Democratic Party (SDP). Since then, he has pursued an academic career, and is currently Professor of Management at City University, London and Senior Fellow, University of Liverpool.
The Mondcivitan Republic was initiated by Hugh Schonfield in 1956, at which time it was known as the Commonwealth of World Citizens. The republic was conceived as a 'servant-nation', a nation without territory, whose citizens across the world would work to promote peace and unity in the aftermath of World War II. The Mondcivitan Republic British Isles South East Community was based in Camden, London in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and was largely organised by Peter Deed. The Republic ran a craft shop, housing association and a school from its headquarters in Delancey Street; it also had its own national bank and currency (the 'Mondo').
Diane Munday became involved in the campaign to reform abortion law in the 1960s, following her own experience with abortion. She was a member of the Abortion Law Reform Association and of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service until the 1990s, and frequently gave speeches and wrote articles on the topics of abortion, pregnancy and family planning. Later, she became interested in the question of voluntary euthanasia, and has also spoken and written on that subject.
Munday began questioning religion at the age of 8 or 9, and has been heavily involved with the British Humanist Association. She began a successful campaign for a state school in her village after her son was called a pagan in the local Church of England school. She was appointed as a magistrate in 1969, acting for many years as Chair of the Family Panel, and retired from the Bench in 2001.
Clive Murphy was born in Liverpool in 1935. He was educated and brought up in Ireland where he qualified as a solicitor. In 1958 he emigrated to London and settled in Spitalfields in the early 1970s. His 'Summer Overtures' was joint winner of Adam International Review's First Novel Award in 1972. 'Freedom for Mr. Mildew' and 'Nigel Someone' appeared to critical acclaim in one volume in 1975. A series of nine recorded autobiographies, as listed below, followed. Since 1999, Clive Murphy has published six books of comic, often ribald, verse. The eighth, 'On Pleasure Bent', was published in 2013. The 'Ordinary Lives' series, edited by Clive Murphy, includes: Deeds of a Good Woman by Beatrice Ali (1976); Born to Sing by Alexander Hartog (1978); Four Acres and a Donkey: the memoirs of a lavatory attendant by S.A.B. Rogers (1979); Love, dears! The memoirs of a former chorus girl by Marjorie Graham (1980); Oiky: the memoirs of a pigman by Len Mills (1984); At the Dog in Dulwich: recollections of a poet by Patricia Doubell (1986); A Stranger in Gloucester: recollections of an Austrian in England by Mrs Falge-Wahl (1986); Dodo by Dodo Lees (1993); Endsleigh: memoirs of a riverkeeper by Horace Adams (1994).
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In 1992 family members of victims of the Bangladesh Liberation War (Bangladesh War of Independence) living in Bangladesh began an unprecedented movement under a campaign called 'Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee' (Committee for Resisting Killers and Collaborators of Bangladesh Liberation War). The Committee has since been renamed the Forum for Secular Bangladesh and Trial of War Criminals of 1971, and is commonly known as the Nirmul Committee. The UK branch of the Nirmul Committee (also known as Bangladesh Anti War Criminal Committee but now known as International Forum for Secular Bangladesh) was also formed in 1992 in solidarity with the campaign in Bangladesh. Its operations were based in the East End of London, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Both the Bangledesh and UK Committees were formed to seek justice for the victims of Bangladesh Liberation War and to challenge fundamentalist or extremist groups who were seen to have colluded with the occupying Pakistani military (including the Razakars and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami). In addition, the UK branch of the Nirmul Committee would seek to expose suspected collaborators who were residing in the UK after fleeing Bangladesh and to challenge the rise of religious fundamentalism and extremism in the UK. The UK branch also has a remit to advance the education of the public generally, and of young people of Bengali origin in particular. This includes, but is not limited to, Bengali secular culture, history and traditions.
The National Miners Support Network was established in 1992 at the initiative of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs and was supported by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Women Against Pit Closures; aimed to encourage and coordinate maximum practical support and solidarity for miners in all areas of the country following the Government's announcement of pit closures in 1992; took steps to produce a regular support bulletin ('Coal Not Dole'), stage fundraising events, distribute posters and badges, organise meetings and speakers and hold a major national conference.
Born in Clerkenwell, London in 1948, photographer Colin O'Brien has published several books of photographs of the people and places of London.
Gilda O'Neill was born in Bethnal Green in 1951, the granddaughter of a Thames tug skipper and a pie-and-mash shop owner. Her parents, Dolly and Tom Griffiths, originally from Bow, eventually joined the postwar slum clearance diaspora in Dagenham, Essex. Leaving school at 15, she took a succession of office and bar jobs in the City. In 1971 she began a whirlwind romance with John O'Neill and married him a week after their first meeting. After their son and daughter were born, Gilda went back to education and began writing after studying at the Open University and the Polytechnic of East London.
In 1989, Gilda's first book was commissioned, the oral history Pull No More Bines: Hop Picking: Memories of a Vanished Way of Life (1990) for the Women's Press (it was reissued as Lost Voices in 2006). She had been fascinated by her mother's accounts of hop-picking in Kent as a girl, and indeed had accompanied her there as a small child. Her first novel, The Cockney Girl (1992), drew on her family experience, but combined it with careful research, also a feature of the crime novels she wrote in later years, of which The Sins of Their Fathers (2003) was the first in a trilogy. Gilda was prolific. Over 20 years, she published 15 novels and five social histories.
She participated regularly in workshops, and co-founded the writers' network Material Girls. In 2008, she joined the National Reading Campaign and contributed not only her book East End Tales (2008), a collection of easy-to-read childhood memories, to the campaign but also lent real fire to what might otherwise have been earnest events. Gilda died from side-effects triggered by medication prescribed for a minor injury in 2010.
Her publications include: My East End: Memories of Life in Cockney London (1999), Our Street: East End Life in the Second World War (2003), The Good Old Days: Crime, Murder and Mayhem in Victorian London (2006). Her novels, include family sagas such as The Bells of Bow (1994) and Just Around the Corner (1995).
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PartiZans are a campaign group who aim to raise awareness of the affect mining and other related industial practices have on local communities (especially indigenous populations) lations) and environments.
Born, March 1905, the youngest son of Colonel Sir John Perring and his wife Florence Higginson; educated at University College School and, during the Second World War, served as a Lieutenant in Royal Artillery, although was invalided in 1940.
After the war, Perring worked as Chairman of his own company, Perring Furnishings Ltd (1948-1981) but also took a variety of public roles, serving as member of the Court of Common Council (Ward of Cripplegate) (1948-1951), Alderman of the City of London (Langbourn Ward) (1951-1975) and one of Her Majesty's Lieutenants of the City of London and Sheriff (1958-1959). Between 1962 and 1963, Perring served as Lord Mayor of London. Furthermore, he was Chairman of the Spitalfields Market Committee (1951-1952), member of the London County Council for Cities of London and Westminster (1952-1955) and served on the County of London Planning Committee, the New Guildford Cathedral Council and the Consumer Advisory Council of the British Standards Institute between 1955 and 1959. Perring also worked as a governor of various public institutions, including St Bartholomew's Hospital (1964-1969) and Imperial College of Science and Technology (1964-1967). He was also a Master of the Worshipful Company of Tin Plate Workers (1944-1945), a Master of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers (1977-1978) and Senior Past Master and founder member of the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers, along with serving as the Chairman of the BNEC Committee for Exports to Canada (1968-1970) and the Confederation Life Insurance Company of Canada (1969-1981). He died in June 1998.
Andrew Roth was born in New York in April, 1919, to Jewish-Hungarian parents. He went on to study Far Eastern History and Chinese at Columbia University, pursuing his interest in the politics and development of the Far East. He went on to work as a researcher for the Institute of Pacific Relations before completing an intensive Japanese language course at Harvard at the behest of the US Navy. Roth completed his enlistment after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, working as a Naval Intelligence Officer specialising in Japanese translations and code breaking. Before the end of his Navy career he was tried for pro-communist sympathies and leaking Naval documents to the Left-wing Amerasia Magazine, but was released without conviction. After the War Roth successfully published his first book, titled 'Dilemma in Japan', in 1945. He then left America and travelled extensively across Europe, the Middle East and the Far East, acting as a roving correspondent for The Nation Magazine, a left-leaning US publication. He also worked as a freelance journalist for various US and Canadian publications, as well as most of the major newspapers of Asia, including The Hindu, India; The Pakistan Times; The Palestine Post; and The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon syndicate. Writing on topical issues and the post-war political developments of the Far East, Roth worked with and wrote about most of the major political and journalistic figures of the time. The McCarthy anti-communist trials of the late 1940s prompted Roth to postpone returning to America, and he instead settled in England in 1950, remaining there until his death. He continued his journalistic outpourings, working predominantly for The Manchester Evening News (1972-1984), The New Statesman (1984-1997), and contributing regularly to The Guardian’s obituaries section. He continued to write for other foreign newspapers and magazines, and received regular speaking engagements to talk about his political views and experiences in post-war Asia. The focus of Roth’s work shifted towards European political research, resulting in the 'Parliamentary Profiles' series of political biographies, published from 1955 onwards. He also published seven books relating to various political figures, and created the weekly Westminster Confidential newsletter. Roth died on 12 August 2010 of prostate cancer, aged 91.
Founded in 1989, the Public Utilities Access Forum (PUAF) is an informal association of organisations which helps to develop policy on the regulation of the public utilities providing electricity, gas, communications and water services in England and Wales. PUAF facilitates the exchange of information and opinions between bodies concerned with the provision of those utilities to consumers with low incomes or special service needs, such as the elderly and people with mental and physical disabilities. It draws the particular problems of such consumers to the attention of the industries, the regulators and other relevant bodies, promoting the adoption of policies and practices which cater for their needs, exchanging information about service provision and promoting research.
The Rationalist Association, known as the Rationalist Press Association until 2002, was founded in 1885 by radical publisher Charles Albert Watts from his print works, CA Watts and Company Limited at Johnsons Court, London. Watts was part of a group of freethinkers who felt that the British secularist movement had become too political in nature, and had started to abandon its intellectual tenor. Watts was also looking for a way to circumvent the mainstream booksellers and publishers who often refused to handle secularist material. Watts first established the Propagandist Press Committee in 1890, appointing George Jacob Holyoake as President. Shortly afterwards the committee changed its name to the Rationalist Press Committee, and by 1899 the Rationalist Press Association had been formed. The Association began issuing reprints of serious scientific works by Julian Huxley, Ernst Haeckel and others, as well as establishing the CA Watts and Co Thinker's Library book series (under the leadership of Fredrick Watts), published from 1929 to 1951. The link between the Rationalist Press Association and CA Watts and Company Limited remained strong and in 1930 the Association agreed to place all their printing and publishing business with the Company for a period of 21 years. The close relationships continued and in 1953 it was agreed that the publishing policy of CA Watts and Co would be decided by the Rationalist Press Association Board. Additionally, a single Editor General would be responsible for obtaining books for publication by both CA Watts and Co and the Rationalist Press Association, and the Association was granted the rights to appoint five directors to the Board of CA Watts and Co. The minutes record that, ''In brief, free initiative should be given to Watts [and] Co to run the publishing side of the business, as well as that of booksellers and printers, and to build up income to assist the Rationalist Press Association in its propaganda work.'' Pemberton Publishing Company was a subsidiary of the Rationalist Press Association, being fully owned by the Association. Pemberton had a specific interest in producing radio and television programming, trading under the name Human Horizons. From 1962, Pemberton handled all the publishing affairs of the Rationalist Press Association. The Rationalist Benevolent Fund was a registered charity, established by the Rationalist Press Association in 1928 for the relief of distressed rationalists. The Trustees of the Fund were also Directors of the Rationalist Press Association. Similarly, the Rationalist Trust was established as a charitable body affiliated to the Rationalist Press Association. It operated until 2004, after which it was removed from the Charities Register and incorporated into the Rationalist Association. The New Humanist is the magazine of the Rationalist Press Association and is published on a bi-monthly basis.
Red Pepper is a magazine (founded in 1984) and, later, a website of left politics and culture, drawing on socialist, feminist, green and libertarian politics, and seeking to be a space for debate on the left, a resource for movements for social justice, and a home for open-minded anti-capitalists.
'Republic' was formed in London in 1983 as an interest and pressure group to promote Republicanism, to provide a forum and focus for democratic republican opinion and to contribute to ideas about the concept of a British Republic. It was affiliated to the Thomas Paine Society; to the Campaign for the Freedom of Information and to Charter 88. The group subscribed to the Quarterly Review of the Constitutional Reform Centre and hosted its own Working Party on Constitutional Reform, although avoided direct affiliation with any political party.
William Rogers was born in November 1819, was the son of William Lorance Rogers, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn and a London police magistrate, and his wife, Georgiana Louisa, daughter of George Daniell QC; sent to Eton College in September 1830; Oxford University, matriculating from Balliol College in 1837, and graduating BA in 1842 and MA in 1844. While at Oxford he obtained no academic distinction, but became well known as an oarsman. He had in May 1837 rowed in the Eton boat against Westminster. He took an active part in founding the Oxford University boat club, and rowed number four in the fourth race between Oxford and Cambridge in 1840; left Oxford and went with his mother and sisters on a tour abroad, staying mainly in Florence, and on his return entered the University of Durham (October 1842) for theological training; ordained to his first curacy--at Fulham--on Trinity Sunday 1843. In the summer of 1845, Rogers was appointed to the perpetual curacy of St Thomas's, Charterhouse, City of London; remained for eighteen years, and worked to improve the social conditions of his parishioners, particularly by establishing schools; exploited the influential friendships he had formed at Balliol with the likes of Lord Coleridge, Stafford Northcote, Lord Hobhouse, Dean Stanley, Jowett, and Archbishop Temple to carry through his schemes. He eternally dunned' his friends, as he admitted, for his great educational work, but never for his own advancement. Within two months of his arrival he opened a school for street children in a blacksmith's shed and, in January 1847, he opened a large school building, erected at a cost of £1750. In five years' time he was educating 800 parish children at the new school, but was determined to extend his operations. He was encouraged by the sympathy of the marquess of Lansdowne, president of the council, who in 1852 laid the foundation of new buildings in Goswell Street, completed in the following year at a cost of £5500. Rogers had obtained £800 from the council of education; the remainder he obtained by his private fund-raising. But before the debt was extinguished he had projected another new school, in Golden Lane, and contrived to extract nearly £6000 from the government for the purpose. This was opened by the Prince Consort on 19 March 1857. Before he left St Thomas's, Charterhouse, the whole parish was a network of schools, described in the official reports on the schools published by Rogers successively in 1851, 1854, 1856, and 1857; appointed by Lord Derby a member of the Royal Commission to inquire into popular education, June 1858; returned at the head of the poll as a representative of the London school board, 1870; appointed Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the Queen, 1857; prebdendary at St Paul's, 1862; presented to the rectory of St Botolph without Bishopsgate, June 1863. There he energetically set about founding what were calledmiddle-class schools': secondary schools catering for the sons (he later added provision for girls) of tradesmen and clerks, intended for white-collar occupations in the City. At a time when secondary education was under review by the Taunton commission, Rogers became a leading promoter of such schools. The Cowper Street middle-class schools in Finsbury, for which he raised £20,000, were a model of their type. His next important work was the reconstruction of Alleyn's great charity at Dulwich, of which he was appointed a governor at the behest of the prince consort in 1857. After becoming chairman of the governors in 1862, Rogers had a stormy relationship with the headmaster, A. J. Carver, who was intent on establishing a leading public school. Rogers wanted the endowment to be used to establish middle-class schools in London parishes, an aim partly achieved, after four schemes had been mooted, in 1882 when the Alleyn School was founded as a separate institution from Dulwich College. Rogers advocated secular education, leaving doctrinal training to parents and clergy. He was much attacked in the religious press for an outburst in October 1866 against the obstacles to middle-class schools: Hang economy, hang theology: let us begin' (Reminiscences, 167). This earned him the sobriquethang theology' Rogers. He supported the opening of museums and galleries on Sundays and was a founder of the non-sectarian Society for the Relief of Distress. In Bishopsgate, Rogers was active in the restoration of the church of St Botolph, and at all times, both in his own and adjoining parishes, the erection of baths, wash-houses, and drinking fountains, the extension of playgrounds, and the provision of cheap meals, industrial exhibitions, picture galleries, and free libraries had his heartiest support. His labours in his own parish culminated in the opening of the Bishopsgate Institute (24 November 1894). From the mid-1880s he was badly lame, which curtailed his activities. Rogers died Jan 1896.
Andrew Roth was born in New York in April, 1919, to Jewish-Hungarian parents. He went on to study Far Eastern History and Chinese at Columbia University, pursuing his interest in the politics and development of the Far East. He went on to work as a researcher for the Institute of Pacific Relations before completing an intensive Japanese language course at Harvard at the behest of the UN Navy. Roth completed his enlistment after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, working as a Naval Intelligence Officer specialising in Japanese translations and code breaking. Before the end of his Navy career he was tried for pro-communist sympathies and leaking Naval documents to the Left-wing Amerasia Magazine, but was released without conviction.
After the War Roth successfully published his first book, titled Dilemma in Japan, in 1945. He then left America and travelled extensively across Europe, the Middle East and the Far East, acting as a roving correspondent for The Nation Magazine, a left-leaning US publication. He also worked as a freelance journalist for various US and Canadian publications, as well as most of the major newspapers of Asia, including The Hindu, India; The Pakistan Times; The Palestine Post; and The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon syndicate. Writing on topical issues and the post-war political developments of the Far East, Roth worked with and wrote about most of the major political and journalistic figures of the time.
The McCarthy anti-communist trials of the late 1940s prompted Roth to postpone returning to America, and he instead settled in England in 1950, remaining there until his death. He continued his journalistic outpourings, working predominantly for The Manchester Evening News (1972-1984), The New Statesman (1984-1997), and contributing regularly to The Guardian’s obituaries section. He continued to write for other foreign newspapers and magazines, and received regular speaking engagements to talk about his political views and experiences in post-war Asia. The focus of Roth’s work shifted towards European political research, resulting in the ‘Parliamentary Profiles’ series of political biographies, published from 1955 onwards. He also published seven books relating to various political figures, and created the weekly Westminster Confidential newsletter.
Roth died on 12 August 2010 of prostate cancer, aged 91.
The Rationalist Peace Society was founded in 1910 by Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner and J.M.Robertson MP. The Society established itself during the period of increasing controversy about war preceding the First World War. The aim was to "protest against ideas and methods which are utterly opposed to reason and the interests of social progress." As the war progressed it was divided by the issue of conscientious objection and conscription - and as members began to feel the war was justified it dwindled until fading away after the war.
As a result of Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech denouncing Joseph Stalin and the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, many abandoned the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and began to rethink its orthodox Marxism. Some joined various Trotskyist groupings or the Labour Party.
The Marxist historians E. P. Thompson and Ralph Miliband established the Communist Party Historians Group and a dissenting journal within the CPGB called Reasoner. Once expelled from the party, they began the New Reasoner from 1957. In 1960, this journal merged with the Universities and Left Review to form the New Left Review. These journals attempted to synthesise a theoretical position of a revisionist, humanist, socialist Marxism, departing from orthodox Marxist theory. This publishing effort made the ideas of culturally oriented theorists available to an undergraduate reading audience. In this early period, many on the New Left were involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, formed in 1957.
Under the long-standing editorial leadership of Perry Anderson, the New Left Review popularised the Frankfurt School, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser and other forms of Marxism. Other periodicals like Socialist Register, started in 1964, and Radical Philosophy, started in 1972, have also been associated with the New Left, and published a range of important writings in this field.
As the campus orientation of the American New Left became clear in the mid to late 1960s, the student sections of the British New Left began taking action. The London School of Economics became a key site of British student militancy. The influence of protests against the Vietnam War and of the May 1968 events in France were also felt strongly throughout the British New Left. Some within the British New Left joined the International Socialists, which later became Socialist Workers Party while others became involved with groups such as the International Marxist Group.The politics of the British New Left can be contrasted with Solidarity, UK, which continued to focus primarily on industrial issues.
part of the Ruskin College/History Workshop/Raphael Samuel History collection
Launched in 1976, the History Workshop Journal is a leading historical journal that engages with contemporary debate on radical politics.
The Raphael Samuel History Centre is a research and educational centre devoted to encouraging the widest possible participation in historical research and debate. The RSHC has a large programme of research, teaching, and public events. The Raphael Samuel History Centre is a four-way partnership between the University of East London (UEL), Birkbeck, University of London, Queen Mary, University of London and the Bishopsgate Institute.
Born, London, 1934; educated at King Alfred's School, Hampstead, and Balliol College, Oxford, where he was tutored by and became friends with historian Christopher Hill; during this time he became a Marxist, joining the Communist Party and the Communist Party Historian's Group; the latter an organisation formed by E.P.Thompson, Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, Eric Hobsbawm, Maurice Dobb and others and which was responsible for founding the journal Past and Present, which aimed to pioneer the study of working class history; left the Communist Party, 1956, and was one of the founder editors, together with Stuart Hall and Charles Taylor, of what was soon to become the New Left Review; appointed Tutor in Sociology at Ruskin College, Oxford, 1962; launched a series of national workshops, starting in 1966, on topics previously neglected including women's history, the history of childhood, empire and patriotism, the changing definitions of nations and the cultural diversity of Britain. Participation in these workshops was to remain extremely popular into the 1970s and 1980s, and many of its contributors became initial writers for the History Workshop Journal, founded in 1975; appointed Professor at the University of East London in 1996, although died shortly after. His publications include: Village Life and Labour (1975), Miners, Quarrymen and Saltworkers (1977), People's History and Socialist Theory (1981), East End Underworld (1981), Culture, Ideology and Politics (1983), Theatres of the Left: 1880-1935 (1985), The Lost World of Communism (1986), The Enemy Within: The Miners' Strike of 1984 (1987), Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity (1989), Patriotsm: Minorities and Outsiders (1989), The Myths We Live By (1990), Theatres of Memory (1996) and Island Stories: Unravelling Britain (1997).
Jean Sargeant arrived in London from Antigua in 1950, at the age of 17, never to return. While taking a secretarial course, and living with her aunt, she began to explore London. Within a year she had met and married her husband and, for a few years, lived in Newcastle upon Tyne and Inverness. By the early 1960s Jean was back in London and, although the marriage was over, she remained good friends with her ex-husband for the rest of her life. She began work as a secretary at The Sunday Times and rose to become an editorial researcher in the travel section where she wrote many articles. She stayed at The Sunday Times until 1986 when she lost her job in the Wapping dispute. Despite a colonial upbringing which might have led her to different politics, Jean joined the Labour Party and actively campaigned in the 1964 general election and all subsequent elections, general and local, until the last few months of her life. She was a committed Anglican, a Christian Socialist and an active member of the Jubilee Group. A regular visitor to Lords, especially when the West Indies were playing, she was enormously proud that her grandfather, Percy Goodman, was a member of the first West Indies cricket team to tour Britain in 1900 and again in 1906 - a multi-racial team, she was pleased to point out. When the anti-apartheid Stop the Seventy Tour campaign sought to disrupt tours by the all-white South African cricket team in the late 1960s, Jean became actively involved. The campaign succeeded in stopping the 1970 South African cricket tour of Britain. After Jean lost her job in Wapping, she joined the Guardian as a secretary where she worked until her retirement.
Peter Sedgwick was born in 1934 and brought up in Liverpool. He gained a scholarship to Balliol College Oxford where he became a communist, leaving the Communist Party in 1956 with other members of the early New Left. He then joined the Socialist Review Group later to become the International Socialists. He wrote brilliantly for the group’s press, but also involved himself deeply in all the drudgery and activities of the rank rank-and and-file members. He was always a free spirit and was bitterly opposed to the International Socialism group renaming itself as a the Socialist Workers Party in 1976 refusing to join the new organisation while always remaining a man dedicated to the far left. He was editing the works of Victor Serge at the time of his death.
The Spitalfields Inventory was a project to detail the features of buildings in the Spitalfields area conducted by a group of researchers between 1990 and 1991. The area was divided into 8 blocks and surveys were conducted on a select number of buildings in that area recorded on a survey form and colour transparency of the building. No further information on the origins of the project is currently known.
The Society of Public Librarians (SPL) was founded in 1895 to promote the interests and professional status of chief librarians in and around London. The Society held monthly meetings at which papers would be presented on matters of professional interest or debate, including cataloguing, public access to library shelves, the selection of books and so on. The group also hosted an annual outing every summer out of London to a historic or cultural landmark or educational institution, along with an annual dinner in the Holborn area of London. The Society, along with leading members Charles Goss, John Frowde, Frank Chennell, William Bridle and Edward Foskett, remained one of the main vehicles of opposition to open access within the public library, with debate channelled through the correspondence pages of newspapers and periodicals. The Society folded in 1930.
Sandys Row Synagogue is the oldest Ashkenazi synagogue in London, and the last remaining synagogue in Spitalfields. The main synagogue building is almost 250 years old and Grade II Iisted. In 1763 a French Huguenot community purchased an old chapel and it's freehold on this site for £400 on a corner of Henry VIII's artillery ground. L'Eglise d'Artillerie was dedicated in 1766 and remained open until 1786, when it merged with the London Walloon Church. For the next fifty years, the church was let to several Baptist congregations, becoming known as Salem Chapel and then Parliament Court Chapel.
In 1854, 50 poor Dutch Ashkenazi Jewish families founded a chevrah, a type of Friendly Society with a small synagogue attached known as the 'Society for loving-kindness and truth'. The first of its kind. By 1867, it had grown to five hundred members when it acquired the leasehold of the French chapel, having found a champion in the architect, Nathan Joseph. The site was particularly suitable because it had a balcony and was on an East-West axis, albeit facing westwards. Joseph blocked up the original entrances which are still visible, and formed a new one in Sandys Row, together with a new three-storey building for offices and accommodation. The community's independent streak, which perhaps goes a long way to explaining its longevity, was first evidenced in 1870, when the leading Sephardi rabbi, Haham Benjamin Artom of nearby Bevis Marks Synagogue, formally consecrated this Ashkenazi place of worship. The Chief Rabbi at the time, Nathan Marcus Adler, had publicly opposed the establishment of any new synagogue by the poor East End Ashkenazi migrant community and refused to be associated with it. In November 1887, Sandys Row Synagogue was the largest of the East End congregations that founded the Federation of Synagogues. It left the Federation in 1899, and was refurbished for the 50th anniversary of the community after acquiring its freehold becoming an Associate of the United Synagogue in 1922. In 1949 it returned to independent status. For many years the Synagogue acted as the secretariat of the Stepney and Whitechapel Street Traders' Association, bringing together all the market traders from both Petticoat Lane and Whitechapel Markets.