Ba-Bk
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Born:
Stoke Golding 1814, died 17th February 1887 (Leicester
Democratic Association)
T.P. Bailey was a leading figure
in the trade union and radical movement of the 1860-70s. He was a
framework knitter who saw trade unions as “necessary to working men, as
otherwise they would have to submit to great oppression.” He thought
strikes were a great evil, which often lay at the door of the employer. He
felt the remedy lay in boards of arbitration. In 1869, he was involved in
an attempt to set up a combined union for framework knitters from
Leicester, Derby and Nottingham and played a major role in the successful
campaign to end frame charges and rents.
With Daniel Merrick, he was
instrumental in establishing the Leicester & Leicestershire Framework
Knitters Union, which then provided a basis for the formation of the
Trades Council in 1872. In January 1871, he was put on the Liberal slate,
with Merrick, as a ‘working man’ candidate for the newly established
school board. The newly formed Democratic Association had its first
experience of organising the working class vote and Bailey came top of the
poll. The Democratic Association was supportive of Leicester’s radical M.P.
Peter Taylor.
In 1867, the Leicester
Co-operative Hosiers’ Industrial Society was formed and operated from
premises in Friday Street where T.P. Bailey lived. The society became
known as ‘Mr Bailey’s Society.’ However, it suffered from under investment
and in 1873, it was described having departed from its first principles
when, instead of manufacturing hosiery, it was buying and selling boots
and drapery having taken over a retail shop. It was placed on a new
footing when the union bought out the enterprise in 1875.
Sources: Midlands Free Press, 25th
December 1869
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Born:
1822? Yorkshire? died: 1853? (Chartist leader)
Jonathan Bairstow was a handloom
weaver. In 1841, at the age of 20, he was employed by the Chartists as a
lecturer for the district having been active in Lancashire. He was tall
with a clear strong and musical voice and had a commanding presence at
public meetings and his speeches were “mostly declamatory and his
descriptions extravagant.” Although, in the 1840s, he was based in
Leicester, he travelled widely and was also active in Derby.
Along with Thomas Cooper and many
other Chartist leaders, he was arrested in 1842 and put on trial at the
Lancaster assizes in 1843. He defended himself very ably, but along with
30 others was found guilty. However, sentencing was adjourned and due to a
fortuitous legal loophole, it was never passed.
In 1843, he was elected to the
National Charter Association and became editor of the Leicester weekly
newspaper, The Chartist Pilot, of which 56 editions were produced
during 1843-44. The paper was well produced and contained accounts of
labour conditions and local comment. Early in 1844, he was seriously
injured in a train accident on the Bolton and Preston railway.
Cooper had taken Bairstow into his
house and given him money for his journeys. Whilst Cooper was in prison,
he left Bairstow in charge his business of a bakery, coffee rooms and
newsagent. However, he apparently ruined the business, taking three
quarters of the money for himself and as a result Cooper’s house had to be
given up and Cooper’s wife was taken in by friends. According to Cooper,
he also appropriated a large portion of the funds collected to support the
Coopers and invited card players into the house. A good number of
Chartists turned their back him and set up the Hampden Section of
Leicester Chartists, leaving him to lead what was left of Cooper’s
Shakespearian Chartists.
In early 1846, Bairstow left his
wife and then moved from Leicester. After his departure, one of his
supporters described him as having “perpetrated indescribable mischief
engendered divisions, misunderstandings, public quarrels and private bad
feelings.” There are conflicting accounts of his later life. According
to Gammage he left Britain in 1853 for New York, but according to Harney,
he was drowned in the shipwreck of The President off the coast of
Australia in 1853.
Sources: Northern Star, 23rd
May 1846, R.C. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, 1894,
Thomas Cooper, The Life of Thomas Cooper, 1872, A. Temple
Patterson, Radical Leicester, J.F.C. Harrison, Chartism
in Leicester,
published in Chartist Studies Asa Briggs (ed) 1959
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Born: Leicester,
3rd December 1904, died January 1999 (Labour Party)
On leaving school in 1918 he
joined the Leicester City Libraries Department and later decided upon a
career in engineering. Throughout his working life (with the exception of
five years in Canada) he worked in the Engineering trade as a textile
engineer.
During the 1939/45 war he was
engaged on secret government work and also served in the Home Guard. In
1952, he was first elected to the City Council for the Spinney Hill Ward
and served until 1955. He returned to the City Council in 1963 as the
representative of Charnwood Ward and then for Wycliffe Ward in 1970. He
was a Chairman of the Museums and Libraries Committee of the City Council
and a Chairman of the former Civil Defence Committee. Albert Baker became
Lord Mayor in 1977 and his son Howard was elected as a councillor in the
1976.
Sources: Leicester City Council,
Roll of Lord Mayors 1928-2000
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Born:
Melton 1856, died: April 1932 (Liberal, I.L.P.& Labour Party)
George
Banton was described as the man who did the spade work to establish the
Labour Party in Leicester. He was bound as an apprentice in the cabinet
making trade and joined the Amalgamated Society of Cabinet makers at the
age of 19. Soon after finishing his apprenticeship and as a result of the
change of ownership of the business where he worked, he left his
employment and tramped from Leicester to Birmingham in search of work. He
then walked to London where he worked for several months. Being thrown out
of work, he tramped back to Birmingham and finding no work, he continued
tramping until he reached Liverpool. He then toured most of the chief
towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, occasionally finding work. He made his
way back to Leicester by way of Sheffield, Nottingham and Derby. He
arrived back in Leicester with only a farthing in his pocket, but within
an hour or two he met an old friend who had been seeking him for several
months to offer him a job.
After a period of work for the
firm Inglesant’s, he went to work for Gent & Co., the electricians. He
became a delegate to the Trades Council and, in 1892, was involved in the
foundation of the Leicester Co-operative Printing Society and also acted a
joint auditor of Equity Shoes for several years. He was eventually elected
president of the Trades Council for 1893-95.
At that time, Banton was the
Liberal general committee member for Westcotes ward. However, Tom Mann’s
speech to the Trades Council in 1894 was so effective that he left the
Liberals and joined the I.L.P., becoming the first president of the
Leicester Branch, a post he held from 1894-1909. As a result of his
support for Socialism, his union removed him as its Trades Council
delegate. In November 1896, he became the second I.L.P. member to be
elected to the Town Council representing Wyggeston ward. Being a Labour
Councillor caused him difficulties with his employer, so he went into
business as a coal merchant.
For many years, he was the leader
of the Labour Group on the Town Council. He became president of the Labour
Representation Committee in 1904, was made an alderman in 1905 and a
magistrate in 1907. He was a lay preacher at the Free Christian Church,
Harrow Road and was active in forming the first allotment society in
Leicester.
He was adopted as the I.L.P.
candidate for the 1913 parliamentary bye-election, breaking the electoral
pact with the Liberals, but was forced to withdraw by Labour’s national
leadership. Backed by the local ILP branch, Banton sent a telegram of
support to the British Socialist Party Candidate, E.R. Hartley who
hurriedly stood against the Liberals.
During the war, Banton advocated
MacDonald’s ‘People’s Peace.’ This position effectively ended the basis
for any electoral agreement with the Liberals. In 1918, he was heavily
defeated when he stood as candidate for Leicester East. However, he was
elected to parliament for Leicester East in 1922 and again in 1923, but
was defeated in the 1924 election. He became Mayor in 1925 and as chairman
of the Tramways Committee in 1926, prevented the Corporation from running
the trams with volunteers and or blacklegs during the General Strike. At
his funeral, his coffin was carried by local tramway workers.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 2nd
September 1902, 26th June 1913, 7th August 1914,
The Labour Party Conference 1911, Official Souvenir, Leicester 1911,
W.W. Borrett, 21 Years on the Town Council, 1917, Howes, C. (ed),
Leicester: Its Civic, Industrial, Institutional and Social Life,
Leicester, 1927, Bill Lancaster, Radicalism Co-operation and
Socialism, Leicester Mercury, 19th, 22nd & 29th
April 1932, Leicester Evening Mail 19th, 22nd April
1932
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Born: Stapleford,
Cambridgeshire c1870, (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
Ruth
Banton joined the Salvation Army at an early age, rising to the rank of
captain at the age of 16. After 7 years in the army, she resigned and came
to Leicester and took a position at the Victoria Road Church Mission. She
continued her social work until she married George Banton. (his second
wife)
She helped form the Women’s Labour
League in March 1906. Local founding members included: Marina Peach, Annie
Stretton, Mary Hill (aged 17) and Margaret MacDonald. She acted as
secretary of the Women’s Labour League for many years, becoming secretary
of the Labour Party Women’s Section. She was a committee member of the
Newton ward infant consultation centre founded in Marina Peach’s memory.
Ruth Banton was elected to the
Board of Guardians in 1913 and served until 1928. She was involved with
the beginnings of the Highcross Street Infant Welfare Centre and the
promotion of a Municipal Maternity Home. She was described as having
“an indomitable spirit behind a gentle
manner and frail physique….she excelled in her Labours in the comparative
obscurity of the committee rooms of the Poor Law Institution. Always
painstaking and conscientious, never caring for publicity, her one object
has been to secure justice for those compelled to seek Poor Law
assistance.”
Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 16th
May 1924, Howes, op cit
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Born: 1852, died:
1933 (Socialist League, SDF, Anarchist Communist Group, I.L.P., Secularist)
Tom
Barclay was born in a two-roomed hovel in an 18 ft. sq. court off Burley’s
Lane. He was the son of Irish parents who had been starved out of Ireland
by the potato famine. Although he never went to day-school, he was taught
to read by his mother. Although he scraped along in various menial jobs
for most of his life, he had a profound influence on the intellectual life
of the City. In the 1870s, he attended classes at the Working Men’s
College under the Rev. D.J. Vaughan and others, whilst working at Cooper
and Corah’s hosiery factory. He eventually rejected Catholicism and became
a Secularist, influenced by the writings of the American secularist Robert
Ingersoll and others. He joined the Leicester Secular Society in 1881.
He had a deep love of literature,
especially Ruskin and felt an obvious empathy with William Morris. He
later came across the new Socialist ideas and though Barclay saw
capitalism as evil, it was the moral, intellectual and spiritual
degradation that went with it that he so despised.
Although he was previously in the
S.D.F., in November 1885, he was a founding member of the Leicester branch
of the Socialist League and contributed to Morris’ Commonweal. He
was an active propagandist for socialism speaking wherever he could find a
platform. In 1886, Barclay was also briefly general secretary of the
Leicester Area Hosiery Union. The same year, he produced a weekly
newspaper, the Countryman that was distributed free to over 50 villages
and was financed through advertising and the patronage of J.W. Barrs, the
secularist tea merchant. The first issue came out in March 1886 and
displays Barclay's pen in full flow, with numerous articles tucked between
the copious adverts. There were features on village hosiery strikes,
political economy, magisterial appointments and an essay competition for
agricultural workers. It ceased publication in the early 1890s.
During his life he was a member of
the S.D.F., the Anarchist-Communist Group and the Independent Labour
Party, but he disliked the sectarianism of the left of those days. He
upset fellow Anarchists by supporting the I.L.P. and Joseph Burgess for
parliament. He claimed to have influenced many of the founders of the
I.L.P. including T.F. Richards, George Banton, Jabez Chaplin, Amos
Sherriff and his life-long friend Archibald Gorrie. Despite Bradlaugh's
rejection of Socialism, he remained one of Barclay's heroes. At the news
of Bradlaugh's death, Barclay was found in St Saviours road crying like a
child.
Barclay, probably because of his
impoverished background, held a long-standing aversion to co-operative
production. He believed with some justification that it enhanced to status
and economic position of the few well off workers who could fund such
ventures, leaving the deeper problem of poverty untouched.
He also set up a weekly socialist
newspaper exclusively for the Leicester Labour movement: the Leicester
Pioneer, probably in 1892. (None of the early issues survive) and
claimed 5,000 readers. Although he opened up the paper to the I.L.P., the
paper was eventually re-established with the backing of the Trades
Council, the I.L.P. and some Liberals.
During the 1890s, he worked as a
house to house bill distributor and took note of the people’s living
conditions. This served as a basis for a series of articles on Leicester’s
slums for The Wyvern written under the pseudonym of Armer Teufel
(poor devil) He also wrote on a number of other topics including
Some Memoirs of a Literary Hot Pea Vendor. He then moved to London
where he did a similar job. At this time he became convinced that he could
not be true Irishman without learning the language and took classes in
Gaelic. He returned to Leicester in 1902 and set up a short-lived branch
of the Gaelic League in the City. He had no desire for office even within
the Secular Society and despite the hard conditions of his life, refused
offers of financial help from his friends. He never married having been
disappointed in love in his ‘teens. Later in life, when it was clear to
him that he would always be poor, he determined never to marry and a have
children and have them suffer the privations that he had been through.
Barclay had a wide circle of friends, his fund of knowledge on books and
authors, of humorous tales, of limericks and school boy howlers made him
excellent company. Sometimes he would get out his whistle and amuse the
children by dancing Irish jigs. Children grew very fond of him. One
observer described as being: ‘never
so happy, as when he is making economic problems clear to the
comprehension of a costermonger in a Leicester court or alley. He is the
Socrates of the Market-place and street comer.’
He said he worked in quite twenty
factories over a period of fifty years and during the last twenty-five
years of his life his work was mainly that of a bottle-washer. Throughout
his life had an insatiable thirst for knowledge. He was a true working
class intellectual and freethinker. His book: Memoir and Medleys: The
Autobiography of a Bottle Washer was published posthumously in 1934.
Sources: Tom Barclay, Memoir and
Medleys: The Autobiography of a Bottle Washer 1934, Bill Lancaster,
Radicalism Co-operation and Socialism, Leicester Working Class Politics
1860-1906, Nash, David, Secularism, Art and Freedom, Leicester
1992, The Wyvern, 25th January & 7th June1895
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Born
Leicester c1852, died:1922 (tea merchant & Secularist)
Barrs was a well-to-do tea
secularist merchant and a well-known radical with idiosyncratic tastes in
both arts and politics. According to Tom Barclay it: 'Twas a
habit of him to purchase and read any book that the popular and ordinary
critic condemned.'
His father had been a prominent radical
councillor. In the 1881 census, he described himself as a tea dealer
and local atheistic lecturer (occasional). Barrs met Barclay
through the Secular Club and wanted a publish a journal which could
express the unconventional without let or hindrance. In 1886, Barrs financed
a free paper, The Countryman which relied on advertising for
its revenue. He gave Barclay complete editorial control. Barrs was a friend of the
poet James Thomson, (1834-1882) who contributed to Bradlaugh’s National
Reformer and wrote a poem for the opening of the Secular Hall. Barrs’
tea was well advertised in the Leicester
Pioneer.
Sources: David Nash, Secularism,
Art and Freedom, census returns, Bill Lancaster, Radicalism
Co-operation and Socialism.
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Died: May 1974
aged 55 (Labour Party)
 Sam
Barston was educated at Green Lane Boys School and later at Moat road
Intermediate School leaving at the age of 14. He was an ardent trade
unionist from his youth, becoming a shop steward at J.P. Engineering in
his teens. During the war his occupation was reserved and he served in the
home guard. In 1953 he was appointed as district secretary of the A.E.U.
and was also elected to the City Council for Charnwood ward. He held the
seat until 1968. In 1956, he won an American Government scholarship that
took him to the United States for four months. In 1973, despite a strong
challenge from a left-wing candidate, he won a fifth term of office as
AUEW district secretary in a postal ballot. Not long after, he had a
nervous breakdown and in May 1975, whilst severely depressed, he hung
himself.
Sources:
Leicester Mercury , 21st May 1974
& 16th March 1976, election addresses-Leicester Labour Archive
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'Darky' Barton
The
Leicester Daily Mercury reported in October 1921 that there was ‘an
unfounded rumour going about the town on Saturday night, that the negro
taken to the Royal Infirmary, after the affray at the Clock Tower was
dead.’ The same day the Leicester Mail reported that 'Darky' Barton
was ‘comfortable.’ Rumours are notoriously difficult to quash. Even after
50 years had passed, the author was told that the police had killed a
black man following their crackdown on the demonstration of the
unemployed. (see Dennis Jennett) R.V. Walton remembered 'Darky' Barton as
one of a group of people that used to hang about the Clock Tower. In an
all white city his dark skin must have given him a considerable amount of
notoriety. Since he was only ever referred to as ’Darky’ it is difficult
to trace death certificates, however the author has found no records of
any Barton dying in Leicester in 1921.
Sources: Leicester Daily Mercury & Leicester Evening Mail, October 3rd
1921.
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Born: Leicester
Stoughton c1855, died: Sept 11th 1922 (Co-operator)
George Bastard was involved with
the Temperance movement and was much influenced by the Christian
Socialists. His first connection with the Co-operative movement came in
the 1876, when he became an auditor of the Leicester Co-operative Hosiery
Society. He was elected to the Board of the Co-operative Society in 1885
and remained a board member for at least 26 years. He declined to be
nominated for president of the Co-op in favour of Amos Mann. He was the
Co-operative Society’s librarian and worked as a relieving officer for the
Board of Guardians.
Sources: Leicester Co-operative
Society, (1898) Co-operation in
Leicester, Leicester Co-operative Monthly
Record, November 1885
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Born:
c1878, Mountsorrel (I.L.P.)
 Edwin
Baum’s father Henry was an illiterate stockinger who realised the value of
education and tried to obtain the best education for his son. His early
education was at St Peter’s School, Mountsorrel and it became his duty to
read the newspaper to his father. Family circumstances did not allow him
to go to grammar school. When he was 14 his family moved to Leicester and
he started as a ‘sweeping lad’ in the hosiery trade, before graduating to
a Cotton’s patent frame. He joined the I.L.P. at its foundation, even
before there was a local branch. He was elected to the executive of the
Hosiery Union in 1914 and during the war he was President of the Union for
2½ years. He became President of the Trades Council in 1921 and was also a
member of the LCS board. He was a total abstainer.
Sources:
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Born:
18th Dec 1878, Dalbeattie, Scotland died: 1935 (I.L.P)
 Jimmie
Baum was the son of a quarry worker. After his father was killed in an
accident, he was brought up in Mountsorrel by his grandfather (Edwin
Baum’s father), who had been a staunch Chartist. His early education was
at St Peter’s School, Mountsorrel. He worked all his life as a clicker in
the boot and shoe trade.
He was always a studious
individual and as a youth attended the Working Men’s College and later
became a member of the University Tutorial classes studying economics and
biology. He was active as a lecturer in the adult school movement and was
a founder of the WEA.
He joined NUBSO No 2 Branch in
1896. He was elected Secretary of the Trades in 1912 and held the position
for 11 years. He eventually became the National Organiser of NUBSO. He
joined the I.L.P. in 1900 and after the war acted as agent in West
Leicester for Labour MPs Alf Hill and Fredrick Pethick-Lawrence.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 25th
April 1924, Trades Council Year Books, Alan Fox, A History of the
National Union of Boot and Shoe Workers,
1958
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Born: St George,
Middlesex, 1834 died: 1917
Anna Beale came to Leicester in 1876
as the headmistress of the Belmont House School on New Walk. She remained
headmistress until 1882 and then continued to
teach French and German at the school until 1887. She resigned her post
due to ill health. Whilst at the school, she enabled girls to take the
London Matriculation for the first time. In 1887, she became the first
joint secretary of the Leicester and Leicestershire Women’s Suffrage
Association.
Sources: Isabel Ellis, Records Of
Nineteenth Century Leicester
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Born:
Melbourne, Australia 1872 (I.L.P.)
Seaward Beddow went to school in
Australia and to university in Toronto Canada. Whilst in Canada he married
Ethel Cooper. From 1911, he was the pastor at Wycliffe Congregational
Church. (Previously he had been assistant to Dr Ambrose Shepherd in
Glasgow and then at Carey Hall) He was active in the I.L.P. and also
chaired public meetings of the British Socialist Party. He was active in
the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation during WW1 and in the inter war
period. In 1920 the Bloomsbury Press published his play: The Challenge
with a foreword by George Lansbury. He wrote two more plays:
The Proconsul
and The Prodigal Son.
He was active in the ‘No More War’ movement in the 1920s and 30s and was a
lecturer for the Workers’ Educational Association.
He played a role in helping the
Hunger Marchers in 1934 at a time when the official trade union movement
was hostile to the NUWM led protests. In 1938, he described Air Raid
Precautions as “a hindrance to peace and a direct encouragement to
war.”
Sources: Leicester Mercury, 22nd
September 1938
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Born:
17th July, 1856, Hinckley (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
Thomas Bedford was taught at home
by his father who was a Quaker schoolmaster. Having started work at the
age of 6 as a winder in the hosiery trade, he made his first stockings,
aged 10, on a ‘two legger.’ A young Jabez Chaplin was his winder. He
became a preacher and was active in the Adult School Movement. He left the
hosiery trade and for 28 years sold shoes in Loughborough Market. He was a
member of the Board of Guardians for Newton ward for 20 years.
Sources:
Leicester Pioneer, 4th April 1924
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Born: Thringstone,
9th May, 1864 died: 1929 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
George Bell’s only schooling came
from his father who was a Methodist local preacher. By the age of 9 he was
working as an agricultural labourer. For a time he worked in the mine at
Swannington, he then worked in Leicester in a mineral water factory where
he lost an eye in an accident. He then returned to the mines in Yorkshire
c1880. In 1881 he was working at the Leicester Gas Works where he
organised the union, got a reputation as an agitator and was sacked. He
then went back to work in the mines in Nottinghamshire. He then secured a
position at the C.W.S. Wheatsheaf works and joined NUBSO. After various
spells of unemployment, he took a job as a dyer’s labourer.
He was elected as a delegate to
the Trades Council in 1896 and became its president in 1923. He was a
member of the General Workers' Union and frequently worked as a
propagandist in the rural areas of Leicestershire.
Sources:
Leicester Pioneer, 18th April 1924
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Born: Mansfield,
c1874, died: 1956 (I.L.P. & Labour Party)
 Miss
Mary J. Bell started work, half-time, at the age of 10. She worked in the
boot and shoe trade as a shoe fitter and joined NUBSO in 1892. In c1903,
she was nominated by the Trades Council as a candidate for the Board of
Guardians and was duly elected. Though she was not the first woman on the
Board of Guardians, she was the first Labour woman and the first working
woman to be elected to the local board. She spent 12 years as an elected
member of the Board of Guardians during which time she claimed to have
visited every case of childbirth in Wyggeston ward that came under the
Poor Law authorities. She successfully moved the abolition of Oakhum
picking and was also successful in her support for the appointment of a
woman relieving officer. In 1906, she was a member the national executive
of the Labour League of Women and active in the Citizen’s Aid Society.
In 1911, when the Leicester
Women’s Branch of NUBSO (No 3 branch) split from the union and became
independent, she stayed in NUBSO and took over the secretaryship (and
several other posts) of the branch when its membership stood at 58. As a
result of her heroic efforts, membership slowly rose and even some of
those who had defected to the independent union returned. However her
increased union work led to her resignation from the Guardians in 1913.
When she married Freddy Richards in 1916 she added his name to hers,
becoming Mrs Bell-Richards (though he did not do the same.) That year, she
became the full-time president of the branch and in 1918, she became the
second woman to sit on the Executive Council of NUBSO. As the number of
women in the industry increased, so did union membership. By 1939, when
she retired, the membership of the branch stood at 6,136.
Mrs Mary Bell-Richards was a delegate
to the International Working Women's Conference held in Geneva in 1921. It
was held under the auspices of the Standing Joint Committee of Industrial
Women's Organisations (to whose General Purpose Committee she was elected
in 1925)
Like Lizzie Wilson, Mrs
Bell-Richards was frequently at loggerheads with the rest of the executive
over the role of the Women’s branch and the position of women in the union
and in the workplace. In 1922, Mrs Bell Richards became convinced that
that the Leicester Women’s Branch, if permitted to make their own terms
with the employers, could exempt themselves from negotiated wage cuts. She
was probably right, since the Independent Women’s Union was doing just
that. However the union leadership refused to agree so Mrs Bell Richards
resigned her seat on the EC and threatened secession by the Leicester
Women’s branch.
“We want to be equal members of the
Union and I want to say quite frankly that we shall fight this to the
bitter end…..even to our extinction.”
The strong bargaining position
of women in Leicester and the pugnacity of Mrs Bell-Richards ensured that
women’s increased wages from 56% of the men’s rate to 67% in 1935. She
managed to get the union to support the idea of an equal minimum wage for
women in 1926, though many in the union saw it as a distant objective. She
also wanted all factory departments to be open to women provided that the
full men’s rate was paid. This was voted down by the Union conference in
1930 who did not want women engaged on work hitherto done by men. She also
fiercely resisted notions that working women were not good mothers.
In 1929, she was elected to be
chair of the Leicester Trade Board. She had joined the Labour Party at its
foundation and contested West Humberstone ward in 1924 and Charnwood ward
in 1928 in local council elections.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer 27th March
1908, Alan Fox, A History of the National
Union of Boot and Shoe Workers,
1958, Richards, T.F. & Poulton E.L., Fifty Years: Being The History Of
The National Union Of Boot And Shoe
Operatives, Co-operative Magazine, Leicester
Pioneer
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Born: London died
2008 aged 97 (Labour Party)
Kathleen Benson came to Leicester
in 1945 having previously worked in the estates and housing department of
the L.C.C. She was elected for to the City Council for North Braunstone in
1958 after having fought six unsuccessful contests in other wards. In
1965, she became ‘chairman’ of the city Health Committee. She lost her
seat in the Conservative landslide of 1967 and became a social worker at
Groby Road hospital.
Her husband, Chris Benson (d 1985)
was a long serving City architect who was responsible for the design of
much council housing from the 1925-65.
Sources: author’s personal knowledge
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Born: Leicester
26th May 1914, died February 2002 aged 87, (Labour Party)
Arch
Berridge left school in 1928 aged 14 and worked as an apprentice engineer
at the firm of Ashwell and Nesbitt. He stayed with them as a centre lathe
turner until 1938. After a spell as an insurance agent, he returned to the
engineering industry in 1940, working for Goodwin and Barsby as an
engineer. He joined the A.E.U. in 1942 and in 1943, became convenor, a
post he held until he retired in 1979. He was elected secretary of his
union branch in 1952 and served as a member of the District Committee of
his union from 1950 to 1979.
In 1945, he joined the Labour
Party in 1945. Arch Berridge first stood for the council in Aylestone ward
1961 and in 1962 was elected for Belgrave. Following his defeat in 1965,
he returned to the City Council in September 1970 when he won Latimer
Ward. In 1979 he was re-elected for the Belgrave Ward. He became a County
Councillor in 1973 when he was elected to represent the Belgrave Ward on
the new Leicestershire County Council. These ‘dual councillors’ attracted
some criticism at the time because of a perceived conflict of loyalties.
He became Lord Mayor in 1981.
A devout Methodist, he served in a
number of offices in his local church at Claremont Street, Leicester over
many years.
Sources: Leicester City Council,
Roll of Lord Mayors 1928-2000
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Born:
c1866 Plymouth, Devon (I.L.P.)
George Bibbings was the full-time
lecturer at the Spiritualist Hall in Silver Street. The hall was
frequently used by the Socialist League and the SDF for their meetings. He
was elected to the Guardians for Newton ward in 1904, and believed in
relief without pauperisation, advocating a more humane regime in the
workhouse with increased payments for those on out-relief. He assisted
George White in organising the unemployed in 1905.
Sources: Bill Lancaster,
Radicalism Co-operation and Socialism
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Born
1801, died 4th June 1871 (Liberal)
John Biggs was a radical
politician, hosiery manufacturer and philanthropist, who attended the
Unitarian Great Meeting in Bond Street. Like his younger brother William
he was self-made man and both brothers became prominent in the reform
movement. In 1830, John Biggs founded the Leicester Political Union (later
the Reform Society) which provided support for the 1831 Reform Bill and
provided the political opposition to the Tory corporation. When municipal
reform and elections finally took place in 1835, the old corrupt Tory
corporation was swept from power. John and William Biggs were elected to
become leading lights in the council that took office in January 1836.
John Biggs serving as Mayor on three occasions: 1840, 1847, and 1855.
In the late 1830’s, a political
gulf opened between the working class and middle class wings of the reform
movement. The Biggs's were adherents of political economy and had little
sympathy for working class grievances over frame rents, wages and the poor
law. The sweeping reforms advocated by the Chartists went far beyond what
manufacturers and radicals like the Biggs's were prepared to contemplate.
John Biggs had a good reputation
as an employer. After the slump of 1838, his was the first factory in
Leicester to raise wages. However, whilst the Biggs's were Radical in
politics, they regarded unions as wrong-headed. They saw that the only
route to improvement lay with free trade and, as a result, John Biggs
founded the Leicester Anti-Corn Law League in 1838 whose aim it was to
achieve freer imports and exports and by so doing bring down the price of
bread. This was viewed as a diversion by many Chartists.
In 1842, John Biggs offered his
Midland Counties Charter which advocated universal suffrage to males over
25 and triennial parliaments. But the Chartist stood firm for their six
points and any common ground with the working class was hampered by a
bitter strike broke out amongst the glove-hands in 1843. The Chartists
were able to point accusingly at Liberal politicians and hosiery employers
like William and John Biggs who, despite their radical credentials, were
opposed to the removal of frame rents and were resistant to calls for
decent wages. Nevertheless, Biggs did use his influence to curb the worst
instances of repression against the Chartists by the magistrates.
In the late 1840s early 1850s,
John Biggs was motivated by his belief in the necessity to channel
working-class dissent, as expressed through Chartism, into the Liberal
party. By 1847, the Biggs's had adopted manhood suffrage and church
disestablishmentarianism as their programme. As the power of the chartist
movement declined, an alliance between classes became possible. As Mayor,
John Biggs presided over the Great Reform meeting of April 1848 which
reunited the Chartist with middle class radicals. Further reform meetings
over the next few years building the alliance that ensured Liberalism
hegemony in Leicester until the 20th century.
The radical candidates, like
Chartist John Markham, who stood for election in 1852 stood as nominees of
the Reform Society. They stood on a programme of votes by ballot, the
redistribution of seats, triennial parliaments, the removal of taxes on
raw material, the substitution of direct for indirect taxation, a national
system of secular education and electoral rights bases on the payment of
taxes and residence. This had much in common with the six points of the
Charter. Biggs also campaigned to have two radicals elected to parliament
for Leicester instead of the compromise that previously existed of one
Whig and one radical. In 1852, the much alarmed paper of the Whigs, the
Leicester Chronicle, branded Biggs as a ‘Red Republican’ and
‘Chartist.’
Sir Henry Halford was the
Conservative member for South Leicestershire and in 1853, he introduced a
bill to abolish frame rents. Although the bill failed, it was supported by
one Leicester MP, Sir Joshua Walmsley and it led to John Biggs
dramatically announcing his own 'Discontinuance of Frame Rents without Act
of Parliament'.
When Biggs was elected to
parliament in June 1856, he was elected on the Reform Society programme.
The fact that his firm had voluntarily abolished frame rents must also
have endeared him to the working class, since the ex Chartist leader Buckby
advised his followers to vote radical. However, there were never two
radical Liberal MPs elected in Leicester. This was only achieved with the
election of Broadhurst and MacDonald (for Labour) in 1906. On the collapse
of his hosiery business in 1862, John Biggs stepped down from parliament
and was replaced by another radical, P.A. Taylor. John Biggs' memory is
honoured in Leicester with a statue in Welford Place. (The present bronze
dates from 1929 and is modelled on the original marble statue which could
not be repaired) He is buried in Welford Road Cemetery.
Sources: Leicester Chronicle, 5th
June and 7th July 1852, Midlands Free Press 10th June 1871, A.
Temple Patterson, Radical Leicester,
Bill Lancaster, Radicalism Co-operation
and Socialism, VCH Vol 4
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Born 1805, died
1881 (Liberal)
Having advocated ‘almost
universal’ suffrage in 1830, William Biggs leapt into the front ranks of
the reform party, becoming secretary of the Political Union and its
successor, the Reform Society. When municipal reform and elections finally
took place in 1835, the old corrupt Tory corporation was swept from
office. William was elected to he council and was also secretary of the
local Liberal Association and led his party in gaining the town's two
seats from the Tories in 1838. By this time William Biggs had retreated
from his earlier views on universal suffrage and become closer to the Whig
wing of Liberalism which was very cautious of electoral reform.
William, a hosiery manufacturer,
was also less sympathetic to working class grievances than his brother
John. During the glove hands strike of 1843, the strikers’ band played the
dead march in front of his warehouse. Several hundred men were seen in
procession headed by a very large placard having up on it: ‘More
aggressions of the glove manufacturers to crush the working man.’ This
was followed by a black banner having painted on it a white slave, with
his clothes all tattered and cut into rags and apparently in a dying
state. It was inscribed: ‘The white slave or dying operative, our
rights or nothing else.” The march went to different manufacturers
asking for the same rate of pay from a year previously. Nine manufacturers
agreed to give the price. “However William Biggs the concoctor of the
Midland Counties Charter, the great reformer of the House of Lords, the
supposed philanthropist and great teacher of equality said he would not
talk to the men.”
William Biggs parted from his
brother on the issue of frame rents, whereby framework knitter s paid his
master a rent for the frame upon which he worked. William used his maiden
speech in the House of Commons, seemingly oblivious to any conflict of
interest, to attack a bill introduced to abolish frame-rents.
He was mayor in 1842, 1848 and
1859. In 1852 he was elected MP for Newport, Isle of Wight, a seat he held
until 1857. He was a strong opponent of England’s involvement in the
Crimean War and wrote a pamphlet entitled Never Go To War For
Turkey. During
the American Civil War he often spoke out in support of the Union. He was
also a believer in compulsory national education and advocated the
establishment of the Welford Road Cemetery. He also went into the family
business in the course of which he travelled extensively in Europe and the
USA.
Sources: Northern Star, 24th
June 1843, A. Temple Patterson, Radical
Leicester
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Born:
Leicester, 12th May 1924, died: July 1997 aged 73 (Labour Party)
 George
Billington left school at 16 and, apart from war service, worked most of
his life as a clerk. He joined the Labour Party in 1949 and became
secretary of the Newton Ward branch in the 1950s and the Secretary of the
newly-formed New Parks branch in 1982. In 1969, he became Barnet Janner’s
election agent and continued in that capacity for his son, Greville.
George Billington was elected to
the City Council in 1971 for the Newton Ward and as a County Councillor in
1973, holding minor positions of responsibility on both councils. He was
regarded as being on the right of the party and during the 1970s and
1980s, he was a staunch opponent of Militant supporters within the Labour
Party. For many years, he was the butt of Colin Grundy’s jokes, which he
always took in good part. He became Lord Mayor in 1983 and stood down in
1996.
Sources: Leicester City Council,
Roll of Lord Mayors 1928-2000, author’s personal knowledge
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Born circa 1859
(Socialist League and Fabian Society)
James Billson was a member of the
Secular Society and a friend of the Gimson family. James Billson’s father
Jon was a coal merchant and James worked in the trade as well as being a
florist and a farmer. He was a Kyrle Society subscriber and friend of G.B.
Shaw. He gave financial support to the Socialist League in the 1880s and
was a friend of J.W. Barrs. In the 1890s he joined the Fabian Society and
bought an estate which included the ruins of the medieval priory of
Ulverscroft. He sold two plots to Sydney and Mentor Gimson and
commissioned Ernest Gimson to build a two cottages on his piece of land.
Ernest then built ‘Stoneywell’ cottage (1898) for Sydney, ‘Lea’ cottage
for Mentor and ‘Rockyfield’ cottage for Margaret Gimson (1908). It was
this way that Billson and the Gimsons fulfilled their version of William
Morris’ rural utopia in houses built according to the precepts of the Arts
& Crafts movement.
Sources: David Nash, Secularism,
Art and Freedom, Leicester Arts and Museums Service, Ernest Gimson
& the Arts & Crafts Movement in Leicester, census returns
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Born
In 1841, J.W. Billson was the
secretary of the Leicester branch of Robert Owen’s Universal Community
Society of Rational Religionists. He was also the auditor of the Mechanics
Institute (1844). In 1852, he was a committee member of the Leicester
Secular Society and was also active in discussion class at the Domestic
Mission in the 1850s.
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Born: circa 1826,
died 1881 (Hose, Shirt & Drawer Hosiery Union)
In 1858, two unions for framework
knitters were formed in Leicester: the Sock and Top Union and the Hose,
Shirt and Drawer Hosiery Union. Robert Bindley was a leading figure in
latter and in 1872, the two unions merged to form the Leicestershire
Framework Knitters Union. Members of the Hose, Shirt and Drawer Union
benefited from the Victorian fad for woollen underwear. Although, like the
glove trade, it could suffer from the vagaries of fashion, by 1870 the
union’s membership had grown to 1,000 members in Leicester and 1,000 in
the County.
When Robert Bindley gave evidence
to the Commission into the Truck System, in 1871, he had been a framework
knitter for 34 years. It had long been the practice for middlemen to rent
out knitting frames to stockingers. Along with Daniel Merrick, in the Sock
and Top Union, he was active in the successful campaign for legislation to
abolish frame rents and charges. Bindley describes how the spreading of
work amongst as many frames as possible, even during depressed times,
ensured that the hosiers or middlemen received their profit at the same
time as it perpetuated the framework knitters poverty. He believed that
the surplus of frames was not an accident, but had been deliberately
devised by masters, since the rents and charges were the most lucrative
part of the business.
In his pamphlet on the struggle
against frame charges (1875), he described how difficult it was to find
men who would give evidence against the system even though they had been
‘cruelly oppressed.’ “This fearful feeling was not confined to the men,
some of the leaders acted with the same timidness.” He described how
for thirty years all those who had campaigned against these rents had been
victimised in some way or other. Bindley supported co-operative production
and his union purchased the ailing Hosiery Co-op in 1875, purchasing 7
frames with union funds.
Sources: R. Bindley, The History
of the Struggle for the Abolition of Frame Rents & Charges, 1875
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Died:
January 1935 (Communist Party)
Jack Binns was an Irishman and
unemployed engineer who came to Leicester in 1920 in search of work. He
soon became Chairman of the unemployed committee with John Minto as
secretary. In early 1921, he was moving resolutions at meetings of the
unemployed in the Market Place which demanded the reopening of trade with
Russia, the institution of maintenance of £2 per week for unemployed
householders, 25/- for every single man and woman and 4/- for each
dependent child.
His political views were not liked
by prospective employers and he had difficulty finding a job. At one time,
he had to work as a peddler to eke out a living. ‘Little’ Redfern
remembered him as a very straightforward man who was a capable speaker and
a good worker for the Communist Party. He was active in the National
Unemployed Workers' Movement up to his death in 1935. He was a delegate to
the Trades Council from the A.E.U. and a member of the executive of the
Trades Council in 1928.
Sources: Leicester Mercury 11th
January 1935
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Died: February
1991 aged 93
Susan Bird was appointed to of
full time organiser of the Leicester Hosiery Union in 1934. This
appointment by the executive was bitterly resented by some sections of the
male membership. In 1947, she became Nottingham district secretary for the
NUHK and she travelled to her job from Leicester until she retired in
1962. She was elected to the City Council in 1951, representing
Humberstone ward until 1954.
Sources: Leicester Mercury, 13th
June 1962, 7th February 1991
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© Ned Newitt Last revised:
January 27, 2012. |
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Index
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