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Born: Leicester 1907, died: January 1987, (Labour Party &
Communist Party)
Albert Hall was educated at the
former Milton Street Board School before starting a five-year
apprenticeship with a local wood working firm. In the late 1920s, he
managed get out of the slums in Fleet Street and get a council house on
the new South Braunstone estate. He then became a leader in of the local
tenants association. During the 1930s he produced the Braunstone Gazette
which was distributed free to tenants on the estate and was active in the
campaign for local community facilities and lower rents. He was an active
anti fascist during the 1930s and resigned from the Labour Party in
protest over the party’s initial support for non-intervention in Spain. He
was an active member of the Spanish Aid Committee and took in Czech
refugees from the Sudetenland into his house.
He was a member of the Communist
Party member from the late 1930s, though he left the party in the mid
1950s in the wake of the Hungarian invasion. He was an organiser for the
Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers for 26 years and Trades Council
President 1954 & 1970-1. In the early 1960s, he lent his support to Arnold
Wesker’s Centre 42 activities. This culminated in a successful arts
festival sponsored by the Trades Council in 1962. He was a member of the
Phoenix and later Haymarket Board as well as a governor of Charles Keene,
South Fields and Leicester Polytechnic. In the early 1970s, he was active
in opposition to the government’s legislation on trade unions.
Sources: Leicester Mercury, 25th
August 1982, 12th January 1987, interview Leicester Oral
History Archive, author’s personal knowledge
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Born: County Durham, died: June 1992 aged 53 (Labour Party)
 John
Hall was an instrument maker and member of the E.T.U. He was elected as
both a City and County Councillor. During the 1950s, he was a RAF
electrician and witnessed Britain’s nuclear tests on Christmas Island. He
suffered ill health as a result and in the 1980s, he became a leading
light in the campaign for compensation for nuclear test victims.
Following his death from leukaemia,
his case for compensation was raised in parliament by Keith Vaz MP.
However, successive governments have refused to acknowledge any link
between the tests and the ill health of ex-servicemen. His son Colin also
seved on the City Council.
Sources: Leicester Mercury, 4th
June 1992
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Born: Burton-on-Trent, 1877, died: December 1933 (I.L.P.&
Labour Party)
 Hallam’s
father was a railwayman involved in the 1886 strike, for which he was
subsequently victimised. As a result, the family moved to Leicester and
his father began business as a coal merchant. Although Herbert went to
Ruskin College, he went into the family business. Despite this, he was an
advocate of the municipalisation of the coal trade (including his own
business). He became member of the Fabian Society and was a believer in
phrenology.
He active in the Labour movement in
1904 and was elected to Board of Guardians in 1907. He was subsequently
elected to City Council in 1913 for St Margaret’s’ ward which had a very
high proportion of landlord owned property and contained some of
Leicester's worst housing conditions. With many landlords now raising
rents, Hallam's election manifesto now advocated that the corporation
should initiate a housing scheme.
“The outstanding fact was that in St.
Margaret’s children died three times as fast as the children in Spinney
Hill ward? Why? Because men like Mr Yearby (a Conservative councillor)
represented themselves and their property owning friends, instead of
protecting the lives of children.”
Hallam too was strongly influenced by
the ideas of Town Planning. He opposed streets being laid out on the grid
iron system of heavily paved streets running parallel and at right angles.
His proposal, in 1914, that the Council should undertake a housing scheme
was agreed by the Council, but delayed by war. He stood as the Labour
candidate for Loughborough in the 1918 general election.
In 1921, he became Vice Chairman of
the first Housing and Town Planning Committee and after the death of Cllr
Arthur Wakerley (Liberal) in 1924, he became its Chairman and was
responsible for the planning and building of the Saffron Lane and the
South Braunstone estate. He held this position until a month before his
death. He was very opposed to pressure from government to build smaller
council houses. He was an advocate of the parlour house which had two
living rooms downstairs.
“Let me give you an idea of how a
parlour should be furnished. This is it: a table a few easy chairs and all
the books you can afford. By this simple method of furnishing, the parlour
would become a place in which the various members of the family would
retire when they had important work to do. Gas and electricity should be
laid on in all houses and there should be a continuous supply of hot
water. Electricity will soon be used in every household, and so reduce the
housewife's hours of labour to those of the miner. Why should we demand 6
hours a day for men and be content to let women work twice or three times
as long.”
He was regarded as being an
intellectual and was described by the Tory Leicester Mail as: ‘the most
gentlemanly socialist we know….’ He is commemorated by Hallam
Crescent, Braunstone Estate.
Sources: Howes, C. (ed),
Leicester: Its Civic, Industrial, Institutional and Social Life, Leicester
1927, Leicester Pioneer, 9th January & 13th March
1914, Leicester Evening Mail 6th December 1933
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(Labour Party)
Henry Hancock was a elected to the
Guardians c1912 and became chair of the board in 1924. He was a Labour
candidate for Belgrave in 1925 and eventually won Westcotes in 1927 (Lab
gain)
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Born: 12th February 1865, died:1948 (I.L.P.&
Labour Party)
 Harry
Hand was the eldest child of a large family and attended Charnwood Street
Board School, he was at work as a part-timer at the age of 8 and left
school aged 11. After a series of dead end jobs he was apprenticed as a
carpenter and joiner, joining the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and
Joiners in 1886. However trade depression meant that he had to seek work
in Sheffield and Birmingham. Returning to Leicester he worked as a
journeyman until the outbreak of war. Early in 1915, he set up in trade on
his own account as a joiner and shop-fitter.
In 1886, he joined the Amalgamated
Society of Carpenters and was branch secretary for nine years. He was a
founder of the Leicester Labour Party in 1903 and became Vice Chair of the
Labour Party in 1907. He was elected councillor for Abbey ward in 1909 and
served until 1945. In 1914, he was the co-sponsor, with Herbert Hallam, of
a proposal for council housing in Leicester. In 1918, he became president
of the Labour Party, succeeding George Banton. In 1924, he became the
chairman of the Labour Group on the City Council and was made an alderman
that year. He was Lord Mayor 1928-29. He was vice chairman of the Housing
Committee during the 1930's. He was a prominent member of the City of
Leicester Working Men’s Club (Bond Street) Speaking in the Market Place in
1923 he is reputed to have demanded ‘Homes for the homeless, boots for
the footless.’ He studied music in his spare time at Vaughan College
and sang in St Luke’s and later St Saviour’s choir. He is commemorated by
Hand Avenue, Braunstone Estate.
Sources: Howes, C. (ed),
Leicester: Its Civic, Industrial, Institutional and
Social Life, Leicester 1927, Leicester
Pioneer 20th June 1924
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(I.L.P.)
Charles Harris became the president
of the Trades Council in 1892. He was also elected to the Board of
Guardians for Wyggeston in 1905 and campaigned for the unemployed with
George White. He was re-elected in 1913. He was a member of the Labour
Party executive 1910.
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Died:
December 1905, aged 65 (Co-operator)
Henry Harrott was a frame smith. He was elected to the
board of the L.C.S. in 1872 and on his death had been its secretary for 18
years.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer 23rd December 1905
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Born: Bradford 1854, died: 1918 (I.L.P., S.D.F., B.S.P. and
Clarion)
E.R. Hartley spent most of his life
in Bradford. His started out as a half-timer in a factory later becoming
an apprentice butcher, eventually setting up in business on his own. He
became a Socialist in 1884 and was involved with the formation of the
I.L.P. In 1895 he was elected to Bradford Council and elected again in
1898, becoming an alderman.
After 1901, he gave his allegiance to
the S.D.F. after a disagreement with the I.L.P. He was involved with the
Clarion vans and was an unwearying propagandist, visiting Leicester
several times. However, his propaganda work was always enlivened with a
dry caustic humour, which was always disconcerting to opponents. This gift
of humour made him much sought after as a lecturer. His parliamentary
contests were numerous and unsuccessful. There were many that considered
that his relentless opposition to anything in the way of canvassing helped
him to loose votes that he might otherwise would have obtained. This did
not apply to bye-elections where the fight was a rushed one, but to steady
fights for the SDF in East Bradford in 1906 and 1910. He was a candidate
for the I.L.P. in Dewsbury (1895), Newcastle (1908 & 1913) and stood for
the British Socialist Party in Leicester in 1913, after George Banton was
prevented from standing. He polled 2,580 votes, somewhat less than
expected.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 1st
February 1918
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Born: Stafford, 4th March 1863, died: March 1946
(I.L.P., W.S.P.U.)
 Alice
Hawkins came from a working class background and left school at the age of
13 to become a machinist in the boot and shoe trade. In her early twenties
she was taken on by the Equity shoe factory and was active in the No 3
branch (woman’s branch) of NUBSO. She was a founding member of the
Leicester I.L.P. and in 1894 was vice president of the women’s I.L.P.
By 1901 she and her husband Alfred
(also from Stafford and born c. 1858) had five children and both she and
Alfred played a prominent role in the organisation of the 1905 unemployed
march. In 1906, she was a founder member of the Women’s Labour League,
though, less than a year later she deserted the W.L.L. for the more
militant W.S.P.U.
In 1907, she attended the W.S.P.U.
rally in Hyde Park and following a march on the House of Commons, she was
arrested and sent to prison. On her release, she invited Sylvia Pankhurst
to speak in Leicester and the Leicester branch of the WSPU was formed soon
after. It is thought that Alice is the subject in one of Sylvia
Pankhurst’s painting made at the Equity shoe factory. She wrote that “...
at night I held meetings for the local WSPU, amongst whom, only Mrs
Hawkins, as yet, dared mount the platform.”
Alice and her Leicester colleagues
began a tireless campaign of speaking at factory gates, market squares and
village greens throughout Leicestershire and parts of Northamptonshire.
Alice went to prison five times for
various militant actions which included chaining herself to railings,
throwing a stone through a Home Office window, pouring ink into letter
boxes and making a disturbance when Winston Churchill held a Liberal
meeting at the Palace Theatre in 1909.
Her husband, Alfred was a committed
socialist and supported her in the suffragette campaign. On one occasion,
he followed Winston Churchill to a meeting in St George’s Hall, Bradford
and heckled him over the issue of votes for women. The stewards threw him
out the meeting and down a flight of stairs breaking his leg. The Men’s
Political Union successfully sued the Liberal party and gained £100
compensation. Alice’s presence in the branch ensured that the WSPU in
Leicester did not become a totally middle class organisation, despite the
national direction of the movement.
In 1911, Alice Hawkins became
president of breakaway Independent National Union of Boot and Shoe Women
Workers, which was led by her colleague Lizzie Willson. Both women were
already delegates to the Trades Council. Like Mrs Panhkurst, Alice
supported the First World War and in 1918, she appeared on platforms with
Jabez Chaplin to condemn the cowardice of the I.L.P. After the war she
continued to support the local trade union and Labour movement up to the
time of her death.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 4th
July 1913 & 16th August 1918, Richard Whitmore, Alice
Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian
Leicester
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President of the Trades Council 1936,
delegate from the Transport And General Workers. son of Alice?
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Arthur
Haywood
Died c1983 Communist Party
From 1926 to 1940 Arthur Haywood worked as a tram driver for Leicester
City Transport. He started on the trams in the year of the General Strike
and his first pay packet was strike pay.
He
was a former pupil of Moat Road School and was well-read, cultured and
played the violin. According to his grandson, he was a very strict,
obstinate and opinionated man who loved Russia and idolised Stalin. This
caused no end of family rows and rifts.
In
August 1940, he was sacked from his job on the advice of the Chief
Constable. Arthur appears to have lost his job on the very day he was
given his 15yr Gold Medal for safe driving. His dismissal was raised in
the House of Commons by Willie Gallacher MP, the Communist member for West
Fife. He asked: Is the Minister aware that there is nothing whatever
against this man so far as his employment is concerned, and that he has
said or done nothing against the law of this country? Can the hon.
Gentleman give any reason why the police should advise that a competent
worker,... should be removed from his employment? Gallacher did not
manage to elicit a reason for his sacking which remains a mystery to this
day. In 1944, Arthur moved to Coleorton and he died alone, divorced, near
Sutton on Sea around 1983.
Sources Hansard, 13th
August 1940, R Haywood
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(Labour Party)
President of the Trades Council 1967,
delegate from the U.S.D.A.W. and also full-time official.
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Born: Thringstone 1817, died 18th May 1885
(Co-operator)
Born in humble circumstances, he owed his education to
his father’s knowledge and was a bread winner from an early age. Even when
he attended Dames School in Thringstone, he took stockings to mend. From
the age of 13 or 13, he worked in Nottingham’s lace factories and in 1860,
he and his wife moved to Leicester where he worked as a stockinger. He was
member of the Methodist New Connexion domination
Benjamin Hemmings and Daniel Merrick were members of a
short-lived Co-operative Society started by Thomas Cook in the
Amphitheatre, Humberstone Gate. It was set up to sell the ‘essentials of
home consumption.’ It sold potatoes from a yard on London Road and had a
place for the sale of flour in Bowling green Street. Benjamin Hemmings
joined the committee of the LCS in 1868 and became its president in 1870,
being re-elected every year until his death.
Although a naturally cautious, modest and unassuming
individual, he played a significant role in the society’s development and
expansion. Beginning with the opening of branch stores and ending with the
opening of the High Street Central store. During the period of the
society’s financial difficulty (1877-80), he retained the confidence of
the members. In middle age he was a foreman in a hosiery factory. After
his death, portraits of him were available at the High Street store.
Sources: Leicester Co-operative
Record, June 1885 (obit), Leicester Co-operative Society, (1898)
Co-operation in Leicester
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Born: Leicester, 11th February 1911, died: 30th
Jan 1979 (Labour Party)
 Mark
Henig was educated at the Wyggeston Boys School. On leaving school he went
to work in his father's Company, Henig & Sons Limited, Wholesale Textile
Distributors, Burley's Way of which he later became a Director.
He was elected to the City Council in
1945. After losing his seat in 1947, he returned by way of a bye-election
in North Braunstone in 1949. He was secretary and whip of the Labour group
from 1949 until 1962. In 1965, he became the leader of the group, however
within a year or so he was made chairman of the Association of Municipal
Corporations and had to give up being leader and chairman of council
committees. He was twice president of the Labour Party, its treasurer for
eight years and became an alderman in 1958 and Lord Mayor 1967. He served
on a long list of other public bodies as well as holding major offices in
the Leicester Synagogue. He retired from local government in 1970 and
became chairman of the English Tourist Board. He was described as one of
the most dynamic and forthright councillors of the post-war years.
Sources: Leicester Mercury, 31st
January 1979, Leicester City Council, Roll of Lord Mayors 1928-2000
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Died
October 1911
In 1907, George Hern and his team of
12 assistants formed the Anchor Tenants Building Society which was
responsible for the construction of the Humberstone Garden Suburb. Hern
modified the layout drawn up by Raymond Unwin. George died in October
1911. A beech tree was planted in his memory at the bottom of Fern Rise.
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Born: 1866 died: circa 1944? (I.L.P. & Labour Party)
 Alf Hill was a village boy, born in
Welwyn, Herts. He became an apprentice clicker in the shoe trade at the
age of 13. After completing his apprenticeship, he came to Leicester in
1885, joining N.U.B.S.O. No. 2 branch in 1890. He was elected branch
president in 1898 and president of the Trades Council in 1901 and 1916. He
was a delegate to the Trades Council from 1893-1943. He was described in
1903 as a prominent member of the local Peace Society,
he has always, in and out of
season, raised his voice in favour of peace and to oppose militarism.
He was
a Town Councillor for Wyggeston ward 1905-19, being made an alderman in
1919. On the first Sunday in August 1914, he felt compelled to leave his
religious work (he was a Primitive Methodist preacher) and take part in a
political demonstration on a Sunday.
“No orator thrilled the crowd as
Alfred Hill did. He spoke with a fervour and passion that told of the
fierce earnestness of his soul, against the black hellish horror through
which the nations of the world have since passed. He spoke for peace, as
a man inspired, and no jingo raised his voice for war on that memorable
day. In the war that followed, he never wavered in his stand for peace
and although it meant a certain amount of unpopularity and brought on
his shoulders a certain amount of abuse, he came through as a man who
could stand for great religious and political principles.”
He was elected to Parliament for
Leicester West in 1922, taking back the seat for Labour from J.F. Green of
the National Democratic Party (pro war, anti-Labour coalition). In 1923 he
stood down in favour of W. Pethick-Lawrence because of illness. He was no
relation to T.R. Hill.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 27th
June 1924
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(Leicester Democratic Association, Leicester Republican
Association)
In 1871, Hill was secretary of the
Leicester Democratic Association which became the Republican Association
the following year. The objects of the Republican Association were the
repeal of primogeniture, game laws, the creation of equal electoral
districts, universal suffrage, secret ballots, the payment of M.P.s,
triennial parliaments, direct, rather than indirect taxation, a national
poor rate, and the dissolution of the House of Lords and the
disestablishment of the Church of England. He was not a supporter of the
Paris Commune and condemned the extremes of the ‘Communists’ and the party
of ‘order.’ In 1873, whilst he criticised the founding meeting of the
National Republican League for meeting on a Sunday, since there were many
Christian republicans. He was, however, a supporter of the Sunday opening
of museums. The Association had a large working class membership.
Sources: Midlands Free Press, 3rd
June & 13th June 1871
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Born: 22nd May 1885 died: 1968 (I.L.P. & Labour
Party)
 Rowland
Hill attended Melbourne Road Board School entering as a new boy on its day
of opening in 1892. He was active in the Labour Movement from 1905 and
became president Leicester branch National Union of Clerks in 1909. By
1914, he was president of the Trades Council and was secretary of the
I.L.P. in 1917. He was a supporter of the local branch of the Union of
Democratic Control which sought to put a reasoned case against the First
World War. He was a conscientious objector and, in 1917, he had his
conscription deferred as a result of a petition to the military tribunal.
However, at the end the period of deferment he had to go ‘on the run,’ to
avoid call up. At this time he wrote for the Leicester Pioneer under the
pen name ‘Robert Dale.’
From 1919, he acted as agent for the
Harborough Constituency and from 1926-32 was secretary of the Trades
Council. He was also a director of the Co-operative Society during this
period. He stood for Spinney Hill in 1920 and lost. He eventually won
Westcotes ward in 1926, but was defeated in 1929. He was eventually
elected back to City Council 1930 for Westcotes Ward as a result of a
bye-election.
He commenced his career in a
commercial office and held jobs connecting with the building and
shopfitting trades. He was director and secretary of Harry Hand (Shopfitters)
and also of the City Sheet Metal Works.
He became chairman of the City
Council Labour Group 1937 and was the longest serving chairman of the
Finance Committee, holding the post from 1934 until 1955. He was
re-elected in 1945 and became Lord Mayor in 1951. He was awarded a C.B.E.
in 1955 and the freedom of the City in 1956 and continued on the City
Council until 19?. His daughter Mrs Janet Setchfield was also a councillor
and also became Chair of Finance and Lord Mayor.
Sources: Leicester City Council, Roll
of Lord Mayors 1928-2000, Howes, C. (ed), Leicester: Its Civic,
Industrial, Institutional and Social Life, Leicester 1927, Mrs Janet
Setchfield
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 Born:
19th July 1870, died: 1937 (Liberal)
Teddy Hincks left school at an early
age and was apprenticed at a shoe machinery firm. He became branch
secretary of the A.S.E. at Gimson’s Vulcan Road works at the age of 27 on
10th July 1897. Three days later, he and his colleagues were
locked out. They were out until January 1898 and he gained prominence as
strike leader. He became a delegate to the Trades Council and was elected
to the Town Council for Castle ward, as a Liberal, in 1900. He became
chairman of three standing committees at different times. (Watch, Health
and Libraries Committee) He became secretary of the Charity Organisation
Society in March 1903 and held the position until his death. He became
Lord Mayor in 1929.
Sources: Leicester City Council, Roll
of Lord Mayors 1928-2000, Howes, C. (ed), Leicester: Its Civic,
Industrial, Institutional and Social Life, Leicester 1927
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Born 1838, died: 1912 (Liberal, Co-operator & architect)
Hind was an architect by profession
and for many years a member of the L.C.S. board. He was elected to the
C.W.S. committee in 1877 and died in office. He was an Anglican, a Poor
Law Guardian and member of the Town Council, as well as a governor of the
Royal Infirmary. He was the architect responsible for design of the Co-op
Central Stores on High Street, completed in 1884. (now part of the Shires)
He also designed the Victoria Model Lodging House on Britannia Street.
Sources: Leicester Co-operative
Society, (1898) Co-operation in Leicester,
Leicester: A Souvenir
of the 47th Co-operative Congress, Manchester 1915
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(I.L.P. & Labour Party)
Len Hollis was active in the
Co-operative movement the I.L.P. and Labour Party from 1919 until the
1970s. He was Secretary of the I.L.P. Guild of Youth until he was 25
organising rambles and social events. He was an active anti fascist during
the 1930s. Member of the LCS board during the 1950s and later became its
president. Len Hollis Court on St Peters Estate is named in his memory
Source Interview with Len Hollis
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 Born:
Leicester, 1850, died: 1911 (Liberal Party, I.L.P.)
James Holmes entered the trade as a
winding boy, progressing from hand frames to being a Cotton’s Patent
Knitter. By the mid 1880s, he had operated every kind of knitting machine
then in existence In the mid 1870s, he was elected to the executive of the
Framework Knitters’ Union and soon afterwards became the unofficial leader
of the power machine men. He became an official of the union in 1881. In
1885, the machine knitters seceded from the old union and he became the
architect and first secretary of the Leicester and Leicestershire
Amalgamated Hosiery Union. He was the first full-time paid official in the
hosiery trade since the days of Nottingham’s Gravener Henson 50 years
earlier. In 1886, the was a major strike which led to a series of
disturbances where blacklegs were struck by missiles, windows in factories
broken and 15 people arrested for rioting. It ended with concessions being
made on both sides.
Holmes was an exceptional organiser
and a powerful orator. In the early 1870s, he spoke on Republican
platforms and although by the late 1870s, he was a prolific lecturer to
the Secular Society, though in 1881 he declared himself to be a
spiritualist, giving a series of lectures on the subject. He was a member
of the Town Council for four years, having to retire due to pressure of
work. He was also a newsagent. In the 1880s, Holmes was a friend of Tom
Barclay and sympathised with the early Socialists. He was a founder member
of the I.L.P. in the 1890s and was a supporter of the co-operative
movement. He was a member of the TUC parliamentary committee in the late
1880s and a shareholder in the Leicester Pioneer Press in the 1900s.
His life ended in disgrace when it
was discovered, as he lay dying of cancer, that he had embezzled union
funds on a grand scale, investing in about 200 houses in and around
Leicester. They were all heavily mortgaged and the union realised little
on their sale. One admirer of Holmes described this as “a sad ending to
a brilliant and honourable career in the championship of Labour.” His
union position was filled by Jabez Chaplin.
Sources: Midlands Free Press 5th
February 1881, 13th & 20th February 1886, The Wyvern
22nd October 1897, Bill Lancaster, Radicalism Co-operation
and Socialism
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Died: March 1961
Violet Holmes was councillor for St
Margaret’s and chairman of the Public Baths and Cleansing committee. In
1958, she moved the proposal to build St Margaret’s baths, the first new
swimming pool built in the City since 1914. In 1960 she told the press
“I shall be very pleased to see the day when every house in the city has
its own bath.” Alas, this was not to be, since she died the following
year.
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Born: Sileby 27th Jan 1818, died: 1907
(Secularist and bookseller)
 Following
the Luddite disturbances, William Holyoake’s family migrated to the little
town of Chard, in Somersetshire. He tried a variety of occupations before
settling down as a tailor's apprentice. His only schooling was received at
Chard, but he supplemented these scanty lessons by a good deal of reading.
On the return of the family to
Leicester, they frequented the Bond Street Chapel. But when William had
the tenacity to ask questions on theological subjects, and when the
minister and deacon gave him unsatisfactory replies, he turned to
Secularism. The 1841 census finds him working as a tailor and living in
Halford Street with Josiah Gimson, John Taylor (also a tailor) and Henry
Layton Knight, an Owenite Social Missionary and Knight’s 15 year old wife,
Margaret, and baby. This maybe this is the ‘sort of vegetarian colony’
that is referred to in his 1902 interview
George Jacob Holyoake (no relation),
now a prominent advocate of Freethought, visited Leicester in 1843, just
after his imprisonment in Gloucester Goal for blasphemy and roused the
liveliest interest among Holyoake and his friends. They also owed a great
deal to the influence of the venerable George Bown, a reformer whose
memories went bade to the days of the French Revolution and Thomas Paine.
In 1844, Holyoake became secretary of
a branch of the Anti-Persecution Union which met in the Owenite Social
Institution in Leicester and was set up to defend Owenites who were
prosecuted for their attacks on Christianity.
From 1846 onwards, he continued
tailoring and bookselling, and many thousands of the townspeople must have
learned the rudiments of Rationalism through the publications which they
purchased at his shop in Bond Street, or at 18, Belgrave Gate, or, still
later, in Humberstone Gate.
In 1853, 1861 and 1867 it was he who
called and organised the meetings which founded a Secular Society. He
stuck to the Secular Society through all its ups and downs, taking part in
its business and discussions, and occasionally reading papers at its
meetings. He assisted in the movement which promoted Sunday music in the
parks, and in the agitation for the Sunday opening of museums and picture,
galleries.
Excluding one year, he presided at
the Bookstore connected with the Secular Institute from 1881 to 1902. He
wrote poetry often with a secular message and with the aid of a duplicator
he was able to distribute it via his bookshop and Secular Society.
Sources: Leicester Reasoner
Leicester Pioneer, David Nash, Secularism, Art and Freedom
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Born: London 1834, died:1911 (Liberal)
John Page Hopps was a
well known radical and a Unitarian minister at the Great meeting from 1876
to 1892. After studying at Leicester Baptist College, in 1856 he became
minister of a Baptist meeting at Hugglescote, Leicestershire. However, the
following year he moved doctrinally and geographically to liberal
non-denominationalism in Birmingham. Before coming to Leicester, he had
been minister at the Upperthorpe chapel in Sheffield and then the St
Vincent's Street Chapel, in Glasgow. He was elected to the Glasgow School
Board and was a prominent advocate of secular education.
In Leicester, he was
particularly noted for the huge Sunday evening meetings he held in the
Floral Hall which attracted very large numbers of working people through
flowers, music, and popular preaching. He wrote hymns which are still sung
by many denominations.
His radical beliefs
led him to support the Democratic Association’s campaign for Liberal
school board candidates and he had good relations with the Secular Society
where he sometimes lectured. In 1877, he became first President of the
Women’s Suffrage Society and a supporter of the Leicester Women’s Liberal
Association’s attempts to get women elected to the Board of Guardians.
Politically he was an advanced Liberal, a strong supporter of Irish Home
Rule (a position that was unpopular with his Leicester congregation), of
land reform, of anti-vivisection, and of the peace movement. Hopps ran for
Parliament in Paddington as a Radical Liberal against Lord Randoph
Churchill in 1886. He believed that the:
“undue aggregation of capital
must be met by the aggregation of labour, in other words by unionism on
the one side, and co-operative industry on the other. What ultimate form
this co-operative industry is to take is, of course, a problem for the
statesman as well as the social reformer. …The foulness of the sweaters’
dens, and the hard unfriendly mechanical relations of the sweaters’
‘boss’ to his hands, may be replaced by the cleanliness, the order, and
the genial associations which might spring up in a co-operative clothing
or cabinet-making company. Of course behind these excellent enterprises
lies the double danger of successful competition by the sweaters, and of
driving the trade in cheap sweater-made goods abroad, where the standard
of living among the workers is even lower than among us. But such
experiments are always worth trying, as doing much to bring out the
gentler and more human forces of society in place of the grinding and
money-making ones.”
Rejecting belief in the resurrection
of the body, he was also an early advocate of cremation. He also
corresponded with Oscar Wilde and was later involved with Spiritualism. In
1892 he left the Great Meeting because of continuing tension with his
congregation,
Sources: The Star, October 1888,
Isabel Ellis, Records Of Nineteenth Century
Leicester, Bill
Lancaster, Radicalism Co-operation and Socialism, R. K. Webb,
Oxford National Dictionary of Biography
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Born London 1856, died: Leicester, January 1909 (Liberal)
 W.B.
Hornidge worked in several trades before he became a laster in the shoe
industry in London in 1876. He had several spells of unemployment during
which he went on the tramp in search of work and moved to Northampton. In
1891, he was elected President of the Northampton branch and a member of
the Board of Conciliation. He was fiercely opposed to the
‘anti-arbitrationist’ militants within the union and within two years he
had became General President of the union. After six years as president,
he resigned from the post in order to succeed William Inskip as general
secretary in opposition to T.F. Richards.
He was a staunch Liberal-Radical and
earnest and conscientious in his beliefs. In fact his forthrightness, his
unwillingness to deviate from the stand he had taken and his views on
arbitration made him many enemies. He was sapped and weakened by bronchial
asthma which was the cause of his periodic disappearances from the Union
scene. At conferences he spoke only briefly and infrequently, but despite
his chronic illness he was unwilling to lay down his office. Finally he
was asked, by a deeply sympathetic, but uneasy, union conference to
resign. Having done so, he relapsed into an invalid condition and remained
bed-ridden until his death a few months later at the age of 52. He was a
member of the Secular Society and is buried in Welford Road cemetery.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 2nd
January 1909, Richards, T.F. & Poulton E.L., Fifty Years: Being The
History Of The National Union Of Boot And
Shoe Operatives, Alan Fox, A History of
the National Union of Boot and Shoe
Workers, 1958
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(I.L.P. &
Labour Party)
 William
Howard was born in the South of Scotland of working class parents. He went
to Glasgow University with the aid of a scholarship and graduated as a
Master of Arts. He was a teacher for a short time before becoming Labour
organiser for Gloucester. In 1919, he came to Leicester as Labour
organiser, acting as the secretary of the City party. During the inter-war
years, he was in charge of Labour’s election campaigns and his skills as
an organiser helped the party recover from the 1918 defeat and to expand
the electoral base of the party during the 1920s.
This culminated in the 1945 election
victory when for the first time there were three Labour MPs and a Labour
controlled City Council. He retired in 1947 and wrote a history of the
party in Leicester which was published to mark its 50th
anniversary. He was not on the left of the party and remained dismissive
of ‘popular fronters’ and other left groups. Despite being considered
something of an eligible batchelor in Labour circles, he never married,
though he had a long friendship with Edith Scott.
Sources: election address 1924,
Leicester Mercury 21st October 1931
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Born: circa 1870 Uppingham, (I.L.P. & Labour Party)
George Hubbard
was orphaned at an early age and attended board
schools. After leaving school he became an apprentice electrical engineer
and then an apprentice auctioneer and land agent in London. He returned to
Leicester, where he had relatives and secured a partnership in a hosiery
firm which was not successful. He then returned to being an auctioneer and
travelled the country. In 1898, he became a
clerk in a trimmers and dyers factory, he later became a commercial
traveller in the hosiery trade.
He said he was a politician as soon
as he could read and was a radical of the ‘most advanced type.’ He heard
MacDonald make his first speech at the Temperance Hall and said “If
this is Socialism, I have been a Socialist for years.” He joined the
I.L.P. and quickly became prominent. He was elected to the executive and
became minute secretary. He was an I.L.P. delegate to the meeting called
by the Trades Council which launched the Labour Representation Committee
and he was made its first secretary. It was claimed that the success of
the L.R.C. in Leicester was largely due to his organising ability. In
1906, he was Ramsay MacDonald’s election agent.
“Within the year practically all the
trade unions of the town had formally affiliated with the Committee…From
the very first the members of the Committee were unanimous and
enthusiastic in maintaining a definitely independent attitude. This policy
has given to the Party an influence far greater than its actual proportion
of members on the local governing bodies and had led many of the workers,
who were at first very critical, to throw in their lot with the Party.”
(1910)
He was a member of the Shop
Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks Union and represented his society on
the Trades Council. He was president of the Trades Council two years
running (1907-9), president of the WEA and a member of the Town Council
until 1910. Following the takeover of the ‘Leicester Pioneer’ from the old
company by the L.R.C., he was one of those who guaranteed the expenses of
the first three numbers out of his own pocket. He was on the committee of
the new company from its formation and became secretary. He was elected as
a City Councillor for Latimer Ward in 1907.
During the war, Hubbard became President of the
Leicester and District Branch of the Union of Democratic Control. The
U.D.C. was a pressure group formed in 1914 which called for a full
examination of the war aims in public and by Parliament. Whilst the Union
did not call for an immediate end to the war, it strongly opposed
conscription and wartime censorship along with other restrictions on civil
liberties.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 9th
February 1907, The Labour Party Conference 1911, Official Souvenir,
Leicester 1911
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(Labour Party)
Bill Hynes became president of the
Trades Council 1969, delegate from U.S.D.A.W. City Councillor for Wycliffe
Ward elected in 1973 and 1979.
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Born 9th May 1951, died: 31st March
1999 aged 47. (Labour Party, International Marxist Group, Socialist
Outlook)
Son of Bill Hynes, Bernie Hynes was
secretary of the Leicester Anti Nazi League and a leading member of the,
Troops Out Movement. He often visited Ireland, assisting Republican
prisoners and their families. He worked in the gas industry and was a
member of Leicester Trades Council.
Source: author’s personal knowledge
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© Ned Newitt Last revised:
March 24, 2013. |
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