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Born c1922
(Labour)
Arthur Padmore was a railwayman and
stood as a councillor for the first time in 1964 for Humberstone and was
elected. He was defeated in 1967
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Died:
October 1981 aged 65 (Communist Party)
Sid Page taught English at Stonehill
High School for 25 years, having previously worked at Roundhill School.
When he became President of NUT Mid-Leicestershire Association in 1976, he
said that: “Cutting education is unlike cutting anything else. A
temporary shortage or cut can be made up later, but you cannot replace the
missed years of a child’s education.” He died a year after he retired.
Sources: Leicester Mercury, 24th
February 24th, 16th October 1981 author’s personal
knowledge
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Born: 1908
R.T. Paget was a local barrister, the
son of Guy Paget. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College. In 1935, he
attracted local attention after being expelled by the blackshirts from
Mosley’s meeting in Granby Halls. Mosley threatened to sue him. He
unsuccessfully contested Northampton for Labour in the same year,
eventually winning in 1945. He later became a member of the House of
Lords.
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Born c1887,
Wellingborough, died Calais, France, 1919
 In
the early 1900s, John Thomas Pantling lived in Belgrave and worked in the
shoe trade. He was a Socialist and member of the local Temperance
movement. At the end of the First World War, he was a private in the Royal
Ordinance Corps, based at Calais. Though he had not fought at the front,
he worked alongside many of those who had been injured and moved to
lighter duty. He was well known and popular with the men and was
co-founder of the Calais Soldiers and Sailors Association. As their
spokesman, he negotiated a reduction in the working week from 6½ to 6
days, better food and accommodation with the Army authorities. He also
distributed the banned ‘Daily Herald’ to troops in the area.
He had already been arrested for
supposedly inciting the men, when, in January 1919, he was arrested for
delivering a ‘seditious’ speech demanding demobilisation, to an assembly
of soldiers. He was accused of being a ‘Bolshevik’ and was incarcerated in
the Calais ‘Bastille,’ where he faced court martial. When the news of
Pantlings’ plight reached the Ordnance Depots in the Calais region,
mutineers smashed open the jail and let him out. As the authorities tried
to recapture him, 4,000 troops marched behind brass bands towards the
headquarters which they quickly surrounded. A deputation entered to demand
the release of Private Pantling. The authorities capitulated and he was
returned to his camp. But by now some 20,000 men had joined the mutiny and
the strike was spreading. French workers were cooperating and a total
embargo was placed upon the movement of British military traffic by rail.
In fact the rail stoppage was a significant factor in the escalation of
the struggle. 5,000 infantrymen due to return home, finding themselves
delayed, struck in support of their own demand for immediate
demobilisation.
Some barrack room lawyer pointed out
that Pantling could be rearrested at any time. It was decided that it
would be to his advantage to be court-martialled whilst the soldiers were
still in control. His acquittal would then be binding and he would be safe
from further arrest. Reluctantly, the officers had to agree. However, just
over a week later, he died from influenza. His comrades said that his ill
treatment whilst in prison was the main cause of his death. £150 was
raised through a collection for his Widow.
Sources: David Lamb, Mutinies,
Gloden Dallas & Douglas Gill The Unknown Army, Leicester Mercury,
21st March 1919, Andrew Rothstein, The Soldiers Strikes of
1919
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Born:
Woolaston, Northants., 4th January 1872, (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
 George
Parbury was the youngest of a family of 13. His father, a chemist, came to
Leicester in 1877 and died a few years later. George had practically no
education and at the age of 10 was working in the shoe trade, at that time
the work was fetched from the factory and done at home. He continued to
work in the boot and shoe trade in and out of employment, tramping from
town to town in search of work. In those years of no work he frequently
had an empty cupboard and grate.
He joined NUBSO in 1889 and took part
in the great lock out of 1895. He joined the I.L.P. the same year. He was
elected a permanent official of NUBSO from 1905 and was Secretary of No 1
Branch from 1912 until his retirement in 1932. This branch had 10,000
members and was thought to be the largest trade union branch in the world.
He was first elected to the City Councillor in 1921 for Abbey ward and
served into the 1940s, becoming Lord Mayor in 1939.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 15th
February 1924, Leicester City Council, Roll of Lord Mayors 1928-2000
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(Bookseller)
John Pares of Humberstone Gate was
arrested in 1798 by a King’s messenger on suspicion of treasonable
practices and taken to London for examination. In his absence his house
was searched and his papers seized. He was held for a fortnight, but the
Home Office was unable to find sufficient evidence against him and he was
released. In 1802, he was convicted at the Borough Quarter Sessions of
publishing a song of seditious tendency and was sentenced to 12 months in
prison. In 1816, he emerged as one of the leaders of the Hampden Clubs and
prosecution for the publication of two pamphlets was considered. The
following year he was arrested again for the publication of ‘seditious,
blasphemous, and malicious libel’- to wit an extract from Volney’s The
Ruins of Empires, entitled ‘A Dialogue between the Privileged Class and
the People.’ Although he was eventually acquitted, the expense of his
defence nearly ruined him.
Sources: A. Temple Patterson,
Radical Leicester,
Leicester 1954
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Died: June
1984 aged 55 (Labour Party)
Gordon Parker was full-time organiser
for the Labour Party in Leicester from 1970-79. He had previously worked
for the party in Derby and Grimsby. In the late 1970s he became very
critical of the National Executive of the Labour Party for failing to take
action against entrist groups like Militant in the Labour Party. He
believed that members belonging to these groups should be expelled.
During the 1970’s, when the National
Front was organising demonstrations in Leicester, he urged people to stay
away from the counter demonstrations being organised by Inter-Racial
Solidarity and Unity Against Racism. In 1979, he became Labour’s assistant
regional organiser for the south. He fell to his death from the sixth
floor of a multi-storey car-park in Woking.
Sources: Leicester Mercury, 12th
June 1984
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 Born:
Bhanvad, Gujurat State, India, July 1937, died: December 1997 aged 60
(Labour Party)
In 1949, Gordhan’s family moved to
Dar-Es-Salam in Tanzania where his father owned a shop. Following the
Africanisation policies in Tanzania, he came to Leicester in 1966. In
Tanzania he had worked as a clerk in the Internal Revenue Office, but in
Britain he worked as a bus conductor. From 1969, he worked as a clerk for
East Midlands Gas. He joined the Labour party in 1970 and, in 1977, was
the first Asian to be elected to the County Council. In 1979, he was
elected to the City Council and in 1987, he became Leicester’s first Asian
Lord Mayor. In 1995, there was a fierce battle for selection for Abbey
ward, in which he threatened to go on hunger strike if he was deselected.
(which he was ) He subsequently became councillor for the Rushey Mead Ward
and died on a cross channel ferry.
Sources: Leicester Mercury, 28th
February 1987, 20th March 1995, Leicester City Council, Roll
of Lord Mayors 1928-2000, author’s personal knowledge
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Died: May
1990 aged 60 AUEW
Bridget Paton was born in Scotland
and first came to Leicester in 1948 to work as a nanny. Two years later
she was an assembler at a local engineering works and joined the union.
“The difference between the way the
bosses live and the lot of the workers has always seemed wrong to me.
Initially I was the only woman member in my section and there was only one
other woman member in the whole factory. Then there was a dispute about
piece rates and we encouraged other women to join.”
She became a shop steward, then a
delegate to her branch, then district president. By the early 1970s, she
was convenor of the AUEW shop stewards at the Patridge Wilson factory on
Evington Parks Road. In May 1975, she was appointed the first woman
officer of the male-dominated Amalgamated Union of Engineers in 1975 and
remained district secretary of the AUEW for many years. She was an
advocate of employers providing childcare for working mothers. She was a
staunch Catholic and was, in terms of union politics, regarded as being on
the right. She died of cancer just a few months before she was due to
retire.
Sources: Leicester Mercury, 26th
May 1975, 7th December 1988, 16th May 1990
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Born: circa
1853? (I.L.P.)
Henry Payne was a member of the
Building Trades Council and had been a union member since 1886. It was
through the Trades Council that he was initially elected to the School
Board in 1893. He stood as one of two I.L.P. candidates in 1894 and was
defeated. He advocated one meal a day for children whose parents could not
provide them with food. He opposed to theological teaching in schools
saying it should be left to parents and Sunday Schools. He wanted limits
on class size and the use of union men for school contracts for building
work.
Following the resignation of Mrs
Saunderson, who had been the I.L.P.’s successful candidate, the other
parties on the board blocked his co-option. However, in 1897, he was
elected coming top of the poll with 24,618 votes-more than twice that of
the second of the list. It is likely he was also a Secularist.
Sources: Leicester Daily Mercury, 30th
November 1894
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(Leicester
Democratic Association & Leicester Republican Association)
The Leicester Working Men’s Reform
Association of the 1860s, became the Leicester Democratic Association in
1871 and Samuel Payne was its chairman. In 1871, the Democratic
Association had 500 paid up members and was a strong supporter of P.A.
Taylor’s republicanism. He was active in critic of the influence of the
Church on the school board. He recollected seeing a Chartist procession
with a banner inscribed: ‘More pigs - less parsons,’ he felt the
school board should have ‘more men less parsons.’ He continued as
chairman when the Democratic Association became the Republican
Association.
Sources: Midlands Free Press, 13th
June 1871
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Born:
Toronto, Canada, 1874 died: 1936 (furniture manufacturer and Fabian)
Harry Peach’s father came from a
Nottinghamshire drapery family and decided to return from Canada to his
Midlands roots. The family settled in Oadby when Harry was three years
old. Peach went to Wyggeston Boys Grammar School and then to Oakham Public
School in Rutland. After a brief period working as an estate agent with
his father, he set up as a bookseller at 37 Belvoir Street, Leicester
specialising in manuscripts and early printed books. His love of
literature and appreciation of good quality printing lasted throughout his
life. He also realised that good quality printing was an effective tool
both for his business and other interests. With his first wife Marina
(May), he was a member of the Independent Labour Party.
He brought an exhibition organised by
the Anti-sweating League to Leicester in 1906 during Ramsey McDonald’s
election campaign. This imaginatively presented exhibition, which
illustrated the grim conditions of work through actual demonstrations as
well as photographs and factual information, was Peach’s first experience
of the impact of the media.
Along with the designer Ernest
Gimson, Harry Peach, gave Leicester a prominent position in the history of
design in the early twentieth century. He was influenced by Morris and the
ideas of the Arts and Craft movement and worked with Benjamin Fletcher at
the newly formed School of Art and Design. Peach owed his interest in
craft and design to his socialist attitudes. Harry Peach tried to bring
together what many people felt were two distinct and antagonistic
activities, art and industry. He felt that the efficiency of industry was
not incompatible with the individual flair of the artist. This faith led
him to found the Dryad Works for Handicrafts and Metal Work in 1907. His
company produced cane furniture and household goods with an emphasis on
handwork and craft. It later became a supplier of handicraft materials.
However, he began to view the trade
unions as narrowly sectionalist, pouring scorn on the demand for piecework
rates that he regarded as being irrelevant and detrimental to the quality
of the finished product. In the 1920s, he crusaded against advertising
finding many examples of unsightly advertising in rural locations. He was
one of the founders of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England
and also of the Design in Industry Association.
He was a rambler, a member of the
Leicestershire Footpaths Association, a Fabian, President of the Literary
and Philosophical Society, an ardent campaigner for the preservation of
rural England, and a keen folk dancer. His firm Dryad is now Specialist
Crafts
Sources: Pat Kirkham: Harry Peach,
Dryad and the D.I.A.
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Born: 1873
died: December 1913 (I.L.P. & Labour League of Women)
 Marina
Peach was a member of the I.L.P. and was a founder member of the Labour
League of Women of which she was president when she died. She was a friend
of Margaret MacDonald and had shown a great deal of interest in infant
health. She was a committee member of the National Union of Women Workers
and had been instrumental in forming the Leicester Health Society in 1905.
She died, aged 40, after giving birth to her seventh child. As a memorial
to her, an ‘Infant Consultation Centre’ was opened in Highcross Street to
promote Mothercraft in an area of high infant mortality. The property was
finance by family and friends and its running costs were met by public
subscription.
Sources: Shirley Aucott,
Mothercraft and Maternity,1997
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Born:
Bedford, May 15th 1900, died: 1980s
Teddy Peacock left school at the age
of 14 and worked in a foundry where in 1916 became an apprentice brass
moulder. The foundry made guns for battleships and he consequently was
exempted from conscription. Eventually, he joined up and served in Germany
until 1920. He was then retrained as a bricklayer and moved to Leicester
in 1922. He became an AUBTW member and delegate to the Trades Council. He
was secretary of the Trade Council’s Permits Sub-committee during the
General Strike and was later active in the anti-fascist movement in the
1930s. He was secretary of the local branch of the National Council of
Labour Colleges for 12 years. He served as President of Leicester Trades
Council in 1934, 1946 & 1958 and was a member of Scraptoft Parish Council
for 26 years.
Source: author’s personal knowledge
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Born:
Leicester c1859, died: May 24th 1923 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
In 1881, Nathaniel Perkins was a
fancy framework knitter, as was his father and his brother John; his
younger brother Thomas was a shoe clicker (at age 16). In 1901, Nathaniel
was still in the same trade, whilst his father was ‘living on own means’;
his daughter Elizabeth was a cigar maker, as was a lodger in the Perkins
household. Nathaniel Perkins was an I.L.P. member from its early days and
was, from 1909-23, a Town Councillor for Latimer ward. He was also a
member of the Leicester Labour Party Executive and was board member of
L.C.S.
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Born: circa
1882
Dorothy Pethick was the younger sister
of Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and arrived in Leicester in 1909 with her
companion Dorothy Bowker. They had just been released from prison having
served a sentence for breaking windows in Downing Street and Whitehall.
Both had been force fed after going on hunger strike and they came to
Leicester to recuperate at 11 Severn Street. Dorothy Pethick was appointed
oraniser and open an office at 17 Highfields Street. Under her influence, the
local WSPU branch began to strengthen its membership of young
middle-class women. She was arrested and imprisoned again in London again
in 1910. She left Leicester in 1912.
Sources: Sources: Richard Whitmore,
Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian
Leicester
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Born:
London 1871, died: 1961 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
 Frederick
Lawrence was the son of Alfred Lawrence a wealthy Unitarian and member of
the Liberal Party. Frederick was educated at Eton and Trinity College,
Cambridge, where he achieved a Double First and became President of the
Union. At university Lawrence was influenced by the ideas of Alfred
Marshall, who argued that the knowledge of economics should be applied to
help the poor. While studying to become a lawyer, Lawrence gave free legal
advice at the Nonconformist settlement Mansfield House in the slums of
East London. He also worked with Charles Booth collecting information on
poverty in the area.
While working with the poor,
Frederick Lawrence met the social worker, Emmeline Pethick. The couple
fell in love but Emmeline refused to marry Frederick because he did not
share her socialist beliefs. It was not until 1901, when Frederick had
been converted to socialism, that Emmeline agreed to marry him. On
marriage, he added his wife's name to his own. In 1901 Frederick Pethick-Lawrence
became the owner of The Echo, a left-wing evening newspaper. He recruited
friends from the socialist movement such as Ramsay MacDonald and H. N.
Brailsford to write for the newspaper. James Keir Hardie introduced
Frederick and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence to Emmeline Pankhurst. As a result
Emmeline joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). In 1907
Frederick and Emmeline started the journal Votes for Women.
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence served six
terms of imprisonment for her political activities during this period. In
1912 the WSPU organised a new campaign that involved the large-scale
smashing of shop-windows. Frederick and Emmeline both disagreed with this
strategy, but Christabel Pankhurst ignored their objections.
As soon as this wholesale smashing of
shop windows began, the government ordered the arrest of the leaders of
the WSPU. Christabel escaped to France but Frederick and Emmeline were
arrested, tried and sentenced to nine months imprisonment. They were also
successfully sued for the cost of the damage caused by the WSPU.
Pethick-Lawrence was opposed to
Britain's involvement in the First World War and joined with E. D. Morel,
Arthur Ponsonby and Charles Treveylan to form the Union of Democratic
Control (UDC). Over the next couple of years the UDC became the leading
anti-war organisation in Britain. Although he was forty-six years old, the
government attempted to conscript Pethick-Lawrence in 1917. He refused,
but instead of being imprisoned, he was assigned to a farm in Sussex until
the end of the war.
In the 1923 General Election, Pethick-Lawrence
won West Leicester for Labour, having the satisfaction of beating Winston
Churchill, who was then as Liberal. Although an expert on economics,
Pethick-Lawrence was a poor orator and he failed to shine in debates in
the House of Commons. As a result, he was not given a post in the 1924
Labour Government. He was Financial Secretary to the Treasury during the
1929-31 government. In 1931, he was defeated and became MP for East
Edinburgh 1935-45. He was Secretary of State for India and Burma 1945-47.
Sorces: Howes, C. (ed), Leicester: Its
Civic, Industrial, Institutional and Social Life, Leicester 1927
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Malcolm Pinnegar
Born: Leicestershire, 1944, died: April
6th 2012, aged 67 (National Union of Mineworkers)
Known to his friends
as ‘Benny,’ Malcolm Pinnegar was the figurehead of the ‘Dirty Thirty.’
This was the group of 30 Leicestershire miners who took strike action
during the 1984-5 strike. The Leicestershire NUM, did not support the
national strike and the 2,500 NUM members at Leicestershire's four pits
carried on working. Their nickname began as an insult but soon became a
badge of honour and the Dirty Thirty went more than a year without wages
during the national strike.
Malcolm grew up and
lived in Stoney Stanton before moving to Hinckley. When the national
strike was called in March 1984, he was working as a header (forging
tunnels) at Bagworth Colliery. When the thirty strikers realised that
picketing Leicestershire collieries would be in vain, they travelled the
UK, Europe and even visited America, raising awareness and funds for the
striking miners and their cause.
Darren Moore, of
Burbage, was an apprentice at Bagworth and the youngest of the Thirty,
said:
"Benny took me
under his wing and I looked up to him. When we realised we were going to
be on our own, he came forward as a natural leader, he had a charisma
about him. He kept our spirits up and whenever there was a problem we went
to him. Like the rest of us, Benny bitterly opposed Thatcher's pit closure
programme and believed it was his duty to stand up for his fellow working
man. He was convinced that if we didn't then the industry would be
decimated, and he took no pleasure whatsoever in being proved right.”
"He didn't see
himself as a hero, just someone doing what was right who wasn't afraid to
go against the grain for what he believed. He was a proper, rank and file
trade unionist but also a great bloke and family man. I'm going to miss
him."
Malcolm is also
immortalised in a song about the Dirty Thirty by Liverpool folk singer
Alun Parry, with the lyrics:
They were called The
Dirty Thirty
So they wore that name with pride
As the only striking miners
They stood against the tide
And if you call them heroes
They would surely disagree
But The Dirty Thirty and their kin
Are all heroes to me
When the strike ended,
the manager of his pit made it as easy as possible for him and the other
strikers to go back. However, this was by no means the case at other pits.
Sources: Leicester
Mercury, April 9th 2012, BBC Radio Leicester
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Born: Leicester c1819,
Died Oct?1892
In the 1840s, James Plant was a
bookbinder and an Owenite. He was a member of the Anti Persecution Union
in 1844 and secretary of the Leicester News Room. In 1852, he became the
first president and general secretary of the Leicester Secular Society. By
the 1870’s, he had become a manufacturer of fancy hosiery, employing 50
people. The 1881 census records his occupation as a geological surveyor.
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Born: Leicester,
June 1847, died: 14th January 1907 aged 59
 In
his early years John Potter was a parchment maker living in London,
Cheltenham and elsewhere. On his return to Leicester he was associated
with the boot trade and was a member of the Amalgamated Boot and Shoe
Makers’ Association. By the 1880s, he had become manager of a Co-operative
Grocery store. In 1874, he was a delegate to the founding conference of
the National Union of Shoe Riveters and Finishers. (later NUBSO)
In 1875, he reported to the Trades
Council that his union, No 2 branch of the Rivetters had started a fund to
set up a co-operative shoe factory. Although By the 1880s, he had become
manager of a Co-operative Grocery store, in 1886 he became one of the
promoters of the Leicester Co-operative Boot and Shoe Manufacturing
Society. (later Equity Shoes)
The society was set up by
discontented workers, following a strike at the C.W.S. works. It was to be
a new kind of co-operative factory, taking its inspiration from the
Co-operative Hosiery Manufacturing Society. The initiative for its
formation came from the strike committee. Unlike the C.W.S. where the
workers were just employees, the Equity Society extended the co-operative
principle into the place of work, giving the workers a share in the
profits and a say in the management. Equity is still in business today.
The founders of Equity were
encouraged and advised by Edward Owen Greening (1836-1923) who favoured
the development of productive co-operatives to raise the status of
workers. He also saw this as part of a general reform of society and an
alternative to the capitalism of investor and landlord control. John
Potter was president of the Leicester Co-operative Boot and Shoe
Manufacturing Society or ‘Equity Shoes’ for 18 years. He was closely
connected with the whole of the co-operative enterprise in Leicester,
being also on the board of The Leicester Co-operative Printing Society and
advisor to the Anchor Society.
John Potter was appointed the first
full-time secretary of the Co-operative Productive Federation and the
office was transferred to Leicester. By 1894, twenty societies had become
members, but the annual subscriptions only totalled £66. In that year the
secretaryship passed into the hands of Thomas Blandford, who held the post
till his death in 1899. The 1901 census describes John Potter as a ‘boot
traveller,’ presumably working for Equity.
John Potter was an earnest and
convinced Radical, a member of the Liberal Association and a prominent
worker in Westcotes ward. He was a member of the School Board for 18
years, a keen opponent of vaccination and in c1895 he was asked to stand
for a seat on the Town Council. He was a secularist and was Vice President
of the Secular Society in the 1890s.
Sources: Midlands Free Press 17th
April 1875, Leicester Co-operative Society, (1898) Co-operation in
Leicester, Leicester Co-operative Record, February 1907 (obit),
Greening, Edward O., A Pioneer Co-partnership, 1923
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Born: Leicester, 1878,
died: 1935
 John
Ernest Potter was one of the sons of John Potter (1848-1907) and was a
long-standing member of the I.L.P and Secular Society. He was a delegate
to the Trades Council from NUBSO for many years and also served on the
boards of several co-operative productive societies. For many years he
worked as a clicker at the Equity works and was elected to its General
Board before the First World War.
He was a founder of the Workers’
Welfare League of India-an organisation formed for the purpose of serving
the interests of Indian workers in this country. The league was
established by Shapurji Saklatvala in 1917. Saklatvala was the first
secretary of the League’s Indian Committee. Saklatvala was later elected
as a Labour then Communist MP for Battersea North.
In 1920, Potter was appointed
organising secretary of this body and worked for it for a year in London.
Quite how he became active in this anti-colonialist body is not known, but
‘unforeseen circumstances’ caused him to return to Leicester where he
remained secretary in an honorary capacity.
In 1921, when the great strike broke
out in Madras and several Indians were killed and wounded by police
officers, the League made representations to the British Government. Teddy
Peacock remembered him was a ‘taciturn sort of a fellow with a
moustache who would champion the cause of Indian
Independence and the Meerut prisoners at every
opportunity.’ In the early 1930s, John
Potter was responsible, more than anyone else, for the founding of the
Braunstone Tenants’ Association and became its first president. He was
elected to the board of LCS in 1932.
Sources: Interview, E.A. Peacock,
Leicester Oral History Archive, Braunstone Tenants’ Gazette 1935
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Born?
In the early 1890s Joseph Potter sat
on the Trades Council from the Hosiery Union and also represented the
Labour League which had a close association with the land Nationalisation
Society. He became president of the Trades Council in 1890. In 1893, he
told the first May Day demonstration that Picton, (the Liberal MP) was or
had been “a parson and was a capitalist. They might as well send a
leopard in sheep's clothing amongst a flock of sheep as send a capitalist
to represent the workers in Parliament.”
Sources: Leicester Chronicle and
Mercury. 13th May 1893, Bill Lancaster, Radicalism
Co-operation and Socialism
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Born: Northampton, 25th
November 1865
On his election as General Secretary
of NUBSO in 1908, he moved to Leicester, from Northampton. He had been
mayor of Northampton, but did not take part in local government in
Leicester. He became a J.P. in 1917 and became Chairman of the TUC in
1921. He was a representative on the International Labour Office (League
of Nations). He retired in 1930.
Sources: Alan Fox, A History of the
National Union of Boot and Shoe Workers, 1958, Howes, C. (ed), Leicester:
Its Civic, Industrial, Institutional and Social Life, Leicester 1927
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Born:
Coalville 3rd June 1894 (Labour Party)
 At
the age of seven years he went with his parents to Church Gresley in South
Derbyshire. Here he became a local government officer attached to the gas
department. He served in the 1914-1918 war with the Royal Engineers and
was attached to a special Company dealing with liquid fire. He was wounded
in the chest and was blown up by a shell during a battle at Zillibeke in
1917. Invalided out of the forces in the same year, he returned to the gas
industry.
Bert Powell came to Leicester in 1938
and was elected to the City Council the following year for St. Margaret’s
ward. He campaigned to get the people of Wharf Street rehoused. He spent
many years as a N.U.G.M.W. trade union official and was a delegate to the
Trades Council, becoming its president in 1944. He was chairman of the
Parks Committee from 1955 to the early 1960s. Under his chairmanship, the
City of Leicester Show, which was revived in 1947, was successful in
making a profit in 1958 and again in 1959. At one time he studied for the
Methodist ministry, however he joined Quakers in 1949. He was Lord Mayor
in 1959.
Sources: Leicester City Council,
Roll of Lord Mayors 1928-2000
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© Ned Newitt Last revised:
April 09, 2012. |
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Index
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