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Born: Stafford, c1864 (I.L.P., Labour Party &
Coalition)
 J.S.
Salt’s early schooling was very limited, starting work in the shoe trade
at the age of 11. At 14 he became an apprentice clicker and moved to
Leicester at the end of his apprenticeship. On arrival in Leicester, he
became a member of the Liberal Club, joining the I.L.P. when it was
founded. He worked at Stead and Stimpsons, Thomas Crick and Thomas Browns.
He was a founding member of NUBSO
No 2 branch and was associated with the formation of the Leicester Self
Help Boot and Shoe Manufacturing Society in 1895. He was elected to the
Board of Guardians in 1907 and to the Town Council in 1910.
Following refusal of the Labour
Party nationally to support the candidature of George Banton for
parliamentary by-election in 1913, he backed Hartley, the British
Socialist Party’s candidate. At the end of the First World War, he
publicly supported the pro war, anti-Labour, coalition candidate. As a
result, he was expelled from the Labour Party in 1919. He was re-elected
to the Council for Aylestone as a Coalition candidate in 1920.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 23rd
March 1907
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Died Jan-March 1840? (National Association for the
Protection of Labour)
Sansome was a framework knitter
and became chairman of the N.A.P.L. in 1831. He was a prominent supporter
of the Reform Bill and of a working class alliance with middle class
reformers. We the passing of the bill, this alliance fell apart. He gave
evidence to the 1833 Factory Commission and was a champion of the ten
hours bill. In 1838, he kept the Union pub in Wharf Street where a union
of framework knitters was formed.
Sources: A. Temple Patterson,
Radical Leicester,
Leicester 1954
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(I.L.P.)
Before she came to Leicester, Mrs
Saunderson had been a member of the School Board in Hull. Her husband was
vicar of St Martin’s Church and she was adopted as an I.L.P. candidate for
the school board in Leicester and elected in December 1894. She was
lambasted by the Leicester Chronicle for being ignorant of the conditions
of Leicester and for wanting to preach Socialism and abolish bible
teaching altogether. She was both the first person from Independent Labour
Party and the first Labour woman to be elected to public office. In
December 1895, she resigned from the Board.
Sources: The Wyvern, 6th
December 1895, Gerald Rimmington, Education, Politics and Society in
Leicester, 1833-1903
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Born Leicester 1883 (Labour Party)
Edith Scott was a bookbinder and at
the end of the First World War was an organiser for the National Union of
Printing and Paper Workers. She was an unsuccessful Labour candidate in
the local elections of 1919 and 1920 in Newton Ward. She argued for
involvement of women in the design of the new council housing. However,
she did not stand again and continued her trade union work until she
retired in 1943. In 1930, she opposed a proportion of her union’s
executive being reserved for women. She said
“We are not prepared to accept
any favours from men. If we are to be elected to Council, we want to go
there by virtue of the democratic vote”
She was a delegate to the Trades Council from the Printing and Paper
Workers and in 1935 became its president. She was still a delegate in the
early 1970s.
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Died: December 1988, aged 73 (Labour Party)
 Bill
Scotton was a former Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy where he had
spent 17 years. (1929-45) He became district organiser of the Union of
Post Office Workers and was first elected to the City Council for Belgrave
in 1963. He subsequently represented De Montfort and Charnwood
(1971-1981). In the early 1970s he was chairman of the City’s Traffic
Committee which was responsible for some of the road including the
controversial Eastern Relief Road. This was approved three times by the
City Council before being dropped by the County following reorganisation.
He did, however, ensure that Waterloo Way passed underneath New Walk,
rather than going through it as originally proposed. He became Lord Mayor
in 1979.
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Born Leicester c1786,died
1846 or 1851 (Radical, Chartist & Owenite)
John Seal was a newsagent and small
bookseller in Town Hall Lane. He was active in the Leicester Working Men’s
Association founded in August 1836 and was also an Owenite. His brother
Richard was Secretary of the Association. In the 1840s, he became a
Chartist leader and supporter of moral force Chartism. He sold newspapers
and pamphlets “advocating the just rights of the wealth-producing
millions and opposing the aggrandisement of the non-producing few.”
The original programme of the
Leicester Association Men’s Association did not go beyond household
suffrage, the ballot and triennial Parliaments. Along with Markham, he
reorganised the Association based on the principles of the Charter. He was
the publisher of the Midland Counties Illuminator on behalf of a
managing committee. He broke with Cooper’s Chartists as a result of
Cooper’s policy of co-operation with the Conservatives and was also active
in the Leicester Complete Suffrage Association.
Sources: Leicestershire Mercury, 5th
March 1842, A. Temple Patterson, Radical
Leicester, Leicester
1954, Bill Lancaster, Radicalism Co-operation and Socialism
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Born c1791, died Oct-Dec 1869? aged 80?
(Framework-knitter)
Richard seal was the younger brother
of John and had served in the Peninsular War of 1808-14. In the late
1820s, he was a leader of the local framework knitters and a rival to
William Jackson also a local leader. He a supporter of Catholic
emancipation and in 1830, he was prominent in the Leicester branch of the
National Association for the Protection of Labour. This was the attempt
led by John Doherty to form a national trade union structure.
In 1832, he was the chief working
class spokesman in the council of the Leicester and Leicestershire
Political Union, the organisation of local radicals supporting the Reform
Bill and boasted his readiness for armed rebellion should it prove
necessary. Initially, he supported an alliance with the middle classes,
though he later became Secretary of the Leicester Working Men’s
Association founded in August 1836. In 1838, he was a founder, with his
brother and John Markham, of the Chartists. He also helped and encouraged
Thomas Cooper.
Sources: A. Temple Patterson,
Radical Leicester, Leicester 1954, Census returns
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Born: Ironbridge, Salop, 28th October
1846; died: 1934 (trade unionist)
 George
Sedgwick attended a Unitarian School in Birmingham and worked as a boot
closer at an early age. He was secretary, then president of the Birmingham
Rivetters’ And Finishers’ Society. After a period in the Worcester Rifle
Corps, he moved to Stafford where, in 1867, he joined the Amalgamated
Society of Cordwainers. In 1874, he helped establish the National Union of
Boot and Shoe Operatives with Thomas Smith. He was the union’s first agent
and succeeded Smith as General Secretary in 1878.
Sedgwick was a supporter of
arbitration he believed that many strikes could easily settled if both men
and employers could meet and talk over their grievances. In 1882 went so
far as to suggest that purpose of the trade union was “to act as
mediator between employers and workmen in trade disputes.” Such a
conciliatory attitude towards employers ultimately foundered in the late
1880s as more disputes arose from the shop floor.
He was member of the School Board
1879-1886 and was the first chairman of the Leicester Working Men’s Club.
In 1886 he was one of the first working men appointed as a Inspector of
Factories. After some time in Leicester he went to Glasgow where he
contributed a great deal to the Select Committee Report on the Sweating
System. After a period in the Black Country, he returned as to Leicester
to work as a factory inspector in 1896, retiring in 1911. When he died at
the age of 87 he was the oldest magistrate on the Leicester bench.
Sources: Fox, Alan, A History of
the National Union of Boot and Shoe
Workers. 1958, Bill Lancaster, Radicalism
Co-operation and Socialism
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Born: Leicester, June 1927, died: December 2008
(Labour Party)
Janet was born into a family which
was deeply involved in Labour politics. Her maternal grandmother, Mrs
Annie Stretton helped to form the Labour League of Women in Leicester in
1906 and her parents Rowland and Molly Hill were both involved in Labour
Party politics.
She was educated at Newarke Girls’
Grammar School and Leicester Domestic Science College. On leaving College,
she commenced a career in catering and taught cookery in a number of
schools. Janet was first elected to the Leicester City Council as a Labour
Councillor for the North Braunstone Ward in May 1970. With the
re-organisation of Local Government in 1973, she was elected to serve on
the new Leicester District Council and also on the new Leicestershire
County Council as a representative for North Braunstone.
During the late 1970s and 1980s, Janet became identified with the
Leicester West group of councillors who were cautious about some of the
radical policies favoured by the newer left wing members.
Janet was also concerned to
protect Greville Janner’s position as MP and kept a watchful eye on the
membership of the constituency and its boundaries. Loyalty counted
for much in her eyes. Not only was she very loyal to the Party itself, but
she was also loyal to those with who she worked - sometimes in spite of
their failings.
She served on a number of the
major Committees of the City Council including Environmental Health and
Public Control, Estates and Finance, on all of which she was the Chairman.
She was a Governor of several local schools and of Southfields Further
Education College and was a member of the Leicestershire Health Authority.
She was one of the first members of the Radio Leicester Council.
During 1982-84, Janet became the
first woman and the first Councillor from a City Ward to become
‘chairman’ of the County Council. She became Lord Mayor in 1985, becoming the first daughter of a Lord Mayor of Leicester to become the
chief
citizen in her own right and the first person to have held the offices of Lord Mayor and the
'Chairmanship' of the Leicestershire County Council.
Janet was a consistent advocate of
the return of powers to the City Council and believed that the division of
the City Labour Party into three separate constituency parties was a
mistake. She saw the City regain unitary status in 1997, but lost her seat to the Liberals in 1999.
She continued her
constituency work for as long as she could and before her death she had provided
additional information for this series
of biographies.
Sources: Leicester City Council,
Roll of Lord Mayors 1928-2000, author’s personal knowledge
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Born: 3rd Jan 1930, died May 1986
(Labour Party and Independent)
 Krishnalal
Shah was a Kenyan Asian who had first come to prominence in working for
the reception of the Ugandan Asian refugees. He was also a member of the
Community relations Council. He was a shopkeeper and owner of Shah’s
Emporium. In June 1973, he became Leicester’s first Asian councillor.
At the election count a member of the National Front poured a cup of tea
over him and the Leicester Mercury ran the page one headline: ‘Leicester
Gets First Immigrant Cllr.’
Ten years later, there were ten
Asian councillors- all Labour. By this time, however, Kris Shah had left
the Labour Party and had stood as independent against Pat Hewitt in
Leicester East. In this contest, he took enough votes to ensure the
election of the Conservative Peter Bruinvels.
Sources: Valerie Marett,
Immigrants Settling in the City, 1987
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Born Leicester circa 1836, died July- Sept 1906
Jos Sharp was the first secretary
of Leicester and District Trades Council in the 1872 and continued in the
position until the late 1880s (he lived at 23 Willow Bridge Street in
1873) The secretaries who signed reports of the Secular Society from 1867
to 1871 were also a Joseph Sharp. According to the census he was a
Provision Dealer & Frame Work Knitter.
Sources: F. J. Gould, The History
Of The Leicester Secular Society,
1900, Leicester Pioneer Sept 5th 1903
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(Communist Party)
Dave Sheppard was secretary of the
Leicester Communist Party during the 1960s and had been active since the
1930s. By 1960, he had been the C.P. candidate for De Montfort ward seven
times without success.
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Born: Leicester, 6th Jan 1856; died: May
1945 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
 Amos
Sherriff attended no school and began work at the age of six. He worked in
a brickyard for his first twenty-five years, spending his spare time
learning to read and write. At the age of 21, he joined the Christian
Mission (later to become the Salvation Army) and was an active member
until 1894. parading the streets, playing the cornet and speaking to the
people. In those days the Salvation Army was often unpopular, and he often
returned home covered with blood and mud, having been pelted with stones.
Like many young socialists, his first exposure to Socialism came at a
lecture by Tom Barclay.
He left the Salvation Army when he
joined the I.L.P. He had no trade union background and had established his
own cycle shop on Belgrave Road, where people used to call to discuss
their problems with him and listen to his advice. He became the central
figure in the small local Clarion readers’ group, his shop being the
outlet for the Clarion cycle.
Amos Sherriff was elected a
reserve executive member at the I.L.P. branch’s formation meeting. When in
1901, he was elected to the Board of Guardians, he fought on behalf of the
unemployed against disenfranchisement and the labour test. A contemporary
account describes Sherriff at an animated meeting of the Board:
“Mr. Sherriff then rose, apparently
in a burst of passionate indignation. It seemed painful to him, he said,
that in the twentieth century, when wealth was produced at lightening
speed, when they were supposed to be civilised and possessed of
humanitarian ideas and ideals, that they should come there and be asked
whether or not they would give a big, strong British workman with a good
character, living with his parents, one shilling a day or 1s 3d for four
days a week, and to do that even for no longer a period than four weeks
and then throw him back on the street or the scrap-heap for another
fortnight. He did not know what the working community would think of it,
but this he did know, that very shortly the working community would rise
up and wring the neck of this wretched system.....
In 1905, he was one of the leaders
of the unemployed march from Leicester to London. Daily meetings of the
unemployed were held in the Market Place, at which he urged the men to
take action. He advised them to refuse offers of relief from the
Guardians, since accepting even one loaf of bread meant being taken off
the electoral register for 12 months. Instead, he told them, they should
demand that the Guardians buy land and erect workshops and pay reasonable
wages without disenfranchisement, they should ’besiege’ the Council, as
they had a lot of powers if they would only use them, and they should lay
their case before the magistrates and enlist their sympathy.
“I would warn the Leicester
Guardians, the Council, the magistrates and the respectable that if they
allow the question to slide, 3,000 men will not suffer like they are
suffering in patience. They will not put their hands in their pockets and
stand with their backs up for ever. I want everyone to understand that if
they put too much pressure even on the proverbial worm, the worm will turn
at last.”
Drawing on his skill as a speaker,
and on his experience as a ’captain’ in the ’Army’, he rallied the men to
march to London to attract the attention of the country as a whole to the
plight of the unemployed, and of the Government in particular towards the
passing of the Unemployed Bill. Although, the march attracted great
popular support in Leicester, to begin with it was not supported by a
majority of the Trades Council and some in the I.L.P. like Chaplin
initially publicly opposed it, whilst others like George Banton though it
a risky venture which could end in disaster.
He was elected to the council in
1908 for West Humberstone. He served on the Town Council for 24 years,
became Mayor on 9th November 1922 and was later elected to the Aldermanic
bench. He would have been Labour’s first mayor in 1919, but because of his
opposition to the war, the Liberals and Tories combined to make Jabez
Chaplin, from the ‘patriotic’ wing of the Labour movement, mayor in his
place.
Following the Rupert Street riot
in 1921, as chairman of the Councils Distress Committee, he brokered a
scheme between the Guardians and the Ministry of Health which set up
work-schemes for the unemployed which were paid half in kind and money.
When, in 1928 when the Guardians were replaced by local authority public
assistance committees, he continued as a member of the local committee.
During the 1930’s he got the Council to set up homesteads for the
unemployed, though it did not meet with any real success. He resigned from
the Council in 1944 and died whilst visiting the Poor Law Institution.
Sources: Bill Lancaster,
Radicalism Co-operation and Socialism, Howes, C. (ed), Leicester:
Its Civic, Industrial, Institutional and
Social Life, Leicester 1927
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Born circa 1877 (WSPU)
Ellen Sherriff was a suffragette
and niece of Amos Sherriff who worked in the boot and shoe trade as a shoe
machinist. She became the branch’s most successful arsonist. Along with
Kitty Marion and Elizabeth Frisby (later a Conservative councillor and
Lord Mayor), she burnt down Blaby Railway station in July 1914, causing
£500 worth of damage. The culprits were never caught. Kitty Marion, (Katherina
Maria Schafer) 1871-1944 was born in Westphalia and was a leading figure
in the WSPU arson campaign. She was responsible for setting fire to
Levetleigh House in Sussex (April 1913), the Grandstand at Hurst Park
racecourse (June 1913) and various houses in Liverpool (August, 1913) and
Manchester (November, 1913). These incidents resulted in a series of
further terms of imprisonment during which force-feeding occurred followed
by release under the ‘Cat & Mouse Act.’ It has been calculated that Kitty
Marion endured 200 force-feedings in prison while on hunger strike.
Sources: Richard Whitmore, Alice
Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian
Leicester, The Papers of
Kitty Marion, The Women's Library, London Metropolitan University
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Convenor of the Leicester branch
of the Left Book Club. Employed as national firm of business system
specialists. He was active in the Co-operative movement.
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Born: 26th March 1915; died: 17th
January 2002 (Communist Party)
Brian Simon, emeritus professor of
education at the University of Leicester, was best known for his four-volume history of the English education system and his life-long advocacy of equal secondary opportunities for all
through comprehensive schooling.
In the 1950s and 1960s, he was the
education spokesman for the Communist Party and called for the end of
intelligence testing. His campaigning for comprehensive education,
particularly through the journal Forum, was indispensable and inspiring
reading during the 1960s and 1970s for many of the country's best
comprehensive school teachers. He was critical of the 1956 Soviet
intervention in Hungary and opposed the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
He was for a short period a member of the CPGB national executive.
Simon came from a favoured
background. His father, Ernest Simon, head of the
family engineering firm, was made first Lord Simon of Wythenshawe for
public services, which included a long spell on the city council and
service as lord mayor, during which he campaigned for - among other things
- a smokeless city and better housing. Brian Simon's mother, Shena was for
50 years on Manchester's education committee, working to improve the state
system. Among close family friends was R.H. Tawney, also strongly committed
to secondary education for all.
As a schoolboy, Simon had
encountered German fascism at first hand, having been sent in the early
1930s to Kurt Hahn's progressive school at Salem, which was already under
Nazi attack. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Simon was part of the
concerned generation which, horrified by fascism, turned to communism.
While at Cambridge, Simon became
involved in international student politics and met his future wife, Joan
Peel - a direct descendant of the 19th-century prime minister, Robert
Peel. In 1939-40 he was president of the NUS, and in 1943, at the age of
27, he wrote A Student's View Of The Universities, a critique of the
university system.
But this gently elegant man did
not want to go into full-time politics. His aim was to become a teacher,
and he trained at the London Institute of Education. Then, after war
service with the Corps of Signals and GHQ Liaison Regt (Phantom), he
taught in Manchester and Salford.
Five years later, in 1950, he was
drawn to Leicester University School of Education, where academics were
doing fieldwork devising a comprehensive school system. University staff,
under the directorship of Stewart Mason, worked with the local education
authority to produce Leicestershire's two-tier model, the success of which
was to help make the case for the national policy announced by Education
Secretary Tony Crosland in 1965. Simon became a professor in 1966, the
year following the publication of what was to be the first volume of his
history of English education, having already published extensively on
intelligence testing and local history. He was a co-founder of Forum in
1958. In 1970, he co-authored - with Caroline Benn - a research study on
comprehensive reform, Half Way There, which was based on extensive
questionnaires. Simon stayed at Leicester for the rest of his professional
life, retiring in 1980.
What Simon histories show not only that divisive
policies were rooted in English culture and society, but also how policy
was made. The books contain some gripping accounts of local education
authority battles to secure more resources for ‘their’ pupils. When it
came to the state system, central government was usually moved more by
fear than by hope. Simon's work on educational psychology, some of it in
conjunction with his wife, was designed to show the deficiencies of the
post-war fashion for psychometric testing, made famous by Sir Cyril Burt,
which divided children into grammar and secondary-modern types. When Simon
retired in 1980, it was not to inaction. He finished the last of his
education histories, bringing the story up to date. He also edited a
number of books, including key texts from a broad range of political views
designed to provide a base for a broad-ranging critique of government
policy.
Simon wrote a draft autobiography,
which was published in a shortened version as A Life In Education
(1998). Sadly, it was pruned of the personal to focus on educational
issues. Had Simon lived in a culture more tolerant of communist
intellectuals, his educational thinking would surely have been recognised
as mainstream earlier.
Sources: The Guardian, January 2002
(Anne Corbett) & personal knowledge
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Born: c1824, died 1901 (Chartist,
Secularist, Republican, Socialist)
For ten years, John Sketchley was
secretary of the South Leicestershire Chartist Association and was active
in the Hinckley area. During 1848, when a Chartist insurrection was feared
by the authorities, two unsuccessful attempts were made to arrest him.
Sketchley did not accept the distinction between physical and moral force
Chartism, (terms that are still used by historians).
“The quarrels on moral or physical
force were most lamentable; as though the use of physical force could
never be moral; or as though moral and legal were synonymous terms. The
fact being that the legal and moral are generally the very opposite of
each other, while, as a rule, the quickest way to end a tyranny and
oppression is the most moral and most legitimate.”
Sketchley was a subscriber to George
Julian Harney’s Red Republican which was on the left of the Chartist
movement. (Sketchley’s first child born in 1851 to his wife Lucy, was
called Julian)
In the 1850s, a John Sketchley of
Hinckley actively opposed the system of frame rents and in 1855, gave
evidence to the Select Committee on the Stoppages of Wages. At that time
he had worked as a framework knitter for 39 years (there is only one John
census on the census for 1851) and he testified that ‘It is the general
system in practice; every workman when he takes a frame knows that he
shall have stopped from his earnings so much a week for rent’. He
explained that in times of good trade there had been no objection to the
1s. frame rent, however, ‘As wages have got lower we have found that
rents have remained the same as they were when wages were higher, and
consequently they bear more heavily on the workmen now than they did at
former periods….’
In the late 1850s John Sketchley
wrote a letter to The Midland Express on behalf of his fellow framework
knitters in which he accused one employer of being a ‘truck-master.’
William Frederick Taunton, the journalist and owner of the paper was
subsequently sued for defamation of character by the employer Taunton lost
his case and was left with expenses of £650. (this may be a different
Sketchley)
The 1861 census shows Sketchley
working as an insurance agent in Hinckley. Sketchley then moved to
Leicester and became a bookseller and stationer, living at 37 Willow
Bridge St. (this was still his occupation in 1901) Mary Ann Sketchley his
second wife, died in Hickley in 1867.
In September 1867, he was elected
Secretary of the re-established Leicester Secular Society. However in
October of that year he went bankrupt and was imprisoned for debt. He was
not released until January 1869. He then moved to Birmingham and played an
active part in the Birmingham Republican movement.
Although his subsequent activity to
place outside Leicester, it is worth noting the influential role he had
within the nascent Socialist movement. In 1878, he founded the Midland
Social Democratic Federation, the first Socialist organisation of the late
C19th. In 1879, he published a pamphlet called The Principles of Social
Democracy, which E. P. Thompson credits with introducing continental
socialist ideas to many future British socialists and in 1883 was one of
the founders of a Birmingham branch of the newly-founded Democratic
Federation. (This later became Hyndman’s Social Democratic Federation.)
Sketchley became a prolific pamphleteer from 1880s onwards, titles include
Land Common Property (1881), Tithes And The Pious Ancestor
Theory (published in Leicester, 1885) Shall The People Govern
Themselves? (1890), The Crimes of Governments (1902),
In 1884, William Morris wrote a
preface for John Sketchley's A Review of European Society and
Sketchley was a contributor to Morris’ paper the Commonweal. That year
Frederick Engels made the disparaging comment that “Sketchley who, as a
former Chartist, presumably considers himself entitled to a pension”.
In 1891, the 66 year old Sketchley was living in Hull with his 25 year old
third wife. In 1900 the John Sketchley Testimonial Fund Committee
published a pamphlet.
Sources: David Nash, Secularism,
Art and Freedom, Rhianydd Murray: Family, Work and Leisure in a
Hosiery Town, Hinckley 1640-2000,
J Sketchley Personal Experiences in the Chartist Movement, 1884 Asa
Briggs, Chartist Sudies
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Born: Loughborough 1801, died 1850
(Chartist)
John Skevington was the son of a leading Loughborough
Primitive Methodist preacher and took up his father's vocation at an early
age. He consequently became known as "the boy preacher" in his home town
before embarking on a series of preaching tours around the country in the
1820s. His lameness compelled him to give up travelling and he continued
preaching until he left the connexion in 1836. According to JFC Harrison
this followed a dispute about the financial problems facing Dead Lane
Chapel, of which he was treasurer. By then, he was already well known in
Loughborough as a democrat, and with the emergence of Chartism he was seen
as a natural leader of the movement.
As an advocate of the principles of the People's
Charter, I found nothing on inspection to condemn them.....but a firm
conviction that though a man may be a Chartist and not a Christian, a
man cannot be a Christian and not a Chartist unless through ignorance.
Through good times and bad, and through bitter division
in the ranks of Leicestershire Chartism, Skevington remained a prominent
and honourable figure at the head of the local movement. He chaired the
meeting and demonstration which founded Chartism in Leicester and was a
delegate to the 1839 Convention. He initially opposed but then voted for a
National Holiday or Sacred Month (general strike) as a weapon to advance
the Charter.
When general strike broke out in the summer of 1842,
Skevington was arrested in Loughborough and whisked away to Leicester with
an escort of Dragoon Guards. He was charged with using inflammatory
language and bound over. Because he could not produce the necessary
sureties, he was sent to county goal on High Cross Street in Leicester.
Although he was released after a few days when satisfactory bonds were
produced, his arrest roused the Loughborough Chartists to renewed action.
This in turn lead to further arrests.
Skevington appears to have tried to reunite the
different factions of Chartists in Leicester, chairing a meeting at which
differences were aired. However, the splits continued until Cooper and
Bairstow had departed from Leicester. In 1848, when the magistrates in
Loughborough declared Chartist meetings illegal and prevented O’Connor
from leaving the station, Skevington called their bluff and called a
meeting in the Market Place. Skevington remained a committed Chartist to
the end and was held in high regard by his Loughborough comrades. In 1848
they presented him with a testimonial and his portrait in oils, ‘for his
great services to the cause of liberty.’ This is now in the collection of
Leicestershire County Council.
Sources: Asa
Briggs, Chartist Studies, A. Temple
Patterson, Radical Leicester, Leicester 1954,
chartist ancestors
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Born: Leeds, c1819 died
1882 (Secularist)
John Sladen of Sladen's Indigo Dye
Works, was also a Town Councillor. He was a dyer of woollen yarn,
employing 3 men in 1870. He was president of the Secular Society in 1873.
He was a shareholder in the Secular Hall Company and died aged, 64, soon
after it was opened. He lived in Cobden Street
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Born: Barnoldswick,
Yorkshire 15th September 1820, died 25th June 1894
Tom Slater learned his trade as handloom weaver in
Barnoldswick. In 1853 he moved to Bury. He became a close friend of
Bradlaugh and intimate with G. J. Holyoake. For ten years he was a member
of Bury Town Council and an energetic co-operator. He was a member of the
first Central Board of Co-operators, which was appointed at the 1869
Congress. In the 1870s, he had appointed as one of the lecturers for the
National Secular Society and in 1885 he accepted an invitation to become
Manager of the Leicester Secular Society. When this arrangement finished
he continued to reside on the premises with his son. He continued to be an
active co-operator in Leicester being elected to the L.C.S. general
committee in 1887 and, as worker and lecturer, he won the respect of a
wide circle of acquaintances. He had a passion for books and possessed a
library of 3,000 volumes.
Sources: Sources: F. J. Gould, The
History Of The Leicester Secular Society,
1900, David Nash, Secularism, Art and Freedom
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Born near Loughborough,
died: November 1847 aged 75 (Chartist leader)
 Smart
was born of working class parents, his father died whilst he was still
young and his mother could not afford to keep him on at school. But he had
learnt to read and had a thirst for knowledge. He managed to teach himself
Latin, French, Italian and Spanish. He also had a talent for verse and
contributed to several periodicals. These gifts and attainments brought
him to the notice of the Marquis of Hastings who found him an appointment
as a supervisor of excise. After 17 years, he lost his job as a result of
his Radicalism and thereafter eked out a precarious living partly as a
school-master and partly by architectural drawing and making machinery.
He was a delegate to the Chartist
National Convention in 1839 where he opposed a proposal for a Sacred
Holiday (general strike) to further the Charter. He was Skevington’s chief
assistant at Loughborough till 1842, when he then moved to Leicester.
Smart, unlike Markham, was hostile to the repeal of the Corn Laws,
believing that repeal would enable manufacturers to pay lower wages. Smart
was a Shakespearian Chartist. Following Cooper’s departure from Leicester,
Smart, despite his age and poverty, attempted with George Buckby to revive
the movement. In 1846 they formed the ‘O’Connor Chartist section,’ which
the Northern Star described as a “few half-starved operatives aided by
an old man nearly worn out in the service.” He spoke at a crowded
meeting at the Town Hall with Ernest Jones in November 1846 and by March
1847 he reported that 11,000 signatures had been collected for the Charter
locally. Smart contributed poetry to the Chartist Midland Counties’
Illuminator published in Leicester and to the Northern Star which
published his last poem shortly before his death. In 1847, he wrote: “I
have been active in the movement more than sixty years .... and ....from
my early youth up, I have trod the bright path of democracy…I have
received the usual reward of slander, of obloquy of persecution and
pecuniary loss. My reward is that of an approving conscience and my
consolation that when I depart, that I have endeavoured to leave the world
a better place than I found it.”
Sources: Northern Star, 25th
July, 19th September, 2nd January 1847, A. Temple
Patterson, Radical Leicester, Leicester 1954, J.F.C. Harrison,
Chartism in Leicester,
published in Chartist Studies Asa Briggs (ed) 1959
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(Communist Party)
Bill Smith was a Communist Party
member who was active in the 1930s and 40s. He was expelled from the
Trades Council in the 1930s for his party membership. In 1937, he became
secretary of the short-lived Unity Campaign, between the C.P., I.L.P.
Socialist League and other left organisations. The local Communist Party
banner was inscribed with is name.
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Born: Stone 1847; died:
1919 (Liberal)
 Thomas
Smith learnt his craft from his father and they went ‘on the tramp’ to
Worcester and then to Stafford, where he became involved in the trade
union movement. Tom Smith was originally secretary of the Staffordshire
Rivetters and became the first general secretary of NUBSO, from 1874-78.
He was elected to the School Board in
1877. In 1878, he resigned his secretaryship of the union on order to
become the full-time secretary of the Leicester Liberal Association. He
then became a town councillor, alderman and mayor in 1907-8. Following the
Conciliation Act of 1896, he was appointed by the Board of Trade as
Conciliator and Arbitrator in many trade disputes in all parts of the
country. He remained a member of No 1 branch until his death.
Sources: Bill Lancaster,
Radicalism Co-operation and Socialism, Alan Fox, A History of the
National Union of Boot and Shoe Workers,
1958
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Born: 26th July
1890; died: c1977 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
 William
Smith received his early education at Medway School. He began work as a
half-time errand boy at the age of 11. On leaving school, he joined the
Post office working as a messenger boy, postman, postal clerk,
telegraphist, and postal and telegraph Officer.
He was conscripted in 1916, but
refused to be vaccinated by the army and at one stage refused to put on a
uniform. His lack of co-operation resulted in him being sent to the front
line, but he survived the war. He spent two and a half years in the Royal
Garrison Artillery and was discharged badly gassed, having previously
suffered from frostbite and trench feet.
He held various positions in the
Labour Party and Postmen’s Federation. He became president of the Trades
Council in 1926. He was elected to the Council for Abbey ward in 1925 and
became Lord Mayor in 1946. In 1953, he became chair and leader of the City
Council Labour group, when John Minto’s three year period of office ended.
He retired from the chair of the Museums and Libraries Committee aged 70
in 1960. He is commemorated by William Smith House in Beaumont Leys. He
was an advocate of temperance and a non-smoker.
Sources: Leicester City Council,
Roll of Lord Mayors 1928-2000, election address 1923, personal
knowledge
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Born: July 1942, died: May 1996
(Labour Party)
Paul Sood was born in the Indian
Punjab, the son of a Congress politician. Throughout his political life he
insisted that the Punjab was an integral part of India, and fell out with
some Sikhs as a result. But he was also one of the Indian High
Commission's closest allies in British politics, and it was through his
influence with the Commission that visa surgeries were established in
Leicester.
After graduating as an engineer at
Trent Polytechnic, he became an active trade unionist as a member of the
ASTMS (the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs),
before leaving engineering to start his own business, first as an
insurance broker and then as a travel agent.
Paul Sood was vice-president of the
Hindu Council of Leicestershire, founding secretary of the Indian Passport
Holders Association, a founder of the Leicester Asian Business Association
and of the British Indian Councillors Association.
He was elected to Leicestershire
County Council in 1982 and then briefly to Leicester City Council for
Abbey Ward. His outspoken comments frequently landed him in trouble with
his colleagues which earned him a reputation as a political maverick. He
was never a man to be quiet, and seldom considered political strategies.
Instead, he shouted when he was sure he was right, and persisted when he
was ignored. On several occasions he attempted to become an MP and he
never doubted that he should have been selected as Labour's parliamentary
candidate for Leicester East in 1987. He made two short films for the BBC
in 1995, one on Diwali. Following his death, his wife
Manjula contested and won the by-election for his seat.
Sources: Author’s personal knowledge,
Paul Gosling, The Independent, 29th May 1996
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Born: Street, Somerset
1850 (Co-operator)
After working in Street, London and
Ipswich in the boot and shoe trade, he came to work at the C.W.S. boot
factory at Duns Lane in 1881. He continued to work for the C.W.S. until he
retired until 1922. He joined the of the Leicester Co-operative Boot and
Shoe Manufacturing Society in 1887 and in 1890 he was elected to the board
of the L.C.S. to which he gave over 33 years service. He was president of
the Leicester Co-operative Carriage Builders Society practically from its
commencement until the 1920s.
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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(The
Leicester Clickers’ Union)
J.G. Stevens was the secretary of the
Leicester Clickers Union founded in January 1873, having 300 members
locally. The less skilled riviters followed later in the year and set up
their own union. (both seceeding from the old craft union.) Around 1876,
the union attempted to advance wages and get a reduction in hours and
after a 15 weeek struggle was defeated, some members taking a reduction.
In 1890, the union merged with NUBSO.
Sources: Midlands Free Press 15th
February 1873
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Born: 1858, died: 1931 (I.L.P.&
Labour Party)
 Annie
Stretton was a member of the Board of Guardian for 12 years.
(c1910-1922.). In 1906, she was also a founder member of the Women’s
Labour League in Leicester. Because oh her husbands job on the railways,
she was able to join the Railway Women's Guild. The Guild was formed for
the purpose of providing 'social intercourse for the wives and daughters
of railway workers.' She became its national president and travelled all
over the country in an organising capacity. She was the mother-in-law of
T. Rowland Hill and grandmother of Janet Setchfield.
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Born: Staffs Barton Under
Needwood, c1860 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
He was a railway shunter on the
Midland Railway and member of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants.
He was a delegate to the Trades Council and member of its executive. He
opposed the First World War and suggested that there was more in common
between British and German workers than there was between British workers
and their bosses. He was married to Annie Stretton.
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Born: Derby 16th
Nov 1854 died: 19th Nov 1932 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
 Fredrick
Sutton left school at the age of 12 and after working as an errand boy for
a chemist, he became apprenticed to a printer in Derby. After working in
Market Harborough, Nottingham and Woolwich, he moved to Leicester in 1876
as a compositor. From 1888-1923 he was secretary of the Leicester
Typographical Society. He was a delegate to the Trades Council for over 30
years and was its secretary for from 1910-12.
His chief work was that of pioneer of
the Leicester Co-operative Printing Society. This business was founded in
1892 and established branches in London and Kettering, as well as making
cardboard boxes. The printing works were first established in Vauxhall
Street, moving to East Bond Street and eventually to Church Gate. The
whole of the business was managed by a board elected by shareholders and
employees. He served on the board.
Before the formation of the I.L.P.,
he had been Trades Council nominee for election to the City Council. He
was a Labour Town Councillor for Abbey 1909-20. He was chair of the 1911
reception committee for the Labour Party Conference and served on the
Appeals Tribunal during the First World War. He was made a JP in 1917.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 9th
May 1924, Howes, C. (ed), Leicester: Its Civic, Industrial, Institutional
and Social Life, Leicester 1927
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(WSPU)
Corrie Swain was the daughter of a
doctor who lived on Regent Road. In 1911, she was given 5 days for
assaulting a police officer along with Elizabeth Frisby following a London
demonstration. She was given organiser’s post in Leicester for the WSPU
whilst in prison May 1912.
Sources: Sources: Richard Whitmore,
Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian
Leicester
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Born c1811? died April-Jun
1885?(Chartist)
John Swain was a small master
stockinger and in the mid 1830s was a member of the Leicester Radical
Working Men’s Association’ He was John Markham’s principal lieutenant in
the anti-Poor Law Society and it was at his house that Cooper lodged when
he first became a Chartist. He remained a supporter of Markham’s All
Saints Open Chartists.
Sources: A. Temple Patterson,
Radical Leicester, Leicester 1954, J.F.C. Harrison, Chartism
in Leicester,
published in Chartist Studies Asa Briggs (ed) 1959
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Died: Spain, February 1937
(Communist Party)
Fred Sykes was a local Communist
activist who lived in Dryden Street. He was active in the unemployed and
anti-fascist movement in Leicester from around 1932. In August 1936, he
was arrested and removed from the platform by the police whilst speaking
in the Market Place. He was summoned for ‘shouting and behaving in a
disorderly way,’ - the case was dismissed.
Not long after, he volunteered to
fight with the International Brigade in Spain and left Leicester with Jack
Watson. He was killed in the battle of Jamara in February 1937, just
months after his arrival. A special memorial meeting was held in the
Market Place to honour him. Among those who spoke was Cllr Will Owen
(later MP). Bill Smith said: “Those that knew him can visualise that
Comrade Sykes would be in the forefront where danger was concerned. This
party has lost its finest comrade and its finest trade unionist.”
Sources: Leicester Evening Mail 11th
January 1933, 14th September 1936, Leicester Mercury 19th
July 1937
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© Ned Newitt Last revised:
June 29, 2011. |
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Index
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