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Arnold Wakefield
(Labour Party)
Arnold Wakefield was a pattern maker
and City councillor from 1955-67.
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Born: Leicester 7th
March 1885 (I.L.P. & Labour Party)
J.W. Wale joined the I.L.P. and was
elected to the City Council in 1927. For
many years he was chairman of the Parks Committee, being in charge of the
City’s Coronation celebrations. He was twice chairman of the Labour Group
and was its secretary for a number of years. He became Lord Mayor in 1949.
John Wale was the
proprietor of Wale’s china shop which was originally on High Street,
moving to
premises in Hotel Street after the war. (this was the same building used
in the 1840s as the Owenite Social Institution .
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Born: 21st Jan
1894, died: Feb 1986 (B.S.P., Communist Party, Co-op Party)
 Roland
Walton was a co-operator all his life. In the early 1920s, he was a Trades
Council delegate from the Leatherworkers union. He was originally a member
of the British Socialist Party and had then become a member of the
Communist Party. He was a CP local election candidate and in 1932, he
stood in Newton ward against T.F. Richards gaining just 105 votes. That
year he had been censured by the Trades Council, by 30 votes to 15, for
conducting a meeting in opposition to the Trades Council's official May
Day platform. During the 1930s, he was very active in the anti-fascist
movement, though by the mid thirties he had left the Communist Party. In
1937, he was elected as president of the Leicester Co-operative Party. He
remained active in the Friends of Russia and similar organisations and was
still on the Trades Council in the 1970s.
Sources: author’s personal knowledge
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Born 1848, died 1918 (Socialist
League)
Ben Warner was the son of the local
Chartist leader and framework knitter Joseph Warner. During the 1880s,
Warner, Homes, Barclay & Chaplin were a group of Socialists active and
prominent in the hosiery union. Warner was a member of the executive of
Leicester Area Hosiery Union and later became its president. He was also
its delegate to the Trades Council. He was a member of the Socialist
League. Although originally a framework knitter, by 1901, he was working
as a woollen glove hand.
At a dinner held to commemorate the
Paris Commune, those present (including Tom Barclay and Jimmy Holmes)
resolved to set a Socialist Club in Leicester. This became the Labour Club
and the base of the I.L.P. By this time, in the early1890s, he had become
an anarchist. He was a member of the Leicester Secular Society.
His son Walter, born c1879, was
the manager the Secular Hall for a short time after 1910. During her
teens, Ben's daughter, Clara born c1875, was active in the Socialist
League. She too became a manager of the Secular Hall.
Sources: Bill Lancaster,
Radicalism Co-operation and Socialism, family members
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Born c1906, died Spain
December 1938
Jack Watson was a shoe repairer and
one time chauffeur, of 9, Gopsall Street who went to Spain with Fred Sykes
to fight with the International Brigade. He was killed in December 1938 on
the Pozoblanco front. Aged 32
Sources: Leicester Evening Mail 16th
December 1937
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Died: October 1989 aged 97
(Labour Party, WEA)
 Fred
Watson was a conscientious objector during the First World War and was
sent to Wakefield and then to Dartmoor Prison. There were so many in
conscientious objectors in Dartmoor that an ILP branch was established in
the prison which he joined. He came to Leicester and lodged with the
George and Ruth Banton. In 1927, became district secretary of the WEA and
was still the honorary secretary of the WEA in the 1970s. He was a member
of the City Council for 13 years and was chairman of the education
committee for five years. He resigned from the Council in 1948 following a
dispute over a personal matter. He was a director of Enderby Co-operative
Society and was agent for the Harborough Constituency. He continued to
help out at Vaughan College until a week before his death.
Sources: Leicester Mercury, 15th
September 1958 & 19th October 1989
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Born: Leicester, died:
February 1985 aged 87 years (Labour Party)
 After
being demobilised from the Royal Flying Corps in 1919, Percy Watts joined
the Midland Railway and served as a main-line driver for 44 years. He was
secretary of Leicester No 4 Branch of the NUR for 25 years and became
president of the Trades Council 1956. In 1953, he was elected to the City
Council and represented Humberstone Ward until he was defeated in 1960. He
returned to the council as representative of Latimer ward in 1964 and
became an Alderman in 1970.
In 1953, he attempted to persuade the
City Council to allow organised games to be played in the parks on Sunday.
His motion was defeated on a free vote. He was a life member of the Trades
Council. He became Lord Mayor in 1971 and died in his home at Lily
Marriott House.
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Born: 1914, died: Spain 25th
September 1938 (I.L.P. & Communist Party)
 Before
moving to Leicester, Roy Watts had been on Portsmouth Trades Council and a
member of the I.L.P. Guild of Youth. He later joined the Young Communist
League and worked in Leicester as a furnishing salesman at the Co-op,
lodging with R.V. Walton. He then volunteered to go and fight for the
International Brigade in Spain. In a letter to R.V. Walton, he describes
some of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War:
“I have served and been into
action with the anti-aircraft artillery, infantry and transmission
units. I have been in most of the territory in loyalist hands, and was
taken prisoner once. Apart from a slight touch of fever and a small
piece of shrapnel, which took me to hospital three times, I have so far
come through it all comparatively unscratched.”
“I have learnt to love this
country. The beauty of it is breathtaking. It is a sickening experience
to pass through these lovely Spanish towns after the Fascist shellings
and bombings. I know that such an experience would soon stimulate those
at home to oust those responsible for aiding aggression and war. Since
our advances, the Fascist fury seems to know no bounds. I had the good
luck to secure a copy of the Leicester Mercury the other day and I
noticed that a Leicester Fascist had challenged you to a debate......War
being what it is, one cannot make any forecast with certainty, but I
expect and hope to be back in England by Christmas.”
Roy Watts was killed on September
25th 1938, aged 24, during the Spanish Republic's Ebro offensive.
Sources: Leicester Mercury, 5th
April & 6th October 1938
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Lily Webb (Ferguson)
Born c1894 (N.U.W.M.)
Lily Webb was active in the NUWM in
the early 1930s. In March 1932, she was fined 5/- for distributing
handbills protesting against the means test without the consent of the
City Corporation She told the court: “If this is an offence, I make no
apology for breaking the law. This bye law has been used to prevent the
unemployed fighting from against poverty and starvation.”
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Born: 3rd July 1873 (I.L.P.&
Labour Party)
Fred West went to St Martins School
and worked in the Boot and Shoe trade before becoming a municipal employee.
During the Fisrst World War he supported a ‘Peoples Peace.' In 1937,
he became president of the Trades Council.
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Born Banbury, 1860
His father was a leather salesman and
Wesleyan preacher from Banbury who came to Leicester with John Butcher,
circa 1873. Father and son went to work at the CWS factory in Duns Lane,
but Frederick soon left to work in the print trade. He also became a
Wesleyan Methodist preacher and spent some years as an evangelist in
London and was a life long abstainer and non-smoker. He became a union
member at the age of 27, became president of the Typographical Society and
president of the Trades Council in 1902. He was a delegate to the Labour
Representation committee. He was opposed to high salaries of council
officials, street betting and the 1905 Education Act. He was a Labour
candidate for Spinney Hill.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer Oct 12,
1902
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Born: 1866, Leicester,
died 1921 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
 George
White was the son of a boot and shoe riveter and although he had no formal
education, he taught himself to read and write. Initially, he followed in
his father’s footsteps and also became a riveter. In December 1890, George
married Emma Polkey, a tailoress. George was called ‘sticky’ because he
was crippled in one leg and walked everywhere with a stick.
By 1904, both George and Emma had
lost their jobs because of their union membership. That year, George
supported George Bibbings’ election to the guardians and lobbied the
Guardians for better treatment for those on the ‘test.’ During the winter
of 1904-5, White organised, with the help of Amos Sherriff, Bibbings and
Harris, a series of demonstration or processions designed to draw
attention to the plight of the unemployed and to raise money for the
workless by a series of street collections. These demonstrations usually
culminated in a Market Place meeting.
By May 1905, he was secretary of the
unemployed committee and the daily meetings of the unemployed were
dominating the local press. This all culminated in the march of around 470
unemployed men to London in June 1905 which he helped organise and lead.
Despite his disability, he marched with the unemployed all the way to
London and back, sending progress reports in letters home. George’s son,
tried to join the marchers but was reported absent by the school
authorities and taken home after reaching Market Harborough. This march
was the first unemployment protest march of the modern period and set a
precedent that others would follow.
After the introduction of the
Distress Act, George White was appointed as clerk of the Distress
Committee and became responsible for investigating individual cases. In
addition to being a keen amateur photographer, he was secretary of the
Anti-Sweating League, the Unemployment Committee and the Gypsy Lane
Working Men’s Club.
The end of George White’s life was
tragic. During the summer of 1920 he left his wife and family and returned
to live with his mother, after being accused interfering with young girls
in the offices of the Distress Committee. In January 1921 he died on the
doorstep of the Belgrave Gate offices of the Committee after cutting his
throat. In a letter he said he could not endure the continued harassment
he received and pledged his undying love to Sarah who he asked to forgive
him. George ‘Sticky’ White was buried in Welford Road cemetery on 10th
January 1921, aged 55 years.
Sources: Bill Lancaster,
Radicalism Co-operation and Socialism, Jess Jenkins
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William J. Wicks
Born at sea off
Newfoundland, c1830, died 5 June 1901, (Temperance Missionary and Peace
Activist)
William Wicks never knew his parents
and although his father came from Leicester, he grew up in Devonport.
Wicks became a shoemaker and signed the pledge at the age of 14. He became
Secretary of his local Temperance Society and came to Leicester in 1870 as
a Temperance Missionary. He held that post for 19 years addressing
hundreds of meetings and retired in 1889 following an accident. He was
also to the fore in the campaign against capital punishment and his boast
was that he has “three times cheated the hangman.” (1894) He was
equally opposed to war and was a member of Leicester Peace Society and
active in the campaign against the Boer war. He lamented the opportunity
for refusing to pay war taxes and circulated anti war petitions. He wrote
that anyone who claimed to be a Christian and supported the Boer War was a
hypocrite and humbug.
Wicks was a Unitarian and famous for
his kindness. Although he was self taught, he wrote short stories and was
a frequent correspondent on anti war and many other issues.
Sources: Leicester Wyvern, Nov 30th,
1894, A Reconstructed World: A Feminist Biography of Gertrude
Richardson, Barbara Ann Roberts
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Born: Leicester, September
1932, died: 2002 aged 69 (Labour)
Bob Wigglesworth grew up on the newly
built Braunstone Estate. He left school, aged 14 years, and worked in
various gents’ barber shops, a mattress factory, a shoe factory and as a
rubber worker at Dunlop’s St Mary’s Mills. In later life, he worked as a
school caretaker at Alderman Newton’s School. In the early 1970s, he was
briefly associated with Militant, though by the 1980s he was seen as being
on the right of the party. He was a City Councillor 1973-1976 for
Aylestone and 1978-2002 for Eyres Monsell where he lived. He became Lord
Mayor in 1992 and served as vice chair of the Housing Committee for many
years. He was a plainspoken, but kindly man who diligently carried out
casework for his constituents.
Sources: Leicester City Council,
Roll of Lord Mayors 1928-2000, author’s personal knowledge
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J.S.Wilford
J. S. Wilford, was secretary of the
Anchor Tenants who in the early 1900s established the Humberstone Garden
Suburb. He held the position from the start, being then a worker at the
Anchor Works, and the one appointed to collect subscriptions, and the
inception of the scheme was due to his enthusiastic advocacy.
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Samuel Wilford
Born Great Glen, 1828,
died: 25th June 1914 aged 85 (Co-operator)
Samuel Wilford was one of the seven
elastic web weavers at Abbey Mills who founded the Leicester Co-operative
Society in 1860. Their first subscription was 3d each. Sam Wilford was no
1 on the books of the society. He continued to work as an elastic web
weaver.
Sources: Leicester Co-operative Society, (1898)
Co-operation in Leicester
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Born: 1881, died 1941 (I.L.P.&
Labour Party)
Sid Wilford was a printer and
entertainer at Labour Party galas during 1920s & 1930s. He led the Smart
Set Concert Party)
Sources: Census returns, Labour gala programmes
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 Born:
Leicester, 23rd December 1879, died 1950 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
W.E. Wilford was born in Vine Street.
Leicester and was the eldest of a family of six. His father worked in the
boot and shoe trade and his blind grandfather told of the early days of
dear bread and the struggles of the Chartists and Radicals for popular
liberty. With the aid of a scholarship, he attended Alderman Newton’s
School and started work at the age of 13 as an errand boy. He continued to
study in his spare time. At the age of 23 he commenced business as a
factor in boots and shoes and owned various retail shops. After a
university extension course, he won a university scholarship. He was an
omnivorous reader who was influenced by Blatchford, Tolstoy, Kropotkin,
Carlyle and Shakespeare.
In 1901, at the age of 21, he was
chosen as the secretary of the Castle Ward Liberal Association and was
regarded as a rising hope of the party. From 1903-8, in the wake of the
Boer war and in the midst of recession, he was secretary of the Citizens
Aid Committee. He organised meals for children during the winters of
1904-06. This caused him to think about the causes of poverty and to break
with the Liberal Party.
He helped establish a Labour Church
in Castle ward and Ramsay MacDonald, George Lansbury and Margaret
Bondfield were among those who lectured there. He was elected to the
Council in 1912 for Latimer Ward and served for 8 years as Labour whip.
Whilst on a family holiday on the east coast in August 1914, he was
mistakenly arrested as a German spy. In 1916, he organised "ye olde
Englishe Faire" in the market place to raised funds for the war wounded. He became Chairman of the City Health
Committee in 1922 and was Lord Mayor in 1931. He was awarded the freedom
of the City in July 1949.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer 10th
October 1908, 11th August 1914 and 11th July 1924,
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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J. Williams
Born: 1857 (Co-operator)
He had no formal education and his
first job was in a trimmer’s shop in the hosiery trade. He worked there
for three years until he was 14 and started in the boot and shoe trade in
a finishing room. At the age of 17 he joined NUBSO and eventually served
on the union executive and on Arbitration Boards. He attended the old Soar
Lane Adult School and his ‘schooling’ there helped to crystallise his
ideas on Co-operation.
In 1878 he joined the Leicester
Co-operative Society and began to take a deep interest in the practical
application of the ideas of Co-operation. In 1906, he was elected to the
Board of LCS and was for a time its treasurer. He was also on the managing
committee of Equity shoes in its early days, he was a founder of the
Morning Star Sundries Society and was a supporter of various other
Co-operative enterprises. He was still active in the 1920s and in 1923 had
been in sole charge of a factory manufacturing boot heels for seven years.
He was an active member of the Robert Hall memorial Chapel.
Sources: Leicester Co-operative
Society, (1898) Co-operation in Leicester, Leicester Co-operative
Magazine June 1923
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Mrs Catherine Willson
(Labour and Co-operator)
 Mrs
Willson was engaged in ‘social work’ with the Misses Edith and Catherine
Gittins. She was one of the first to take an active part when the Infant
Welfare Centres were inaugurated in connection with the Leicester Health
Society. She was an executive member of the Infants’ Nursing Home and was
involved, with the Co-operative Guild, in the committee which instituted
nurseries for working mothers in Rutland Street, Melton Road, Talbot Lane
and St. Martin’s during the First World War. She was also a member of the
Women’s National Council which was associated with putting forward the
women’s point of view on housing and improving facilities for women in
public parks. She was a Labour member of the Board of Guardians for three
years, representing Westcotes.
Mrs Willson joined the Co-operative
Guild in 1906 and at that time there was the only one branch in the
district. In c1915, she became the Secretary of the Leicester District
Committee of Co-operative Guilds. By the mid 1920s there were 19 guilds in
Leicestershire. Mrs Willson was the first woman elected to the board of
the L.C.S. c1921.
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(Trade Union Leader)
The Leicester Women’s Branch of NUBSO
was set up in 1904, but was prevented from having women officers. In 1906,
after considerable agitation, the union allowed women to stand for
position and Elizabeth (Lizzie) Willson was elected secretary of the
branch of over 1,000 women. In 1910, she was elected to sit on the
Executive Council of NUBSO-the first woman to do so. In 1911, members of
the women’s branch took part in a go-slow at a local factory which led to
men members loosing money and making a claim from the union for financial
support. This led to a bitter row within the union resulting in Lizzie and
Alice Hawkins (president of the branch) being dismissed by E.L. Poulton,
the union’s general secretary. They then set up the break away Independent
National Union of Women Boot and Shoe Workers with Elizabeth Willson as
secretary in offices at 72 Rutland Street. A large majority of the Women’s
Branch joined and the independent union continued in existence until the
middle of the 1930s with Elizabeth as secretary.
Sources: Sources: Richard Whitmore,
Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian
Leicester, Alan Fox, A
History of the National Union of Boot and
Shoe Workers, 1958
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Born:? died: 1983
Len Wincott was from the Catherine
Street area and as a naval rating he was an active participant in the
Invergordon mutiny of 1931. He ended up in the Soviet Union working at the
Leningrad International Seamen's club. He survived the siege of Leningrad,
only to spend twelve years in a labour camp (1944-56). From 1957, he lived
in Moscow and published a book in 1974 entitled Invergordon Mutineer.
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Joseph Foulkes Winks
Born: Gainsborough, Lincs,
12th Dec 1794, died: Leicester 28th May 1866
(Liberal)
J. F Winks started out as a draper's
assistant in Gainsborough, the son of a respectable tradesman of the town.
There he influenced Thomas Cooper who was part of his ‘Mutual Improvement
Society’ and Sunday Adult School, for teaching the poor and ‘utterly
uneducated’ to read. Winks later became a pharmacist in Leicester; a
Baptist lay preacher, a publisher of books for the General Baptist
Association, a politician and an opponent of cock-fighting and the use of
the gibbet. He was described as a fiery fighting spirit always spoiling
for a fight in the name of justice and liberty. Thomas Cook was one of his
apprentices in Loughborough. On his move to Leicester he became known in
the Tory press as the ‘Loughborough Renegade.’ He had ten children
In 1823 he became a Baptist
lay-preacher, first at Killingholme and then at Melbourne, Derbyshire.
Wanting to make Christian literature more widely available, in 1825 he set
up a printing press at Loughborough. In 1831, having recently moved to
Leicester he became a leading spirit in the reforming Leicester and
Leicestershire Political Union. In 1835 he moved his operation to
Leicester, where he rented extensive premises in High Street, next to the
Huntingdon Tower, on the site of the present Shires shopping centre. In
this period he was active in the campaign against the compulsory payment
of local rates to the Church of England. In 1837, he had his goods seized
and auctioned to pay the rates in St Martin’s parish. That same year, he
issued anti-Tory handbills and ballads during the parliamentary elections.
In 1839 Winks was appointed pastor at
Carley Street Baptist Church, a post he held until his death. In the
1840’s Winks and Thomas Cooper renewed their friendship in Leicester.
However Winks advised Cooper not to get involved with the Chartists.
According to Cooper, Winks believed in the justice of universal suffrage,
but kept aloof from the Chartists. He became a founder of the Leicester
Complete Suffrage Association in 1842 which tended to represent the left
wing middle class radicals from a Baptist background, now to the left of
the more urbane Unitarians.
In his capacity as a Poor Law
Guardian, Winks opposed plans to enlarge the workhouse in 1847, favouring
an extension of out-relief and a national uniform poor rate. In 1848, the
‘anti-workhouse’ list was carried by an overwhelming majority and he later
became the first dissenting minister to be allowed to preach in the
workhouse. In 1848, he became part of a gradual and hesitating
co-operation between middle class radicals and the Chartists resulting in
a ‘Great Reform Meeting,’ in April 1848 and October 1851. It was the
formation of this alliance, between middle and working class radicals
which was ultimately to sustain the Liberals in power in the City until
the 20th century.
The ultra-Tory
Leicester Herald nicked
named him ‘Gibbet Parson Winks,’ as a result of his campaign against the
use of the gibbet. The last recorded use of the gibbet in Britain was on
Friday 10th August 1832, when James Cook, convicted of a
gruesome murder, was executed in front of Leicester prison. Afterwards,
according to the Newgate Calendar
“The head was shaved and tarred,
to preserve it from the action of the weather; and the cap in which he
had suffered was drawn over his face. On Saturday afternoon his body,
attired as at the time of his execution, having been firmly fixed in the
irons necessary to keep the limbs together, was carried to the place of
its intended suspension.”
His body was to be displayed on a
purpose-built gallows 33ft high in Saffron Lane near the Aylestone
Tollgate.
“thousands of persons were
attracted to the spot, to view this novel but most barbarous exhibition;
and considerable annoyance was felt by persons resident in the
neighbourhood of the dreadful scene. Representations were in consequence
made to the authorities, and on the following Tuesday morning
instructions were received from the Home Office directing the removal of
the gibbet.”
Winks was also one of the first men
in Leicester to speak out publicly against cock fighting (outlawed in
1849), bull running (outlawed in 1835), as well as dog fighting and badger
baiting (both of which not being outlawed until the twentieth century).
Sources: Thomas Cooper, The Life
of Thomas Cooper, 1872, A. Temple Patterson, Radical Leicester,
Leicester 1954, J.F.C. Harrison, Chartism in Leicester,
published in Chartist Studies Asa Briggs (ed) 1959, The Newgate
Calendar
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Paul Winstone
Died: July 2006 Aged 54
(International Marxist Group, International Socialists)
Paul Winstone gained a BA in Social
Sciences from Leicester University in 1973 and during the 1970s, he was
active in various Trotskyist groups, notably the International Socialists
and the International Marxist group. As a member of the latter he was
briefly a member of the Labour Party, during I.M.G.’s entrist phase. He
was very active in the campaign against the National Front, favouring the
physical force tactics rather than the broad non violent demonstrations
organised by the Inter-Racial Solidarity Campaign and Unity Against
Racism. He was consequently involved various Anti Fascist Committees and
the local Anti Nazi League which was then favoured by the ultra-left in
the late 1970s. He was also active in the Troops Out Movement and was a
supporter of Sinn Fein.
In 1986, he started work in the Chief
Executive’s Office of Leicester City Council, working for a time as the
European Development Officer and eventually becoming the policy officer
with responsibility for Race and Faith issues. In this post he was often
an articulate and effective spokesman for the council, sometimes promoting
policies that would have been anathema to him 15 years previously. Shortly
after his death, he was described as a ‘committed Christian’ (much to the
surprise of those that had known him earlier). He was Vice Chair of the
TGWU branch and a member of the International Socialist Group (Socialist
Outlook), the successor organisation to I.M.G.
Sources: author’s personal knowledge,
Leicester Mercury
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Thomas Winters
(Leicester Glove Union)
Thomas Winters was the able and
self-educated secretary of the Glove Union in the 1840s. Following the
failure of the legal case brought by William Chawner, in 1845, Thomas
Winter and George Buckby petitioned parliament to abolish frame charges.
This resulted in the private members Ticket Bill which was backed by
county Tory MPs. The Bill, whilst not abolishing frame charges, did
require middlemen to display the prices they were being paid by the
hosiers to the workmen.
Sources: A. Temple Patterson,
Radical Leicester,
Leicester 1954
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Born: 3rd July,
1885, Bury St. Edmunds died: 1933 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)
 Frank
Wise was educated at Cambridge and joined the Civil Service in 1908. He
served on the National Health Insurance Committee (1912-14) and during the
First World War he was Assistant Director of Army Contracts (1915) and
Second Secretary to Ministry of Food (1918). He was the author of:
Consumers' Co-operation in Soviet Russia, Manchester: Co-operative
Union Ltd, 1929
He was a member of the Independent
Labour Party and unsuccessfully contested Bradford North in the 1924
general election. He was elected for Leicester East in May 1929 and was
strongly opposed to the £67,000,000 cut in unemployment benefits and the
other cuts proposed by. MacDonald, and his Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Philip Snowden in 1931. In the following general election he lost his
seat. Following the demise of the I.L.P., he helped found the Socialist
League at the Labour Party Conference held in Leicester in 1932. This was
a direct precursor of the Tribune Group. Wise died on 5th November 1933.
Sources: election address 1929
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(Labour Party)
Charlie Woods was the full-time
organiser of the Leicester Labour Party from 1947 onwards. He had been a
Councillor in Leeds for five years before coming to Leicester.
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Born: Derby 1839, died:
1917 (Liberal)
Edward Wood, of Kirby Muxloe was in
business in Leicester as a boot factor and became chairman of Freeman,
Hardy and Willis. He entered the Council in 1880, was an Alderman and was
Mayor of Leicester three times, 1888-89, 1895-96 and 1901-02. He was a
Chairman of the Gas Committee and a Chairman of the Water Committee. He
was a Justice of the Peace. He assisted with the joint administration of
the 1896 Trades Council Distress fund with Trades Council officers and
later became a friend of Ramsay MacDonald and was persuaded to put money
into the Labour Leicester Pioneer. He was leader of the Leicester Liberal
Association and proposed that following the loss of West Leicester to the
Tories in 1900 there should be a pact between Labour and the Liberals.
This ensured the election of MacDonald in 1906. He was commemorated by the
Sir Edward Wood Hall, now part of Leicester University.
Sources: Bill Lancaster,
Radicalism Co-operation and Socialism
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Born: London, 1843
(Liberal and Socialist)
In about 1870, the young minister Joseph Wood came to
preach at Oxford Street Congregational Chapel. Although his preaching
attracted a substantial following, his sermons did not meet with universal
approval so his supporters opened the Wycliffe Church for him. (the old
Collegiate Church). Joseph Wood was very aware of social problems and was
described as a ‘leader of thought’ in the town. When the first School
Board was formed, following the 1870 Education Act, he was elected and
became the Board's first vice-chairman. He later became the chairman.
For a time he was editor of the Leicester Daily Post,
but he did not make a financial success of it and the paper passed out of
his control. His increasing liberality of thought eventually led him to a
Unitarian standpoint and, in 1885, he accepted an invitation to the Old
Church meeting in Birmingham. By 1890, he had become a Socialist and
occasionally returned to Leicester to lecture on behalf of the Socialist
League. It was his view that is was:
“the duty of a Christian
minister to preach liberty, equality and fraternity, in the fullest
deepest, broadest and most literal sense. The idea of brotherhood as
given to the world by its great Socialist, was an idea involving such
issues and such a radical reconstruction of society that the ordinary
aims of Liberalism looked pale by its side.”
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John & Mary Woodford
John, born: c1801 Billeson, Mary born
Northampton born c1800
John Woodford was a framework knitter and one of the
founders of the Leicester Co-operative Society. The Society grew out of a
meeting held at his house in Brook Street. Co-operative histories give his
address as 15 Brook Street, however the 1861 census shows him at no 7
His wife Mary was the chairwoman of meetings held on the
issue of married women’s property and aggravated assault on women which
were held in the Town Hall in 1856 & 7. These were women only meetings,
with the exception of Thomas Emery who acted as Secretary. Anne Wigfield
was also an organiser of the meetings. Mary told the meeting that
“Many men when they came out of prison would sell
up their wives property and then go and live with other women. And
beating was not the only way in which men published their wives. Many
poor women were pined and starved to death.”
Sources: Shirley Aucott, Women of Courage, Vision and
Talent
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Born: New Radford, Notts,
August 1859 (Liberal Party, Labour Party)
 Although H. H. Woolley never had a
formal education, he was Secretary of the Leicester and County Saturday
Hospital Society for many years. He came to Leicester from Northampton in
1876 and was a skilled boot maker at the CWS Duns Lane plant. After
spending two years in France from 1883, he returned to Leicester and as a
result of the strike at the CWS works in 1886, he became one of the
initiators of the Leicester Co-operative Boot Manufacturing Society
or Equity Shoes.
In 1885, he became treasurer of NUBSO
and in 1891 became full-time secretary of No 1 Branch whereupon he gave up
his job at Equity. He became president of the Trades Council in 1896.
In
1893, he was elected to the Town Council as a Trades Council candidate for
Castle ward and was re-elected in 1896. His
father, J.H. Woolley, was a Liberal town councillor during the same period.
In 1894, Harry Woolley gave his support to I.L.P. candidates and eventually
joined the I.L.P. Although he resigned his seat c1899, he as the Labour
candidate for Wycliffe ward in 1907. He was a longstanding member of
the Secular Society.
In March 1903, he was elected
as Secretary of the Saturday Hospital Fund, having previously been engaged by
Sir Edward Wood to prepare the ground for the new society which was to
raise money in workplaces for the local hospitals. He continued as
secretary until he retired at the age of 70 in 1930. He was made a J.P. in
1917.
Sources: Leicester Pioneer 26th
October 1907, Leicester Co-operative Society, (1898) Co-operation in
Leicester, Bill Lancaster, Radicalism Co-operation and Socialism,
Greening, Edward O., A Pioneer Co-partnership, 1923, Howes, C.
(ed), Leicester: Its Civic, Industrial, Institutional and Social Life,
Leicester 1927
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Joseph H. Woolley
Born: New Radford, Notts circa 1833,
died: 22nd Sept 1906 (Liberal)
J. H. Woolley was a boot and shoe
worker and father of Harry and Samuel Woolley. He spent his early years in
Northampton where he joined the union and in 1876, he moved to Leicester
and worked at the CWS factory in Duns Lane. He was elected president of the Trades Council in
1884. He was a founding member of the Leicester Co-operative Boot and Shoe
Manufacturing Society and was a committee member. In the 1880s and 90s, he
was a member of the Board of the Leicester Co-operative Society and edited
the Leicester & District Record which was the organ of co-operation
in the town.
In 1891, J. H. Woolley was
elected as Liberal Labour Association candidate in the local elections for
Westcotes. Both he and his son were on the Council at the same time.
He was president of NUBSO No 1 branch from 1891-2 and as a trade union
official, he was Inskip’s main lieutenant
on the NUBSO executive. Although, he was
initially a advocate of arbitration rather than strike action, by 1894, he was opposing Inskip and supporting the
socialists’ calls for co-operative ventures and the banning overtime.
Nevertheless, he was described by the Wyvern in 1895 as a staunch
Liberal. He was also an active member of the Secular Society.
In the wake of the set back for the
union during the 1895 lock-out, Joseph wrote:
“As an object lesson to the
workers in the late lock-out in the boot and shoe trade, it stands
unique (Equity) in the example it sets before them of how best to unite
the interests of Capital and Labour by employing themselves. When this
is done, the need for trade unions will cease to exist and strikes and
lock-outs with all there attendant miseries will be relegated to the
limbo of the past.”
Paradoxically the L.R.C. pact with
the Liberals in 1903 meant that all the old Lib-Lab candidates could not
be accommodated, as a result he lost his council seat when his ward
organisation had to accept an ‘orthodox’ Liberal candidate.
His wife, Elizabeth (born c1838)
worked for a time as a laundress and was later a member of the L.C.S.
education committee and Co-op Women’s Guild. She died in 1909. Hid daughter
Clara (born c1866) was a hosiery worker and active in the Co-operative
Women’s Guilds in the 1900s.
Sources: The Wyvern, 20th
September 1895 & 22nd July 1898, Leicester Co-operative
Society, (1898) Co-operation in
Leicester, Bill Lancaster, Radicalism
Co-operation and Socialism, Greening, Edward O., A Pioneer
Co-partnership, 1923
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Samuel Godber Woolley
Born: New Radford, Notts
1860 (Co-operator and Secularist)
S.G. Woolley’s was the younger bother
of Harry and the son of J.H. Woolley. He first joined a trade union at the
age of 15 and NUBSO soon after it was formed and later became a student at
the Working Men’s College. Following the strike at the West End boot
factory of the C.W.S. in 1886, he launched the movement amongst his fellow
employees that resulted in the foundation of the ‘Equity’ Boot factory. It
was he that called the founding meeting held at St Margaret’s Coffee House
in Church Gate in 1886.
Both he and his wife Elizabeth were
members of the Secular Society and he was a member of the Secular Cricket
Club that attempted to play cricket on Sundays during the summer of 1885.
Their games were obstructed by the police and a mob who assaulted Sam
Woolley and other cricketers. Although they wanted to challenge the ban of
Sunday games in the courts, the Corporation refused to bring a
prosecution. Sam Woolley was a life long non-smoker and abstainer and was
elected to the board of the Leicester Co-operative Society c1918.
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Born: Davenport, 23rd May
1876, died: 1944 (Co-operator)
 J.J.
Worley was the son of Henry Worley, an engine fitter, whose father had
pioneered the Devonport Dock Society. Joseph Worley entered the service of
the co-operative movement at the age of fourteen when he joined the
Plymouth Co-operative Society. From his earliest years in the movement,
Worley extended his education in co-operative history and allied subjects.
He regularly attended the co-operative summer schools, first as a student
(at the first co-operative summer school in Castleton in 1913) and then as
a teacher. He took an active part, also from very early in his career, in
the practical affairs of his own society. In 1899 he helped to establish
the Plymouth Printers, a co-operative venture, and he served as chairman
of the education committee of the Plymouth Society. In 1905 he was
appointed secretary of the Bridgwater Co-operative Society and in 1909
transferred to the Plympton, becoming their manager-secretary.
Worley was always to the left of
centre - later in life he lectured for the National Council of Labour
Colleges - and he showed his political attitudes in an early commitment to
the cause of unionism among co-operative employees. He joined the
Associated Union of Co-operative Employees on the formation of the
Plymouth branch in 1900 and when a district council was formed for the
West country, Worley was elected president. Later, after he had moved to
Leicester, he sat on the Midland district council. In 1915 he was elected
to the executive council and continued to serve until 1917 when army
service caused his retirement.
It was his appointment in 1910, as
the first propaganda agent for the Co-operative Productive Federation,
which brought him into prominence in the national movement. Within a few
years he was generally regarded as an ambassador for co-operative
production throughout Europe and he represented the C.P.F. at the first
Russian Co-operative Congress after the Revolution. In 1922 he succeeded
Robert Halstead as secretary of the Federation, a position he held until
his death in 1944.The offices of the C.P.F. were in Leicester in Horsefair
Street. Also in 1922 he was elected to the central committee of the
International Co-operative Alliance and he represented Britain for many
years at international conferences. He served on the board of the
Leicester Society from 1922 until 1937, when he retired for reasons of
health; he was a member of the joint parliamentary committee for many
years; a director of the Co-operative Press, and president of the
Co-operative Congress in 1938.
In 1930 he was chairman of the
special committee of inquiry which recommended the establishment of a
National Co-operative Authority, and he was himself a member of the
Authority from the time of its formation. At this time he was editing The
Co-operator's Tear Book and the Co-operative Productive Review. A fluent
speaker, he also expressed in writing his life- time of experience in the
co-operative movement in A Social Philosophy of Co-operation, which
was published two years before his death.
During the 1930’s, he frequently
spoke on anti-fascist platforms in Leicester along with others figures
from the left. His last public act was typical of the man. During World
War Two, he moved the vote of thanks to the chairman at a public meeting
called jointly by the education department of the Leicester Co- operative
Society and the British-Soviet Friendship Society, addressed by the Dean
of Canterbury (the Very Rev. Hewlett John- son). The Leicester Labour
Party had threatened to discipline one of their aldermen, Sydney Taylor,
for taking the chair and ‘J.J.’ as he was always known, was present in
Taylor's support. He died within two hours of reaching his Leicester home
on 18 November 1944 and was buried at Welford Road Cemetery on 22
November. His wife and a son survived him.
Sources: Dictionary of Labour
Biography, Co-operative Magazine
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George Wray
Born: circa 1786
(Chartist)
George Wray was a shoemaker who came
to Leicester c1830 and in 1841 was living in Black Friars Street. In 1842,
he was fiercely critical of Thomas Cooper and wrote a letter to him
saying: “You are a man of great talent, but little judgement possessing
neither honour or honesty and as regards politics, that you have not one
spark of Chartist principle in you”. He came to the fore among
Chartists in the borough in 1849 and lamented the decay of Chartism once
employment had returned. He was a delegate to the 1851 Chartist convention
from Leicester.
Sources: Leicestershire Mercury, 5th
March 1842
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Michael Wright
Born: Cheadle, Staffs, 18th
August 1818, died 18th September 1881 aged 63 (Owenite,
Liberal, Republican & Secularist)
Michael Wright was the son of a small
farmer and went to work in a tape factory at the age of 7. At the age of
17, he moved to Leicester and in the 1840s he became a follower of Robert
Owen. He then went to live and work on the unofficial Owenite Community at
Manea Fen where he spent 18 months before the community collapsed in 1841.
Wright then went to Manchester,
working in a weaving mill joining in the anti corn law agitation, where he
married in 1843. He then moved to Erdington and Birch’s Green and then to
Foleshill, where became a manager for a silk weaving firm. During these
years, he was active in the Chartist agitation. At the request to T.W.
Hodges, (who had been a fellow socialist at Manea Fen and became mayor of
Leicester 1865-67), he moved back to Leicester to manage Hodge’s factory
on Welford Road which had recently been started for the manufacture of
elastic webs.
In 1864, there was a strike at Hodges
factory and Wright opposed the union’s claim because he believed that
“the trades union was overstepping it legitimate bounds and was attempting
to tyranise over and dictate to employers as to how they should conduct
their business.” He then went into the manufacture of elastic web on
his own account and made a substantial amount of money.
Wright was a total abstainer for the
greater part of his life and a vegetarian. He was attracted to the
Secularist doctrines formulated by G.J. Holyoake and was described as
being less extreme as many in the ‘Secular Party.’ He was active in
re-establishing the Secular Society in 1867 and in the Leicester
Republican Association. He also became one of the leaders of the
anti-vaccination movement. In January 1870, a working men's conference
assembled at the Temperance Hall to discuss the burning question of
education. Michael Wright advocated the programme of the National
Education League, which aimed at excluding theological teaching from the
Board schools. He was elected to the Board of Guardians in 1873 and gave
his support to the working men candidates in the local elections. He was a
major shareholder in the Secular Hall.
In 1855, Charles Bradlaugh and others
had formed the National Sunday League and from then on there was a running
battle between Freethinkers and Sabbatarians. It was centred on the
question of Sunday opening of art galleries and museums. During the 1870s
Wright agitated for Sunday opening of the museum and in 1874 the Leicester
MP, P.A. Taylor, brought a bill on Sunday opening before parliament. The
Secretary of the Lord’s Day Observance Society did not want art galleries
to be open at any time because they felt that the nude statuary and
paintings were likely to inflame the passions. It was not until January
1891 that the Museum and Free Library were eventually opened to the
public.
In January 1874, at his son’s
wedding, Wright announced the union of his workpeople with the firm. A
system of co-partnership was to be adopted by which his workers would be
paid a share of the profits. Such a system had already been instituted by
Josiah Gimson. However, Wright was an active
member of the Elastic Web Manufacturers’ Association which, during the
summer of 1874, began a
seven week lock-out of the workforce. This was intended to break the power of the
weavers’ union. Bitterness and wage cuts following the lock-out. G. J.
Holyoake’s view that Michael Wright efforts to introduce industrial
partnership failed because it was not supported by the workforce conceals
the legacy of resentment and mistrust that must have existed after the
strike. Thomas Wright, one of his sons, was also an active Secularist.
Sources: Midlands Free Press, 10th
January 1874, 24th September 1881 (obit), F. J. Gould, The
History Of The Leicester Secular Society, 1900, Bill Lancaster,
Radicalism Co-operation and Socialism, George Jacob Holyoake, The
History of Co-operation, 1875, David Nash, Secularism, Art and
Freedom
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Canon A. Linwood Wright
Born London 1874, died
c1946?
Albert Linwood Wright became the
assistant priest at St Mark’s in 1897. In 1903, he went to South Africa
and became rector of East London West, Cape Colony and Chaplain of Native
Convict Station, East London St. In 1911, he became Rector of Boksburg in
the Transvaal. He returned to Britain and in 1918 he succeeded Canon
Donaldson as the rector of St Marks. In the early 1930s he was active in
the campaign against aerial bombing. “I do not call bombing from the
air the Englishman’s way of playing the game.” He also played a role
in helping the Hunger Marchers in 1934 at a time when the official trade
union movement was hostile to the NUWM. He took and active interest in
housing and slum clearance and was opposed to the removal of entire
communities to the outskirts of the City.
Sources: Leicester Mercury, July 1932
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Peter Wright
(Communist Party)
Peter Wright was a lecturer as
Scraptoft College of Education and was part of the very significant group
of Communist intellectuals involved with fight for comprehensive
education. He had served in Yugoslavia during the Second World War with
the partisans and spoke Serbo-Croat. He was active in CND was a critic of
the Soviet Union and opposed the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
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Thomas Wright
(Framework-Knitter)
Thomas Wright was chairman of the
Framework Knitters committee and a principle figure in the Leicester
branch of the National Union of the Working Classes. This was set up as a
result of working class disillusion with the 1832 Reform Bill. In 1833, he
was sentenced to a fine of £30 or nine months imprisonment for selling the
Poor Man’s Guardian and other similar publications.
Sources: A. Temple Patterson,
Radical Leicester,
Leicester 1954
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(WSPU)
Jane Wyatt was chair of the Leicester
branch of the WSPU in 1913. She lived in the Belgrave area and taught at
Harrison Road School.
Sources: Sources: Richard Whitmore,
Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian
Leicester
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The Wynnes were all active in the
Communist Party. Charles Wynne was secretary of the Anti-fascist committee
in 1934 and Secretary of Leicester Peace Council, 1937. John Wynne was an
active anti-fascist activist in the 1930s and was on the Leicester
British-Soviet friendship Committee during WW2 (Charles G Wynne, 64
Evington Drive 1938) Margaret Wynne was secretary of the Leicester
British-Soviet friendship Committee during WW2. The president was Mrs
Swainston, the first woman elected to the City Council. (she was initially
an independent, but later became a Tory)
Sources: Leicester Evening Mail, 22nd
January 1937
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© Ned Newitt Last revised:
September 11, 2011. |
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Index
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