When Football Began

There is a statue of William Wilberforce outside his former home, which is now a museum. This is located within part of Hull’s Museum Quarter incorporating the Nelson Mandela Garden. Close to the Museum is a pub named after Wilberforce. 

Wilberforce was a native of Kingston upon Hull. Born to a prosperous merchant family in 1759, Wilberforce was just 21 when he became MP for Hull, switching four years later to represent the larger county seat of Yorkshire. 

It was following a dramatic conversion to evangelical Christianity that, at the suggestion of the prime minister, William Pitt the Younger, in 1787 he became the parliamentary leader of the abolition movement. Wilberforce made his first Parliamentary speech on the issue in 1789.

The slave trade was enormous and British ships transported 2.6 million of the 12 million slaves that from the late fifteenth century were taken from Africa to the Americas. 

For British slave traders it was a three-legged journey – the ‘triangular trade’ – whereby guns and brandy were traded in Africa for slaves, who were then transported under horrendous conditions to be sold in the West Indies and North America and following which traders returned to England with cargoes of rum and sugar for sale. 

The slave trade was thus highly profitable. In 1700, a slave cost around £3 in traded goods and could be sold for £20. The trade partly helped finance Britain’s subsequent industrial revolution.  

There were many slave uprisings. In 1791 slave leader Toussaint l’Ouverture – one of the greatest military leaders ever – led a successful slave revolution in Haiti. This, in part, prevented the abolition bill of the same year being passed in Parliament. 

The following year a similar bill, which had popular support, was successful but only after the legislation was weakened by the inclusion of the word ‘gradual’, plus a requirement for more research into the trade. Slave traders exploited this and with Britain at war with France from 1792 to 1805 the abolitionist campaign floundered. 

Wilberforce reintroduced his bill into Parliament in 1804. Having sounded out public opinion he published an influential tract in 1806. In 1807 he gave one of the greatest Parliamentary speeches of all time. He was subsequently backed an overwhelming vote that outlawed the trade in slaves on British ships. 

Slavery though remained in British colonies. In 1812, Wilberforce worked on the slave registration bill that failed to obtain Government backing. In 1823, Wilberforce published another tract  attacking slavery. 

Two years later, Wilberforce left Parliament. Just three days before he died on 29 July 1833 the emancipation bill received its final reading and slavery would be abolished – although not without the traders being heavily compensated! 

In 2006, Tony Blair expressed on behalf of the British Government “deep sorrow and regret” for the slave trade. 

The William Wilberforce pub on Trinity House Lane in Hull city centre is a Wetherspoon pub that serves a range of refreshments, including real ale, and a variety of food.

Hull City Council has an extensive website on Wilberforce at http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/museumcollections/collections/theme.php?irn=159

For more on Wilberforce see:- https://writemark.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-end-of-combination-acts-190-years.html

 

Remember Halifax’s Ralph Fox, killed in Spain on 28 December 1936 

One of those who fought and died fighting Franco’s forces in Spain was Halifax’s Ralph Fox.  A bench in his memorial sits at the Manor Heath Walled Garden, Halifax 

Fox was a well-known member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and wrote biographies of the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as well as Genghis Khan. 

Fox studied modern languages at Oxford University, where he was drafted into an officers’ cadet regiment only for the First World War to end before he saw active service. On his return he became active in efforts to half the British blockade to overthrow (Lenin’s) Bolshevik government which had assumed power following the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1920, Fox travelled to the Soviet Union and returned convinced of the need to overthrow capitalism. After successfully completing his studies he later began work for the CPGB and completed his first major book. He later worked for the Daily Worker as a columnist and wrote several books for the Communist press. 

In 1936, Fox joined the International Brigades in order to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War. These were military units composed of volunteers from different countries and who travelled to Spain to help defend the Second Spanish Republic between 1936 and 1939. The Brigades base was in Albacete and where Fox received training before being assigned to the XIV Brigade. He was sent to the front  during one of the first operations in which the Brigades were involved and died at the Battle of Lopera in the province of Jaen in late December 1936.

 

Manchester

Pankhurst is the name most associated with the struggle for women’s right to vote and the first meeting of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903 was held at the family home of 62 Nelson Street, Manchester and where a blue plaque was mounted by Manchester City Council on 1 January 1987. 

Emmeline was born in 1858 in Manchester. Her grandfather had been present at the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 and her grandmother had worked to repeal the Corn Laws. Both her parents backed the movement for women’s suffrage. She married Dr Richard Pankhurst, a radical barrister. They had five children and of which three girls survived.  Living in London from 1889 to 1893, Emmeline helped to form the radical Women’s Franchise League, which supported equal rights for women in areas of divorce and inheritance. 

Richard died in 1898, leaving his wife in considerable debt. In 1903 her daughter, Cristabel, frustrated by the peaceful tactics of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, founded 1897, persuaded Emmeline to join her in advocating more direct action. The first WSPU meeting was held and the motto ‘Deeds not words’ was adopted. Those involved became known as The SUFFRAGETTES and they increasingly used militant tactics to raise awareness of their demands. Emmeline was arrested on many occasions. There were attacks on Churches after the Church of England  had voiced its opposition to the concept of suffrage. MPs’  windows were smashed and politicians were harassed and their meetings disrupted. Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey were assaulted when speaking in Manchester. 

When many of those arrested refused to pay their fines they were imprisoned they continued their struggle by going on hunger strike and were force-fed.

Read the story of Julia Varley

Many suffragettes died following periods of incarceration, probably as a result of the horrific process of enforced nourishment that took place. In June 1913, Emily Wilding Davison, a WSPU activist, threw herself beneath the King’s horse as it took part in the Derby of that year. She was killed. The arson campaign continued to gain momentum but in August 1914, Britain was plunged into WWI.

The conflict resulted in Emmeline and Cristabel agreeing a truce with the government and WSPU militant suffrage activities were suspended for the following four years. Emmeline advocated for men to join the armed forces and encouraged employers to fill their vacant factory spaces by recruiting women to work in industry. She was a prominent figure in the white feather movement that was aimed at embarrassing men who had not already enlisted. 

As the war progressed the vital part that women were playing was grudgingly acknowledged. It became more and more obvious that arguments that women were not fit or clever enough to vote was a total misrepresentation.

Following the end of the carnage across Europe, the dissenters to suffrage were swept aside and the 1918 Representation of the People Act gave voting rights to women over 30. This was nine years older than rights for men. It was to be another decade before women were – under the Equal Franchise Act – granted equal voting rights at aged 21 with men. Emmeline, who died on 14 June 1928, lived just long enough to see a bill passed that achieved her lifetime ambition. 

Cristabel, who later spent many years in the USA, lived till 1958. As a young woman she obtained a law degree from the University of Manchester. Her sex meant she was unable to practise as a lawyer and she thus applied her legal expertise to highlight the inequalities and injustices experienced by women as well as organising large scale demonstrations. 

Sylvia Pankhurst was the second oldest daughter of the Pankhurst’s and proved to be the most militant. In 1906 she started working full-time for the WSPU. In the years leading up to WWI she was imprisoned on numerous occasions and when she moved to East London she came to see that the struggle for women to have the vote was part of a larger struggle for equality. This was not something the WSPU, including her mother and elder sister Cristabel, were prepared to agree with.  In 1914, Sylvia broke from the WSPU to form the socialist East London Federation of Suffragettes. (ELFS) As a pacifist, Sylvia opposed the war, during which she also organised several practical initiatives such as a baby milk distribution centre and a cost-price restaurant chain. 

She later joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) but quit when she was asked to give the party the paper she had established, the Workers Dreadnought. In the lead up to WWII she became involved in the fight against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and where she died aged 78 in 1960. 

There was also Adela Pankhurst, who was also active within the WSPU. She was imprisoned on many occasions. Concerned that her daughter might criticise the WSPU during WWI, Emmeline provided Adela with a one-way boat ticket to Australia. They never saw each other again. In 1920 Adela and her husband, Tom Walsh, set up the Australian Communist Party but she later became disillusioned with communism and abandoned left-wing politics altogether. Adele expressed some sympathy for fascism during WWII and was imprisoned for a year. She died in 1961.

The plaque at Nelson Street, Manchester is located on the Pankhurst Centre, which serves as a women’s centre and community space. Manchester Women’s Aid, which provides essential support services to those suffering from domestic violence and abuse, joined forces in 2014 with the Pankhurst Trust, the body which oversees the Pankhurst Centre, to create a ‘unique space in which women can learn together, work on projects and socialise.’

See www.pankhursttrust.org

The Nelson Street plaque is one of a large number of public monuments to Emmeline Pankhurst. In December 2018 a Emmeline Pankhurst statue was unveiled in Manchester

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/16/pankhurst-statue-manchester-suffrage-feminism-history

This is the second statue to honour Emmeline Pankhurst, the first, in bronze, was unveiled in Central London in 1930 and is the central feature of the Emmeline and Cristabel Pankhurst Memorial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmeline_and_Christabel_Pankhurst_Memorial

There is also an Emmeline and Cristabel plaque at 50 Clarendon Road, Notting Hill, London, W11 3AD and where they lived from 1916 to 1919. 

There is a plaque in Llanelli, where she spoke in 1912, to Emmeline Pankhurst. 

There is a blue plaque to Sylvia Pankhurst at Cheyne Walk, London

There is a second plaque bearing Sylvia’s name at 45 Norman Grove, London E3

… and a third is located at 3 Charteris Road, London , where she lived from 1933 to 1956

There is a plaque in Kingsway, London on what were the headquarters of the WSPU: 

There are two plaques in Manchester that honour Ellen Wilkinson, one on the site of where she was born and the other close by at the University of Manchester where she graduated with a  2:1 in history at age 22 in 1913. She later completed an MA at the institution. 

 

In her early years, Ellen backed women’s suffrage, supported socialist activities and was a member of the Independent Labour Party. Inspired by the 1917 Russian Revolution she joined the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain three years later. 

In 1915, Wilkinson had become the national womens organiser for the Amalgamated Union of Cooperative Employees, which later became part of the National Union of Distributive and Allied Workers.  

In 1923, Wilkinson became the first female Labour MP when she was elected in Middlesbrough East. She backed the 1926 General strike but lost her Parliamentary seat to a National Candidate when Labour was heavily defeated nationally at the polls in the 1931 General Election. 

At Jarrow in 1935 she became an MP again. The major local employer, Palmers Shipyard, had just closed and unemployment and poverty was at record levels. Wilkinson campaigned for the erection of a large steelworks on the derelict shipyard site. It was a move opposed by the British Iron and Steel Federation.

In autumn 1936 she led the 300-mile Jarrow March to London but this failed to force the Tory Government to introduce policies to create jobs and halt malnutrition. Her book, The Town that was murdered, charted the suffering of the people of her constituency. As a small passionate red-haired woman she became known as ‘Red Ellen.’

From 1936 onwards, Wilkinson supported the Spanish Republic, condemned the British Government for its policy of neutrality and regularly visited battle zones. As Hitler continued to expand his military might and occupy parts of Europe, Wilkinson condemned Britain’s policy of appeasement. 

During WWII Wilkinson worked at the Ministry of Home Security and after the war ended she was appointed Minister for Education. She was first female to undertake the post. She introduced free school meals and milk for those unable to pay. She raised the school leaving age to 15. 

Wilkinson died during the bitter winter of 1947 when she took an accidental overdose of medication for bronchial asthma, a life long condition that she battled against. 

 

 

Hannah Mitchell (1872-1956) was born on a small Derbyshire farm, received only two weeks formal education and fled home at fourteen to escape the wrath and beatings of her mother. In Bolton she found work as a badly paid dressmaker, spending some of her earnings on subscribing to a small library and where she taught herself to read and write.

She met Gibbon Mitchell, a tailor’s cutter who was also a socialist and together they attended local branch meetings of the Independent Labour Party. (ILP) They became active in the trade union movement and passionate supporters of The Clarion journal of Robert Blanchford. 

When the pair married in 1895, Hannah insisted that Gibbon share domestic duties and despite her husband agreeing to do so he never ever quite did so. 

In 1904, Hannah joined the Women’s Social and Political Union – or Suffragettes as they were better known – that was headed by Emmeline Pankhurst.  In 1905 Hannah became a full-time organiser for the Union. She objected to how Emmeline and her sister Cristabel made all the major decisions without consulting fellow WSPU members. 

When Hannah disrupted a political meeting in 1906 at which future Prime Minister Winston Churchill was speaking, she was charged with obstruction and given a three-day jail sentence. 

When WWI started, Mitchell refused to get involved in the WSPU army recruiting campaign. She joined up with the ILP and other organisations opposed to the war. 

 

In 1924 Hannah Mitchell was elected to the Manchester City Council, who on 1 January 1996 erected a plaque in her honour at Ingham Street where she lived. Mitchell served as a councillor until 1935. She later wrote her autobiography The Hard Way Up in her seventies but it was not published until twelve years after her death in 1956.

A second plaque honouring Mitchell was unveiled in November 2018. It is part of South Derbyshire District Council’s Swadlincote Heritage Trail, celebrating the town’s inspirational industries, individuals and places and is located near to where she lived in her early years in Newhall. 

https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/burton/newhall-suffragette-hannah-mitchell-heritage-2235255

There is also a plaque, erected in Malakoff Street, Stalybridge by Tameside Metropolitan Borough in 2000, to Gibbon Mitchell. 

 

Originally written in 2015 

See my Unite Education booklet from 2016 on Benny at:- https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/6328-benny-rothman.pdf

See also the 13 minute documentary released  in 2018 on the Mass Trespass at:- https://markwrite.co.uk/2018/11/29/mass-trespass/

Trade unionist Benny Rothman, the man who led the Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout, Derbyshire, in April 1932, is commemorated with a blue plaque at his former Timperley home, seven miles south of Manchester.

Born in 1911 it wasn’t until Benny acquired a bike in his teens that he discovered life outside the overcrowded environment of working class Cheetham in north Manchester. He soon became a keen rambler and spent his 16th birthday climbing to the summit of Snowdon.

At the end of World War 1 in 1918 returning British soldiers had been promised by prime minister Lloyd George a “land fit for heroes.” Landowners, represented in Parliament and the Lords by the Tories, were intent on ensuring that didn’t include the right for those soldiers and others to roam Britain’s mountains and moorlands.

Since 1884 there had been numerous unsuccessful attempts made for an Access to Mountains Bill to be presented in Parliament and with each passing year the chances of an Act being passed seemed to recede.

In this situation the British Workers’ Sports Federation (BWSF) that started in 1928 as a working-class movement to organise sport for workers decided to trespass on Kinder Scout. It was not a universally popular move amongst ramblers.

On a sunny Sunday April 24, 1932, Benny, an active BWSF member, found himself thrust forward as the leader of 400 ‘kinder scout mass trespassers’.

Together in opposition to a line of gamekeepers, the trespassers successfully crossed the Derbyshire Peak District’s ‘forbidden mountain.’ Stung by this deliberate defiance of the law the police arrested six of them.

If the authorities felt this would be the end of the matter they miscalculated by sending Benny Rothman, listed in court as a storekeeper, and four (John Anderson, Julius Clyne, Anthony Gillett and David Nussbaum) others to prison – where Benny used his time productively to learn shorthand – for up to six months. The public outrage that followed helped bring the issue of the countryside to the fore.

More importantly it emboldened many access campaigners who in subsequent negotiations with landowners over obtaining access for walks could point to the trespass when their requests were refused.

A radical post-war Labour government responded by introducing the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949. Lewis Silkin, the then Labour minster for town and country planning described it as, “a people’s charter for the open air, for the hikers and ramblers, for everyone who loves to get out into the open air and enjoy the countryside.”

The Peak District became the first designated national park and today there are fifteen. The passing of the Act also means there are over 50 designated areas of outstanding natural beauty and over 200 natural nature reserves that are there to protect what are seen as the most important areas of wildlife habitat and geological formations and as places of scientific information.

Th right to roam took much longer to obtain. Again, Benny played an important part. In 1982, with access still restricted on many hills, 2000 ramblers celebrated the 50th anniversary of the mass trespass by following the same path.

According to Terry Howard, Sheffield Ramblers chairman, “Benny Rothman addressed us in the quarry where the original trespass had started. He helped inspire a whole new generation like myself to finish what earlier campaigns had started.”

In 2000, under another Labour government, the Countryside Rights of Way Act established the right to roam on certain upland and uncultivated areas of England and Wales. Many new paths allowing open access have been created.

Benny died aged 90 in 2002. According to his son Harry, “he rarely spoke about Kinder Scout as he had far too much going on in his life as he was engaged in things that were immediately important such as trade union and Communist Party work.” His passion for a better world was shared by his wife, Lilian, a mill worker from Rochdale.

In the 1930s Benny played an active role in physically opposing Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts and over forty years later he helped to inspire a new generation of anti-fascists by speaking to them about the dangers of the National Front.

Benny worked as a fitter for most his life. He was regularly elected to represent his fellow members in the Amalgamated Engineering Union. (one of the forerunners to Unite)

At Metro-Vicks in the 1950s his reputation for winning the best piecework rates led to him being sacked and, sadly, his workmates did not support him. He was later victimised by his employers when the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 took place. He nevertheless continued to be an active trade unionist.

“There were always visitors to our home in Timperley such as guys who had been unfairly sacked.

“Dad was a clever bloke and had a good memory. He used his shorthand to keep good notes and so when it came to negotiations with management I understand he would constantly refer back to them when someone might like to say something different.”  Professor Harry Rothman.

Throughout the 1984-85 miners’ strike, Benny was tireless in organising support for strikers. In 1990, Benny Rothman, who was a great friend of Hugh Scanlon, was given the Amalgamated Engineering Union’s highest award, the special award of merit. Six years later he was made honorary life member of the Ramblers Association.

* A booklet on Benny’s life is currently being written by myself for the Unite Education department. All being well it will be out in 2016.

Originally written in 2015 

See my Unite Education booklet from 2016 on Benny at:- https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/6328-benny-rothman.pdf

See also the 13 minute documentary released  in 2018 on the Mass Trespass at:- https://markwrite.co.uk/2018/11/29/mass-trespass/

 

 

Trade unionist Benny Rothman, the man who led the Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout, Derbyshire, in April 1932, is commemorated with a blue plaque at his former Timperley home, seven miles south of Manchester.

Born in 1911 it wasn’t until Benny acquired a bike in his teens that he discovered life outside the overcrowded environment of working class Cheetham in north Manchester. He soon became a keen rambler and spent his 16th birthday climbing to the summit of Snowdon.

At the end of World War 1 in 1918 returning British soldiers had been promised by prime minister Lloyd George a “land fit for heroes.” Landowners, represented in Parliament and the Lords by the Tories, were intent on ensuring that didn’t include the right for those soldiers and others to roam Britain’s mountains and moorlands.

Since 1884 there had been numerous unsuccessful attempts made for an Access to Mountains Bill to be presented in Parliament and with each passing year the chances of an Act being passed seemed to recede.

In this situation the British Workers’ Sports Federation (BWSF) that started in 1928 as a working-class movement to organise sport for workers decided to trespass on Kinder Scout. It was not a universally popular move amongst ramblers.

On a sunny Sunday April 24, 1932, Benny, an active BWSF member, found himself thrust forward as the leader of 400 ‘kinder scout mass trespassers’.

Together in opposition to a line of gamekeepers, the trespassers successfully crossed the Derbyshire Peak District’s ‘forbidden mountain.’ Stung by this deliberate defiance of the law the police arrested six of them.

If the authorities felt this would be the end of the matter they miscalculated by sending Benny Rothman, listed in court as a storekeeper, and four (John Anderson, Julius Clyne, Anthony Gillett and David Nussbaum) others to prison – where Benny used his time productively to learn shorthand – for up to six months. The public outrage that followed helped bring the issue of the countryside to the fore.

More importantly it emboldened many access campaigners who in subsequent negotiations with landowners over obtaining access for walks could point to the trespass when their requests were refused.

A radical post-war Labour government responded by introducing the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949. Lewis Silkin, the then Labour minster for town and country planning described it as, “a people’s charter for the open air, for the hikers and ramblers, for everyone who loves to get out into the open air and enjoy the countryside.”

The Peak District became the first designated national park and today there are fifteen. The passing of the Act also means there are over 50 designated areas of outstanding natural beauty and over 200 natural nature reserves that are there to protect what are seen as the most important areas of wildlife habitat and geological formations and as places of scientific information.

Th right to roam took much longer to obtain. Again, Benny played an important part. In 1982, with access still restricted on many hills, 2000 ramblers celebrated the 50th anniversary of the mass trespass by following the same path.

According to Terry Howard, Sheffield Ramblers chairman, “Benny Rothman addressed us in the quarry where the original trespass had started. He helped inspire a whole new generation like myself to finish what earlier campaigns had started.”

In 2000, under another Labour government, the Countryside Rights of Way Act established the right to roam on certain upland and uncultivated areas of England and Wales. Many new paths allowing open access have been created.

Benny died aged 90 in 2002. According to his son Harry, “he rarely spoke about Kinder Scout as he had far too much going on in his life as he was engaged in things that were immediately important such as trade union and Communist Party work.” His passion for a better world was shared by his wife, Lilian, a mill worker from Rochdale.

In the 1930s Benny played an active role in physically opposing Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts and over forty years later he helped to inspire a new generation of anti-fascists by speaking to them about the dangers of the National Front.

Benny worked as a fitter for most his life. He was regularly elected to represent his fellow members in the Amalgamated Engineering Union. (one of the forerunners to Unite)

At Metro-Vicks in the 1950s his reputation for winning the best piecework rates led to him being sacked and, sadly, his workmates did not support him. He was later victimised by his employers when the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 took place. He nevertheless continued to be an active trade unionist.

“There were always visitors to our home in Timperley such as guys who had been unfairly sacked.

“Dad was a clever bloke and had a good memory. He used his shorthand to keep good notes and so when it came to negotiations with management I understand he would constantly refer back to them when someone might like to say something different.”  Professor Harry Rothman.

Throughout the 1984-85 miners’ strike, Benny was tireless in organising support for strikers. In 1990, Benny Rothman, who was a great friend of Hugh Scanlon, was given the Amalgamated Engineering Union’s highest award, the special award of merit. Six years later he was made honorary life member of the Ramblers Association.

* A booklet on Benny’s life is currently being written by myself for the Unite Education department. All being well it will be out in 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The plaque, erected by Manchester City Council in 1976, that honours Friedrich Engels in Manchester cannot be seen by the public as it located on student accommodation that is gated off. 

For more on Engels see:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels

https://spartacus-educational.com/TUengels.htm

Ernest Jones (1819 – 1869) was honoured by Manchester City Council when they unveiled on 1 January 1983 a commemorative blue plaque at the site of his barristers chambers in the six years up till his death in Manchester. 

German born Jones was of aristocratic background and was presented to Queen Victoria in 1841. He inherited his father’s property in 1844.

Despite a promising career as a Barrister, Jones soon after became a leader with the Chartist movement, (*) a working-class movement for political reform that existed between 1838 and 1848 and which took its name from the People’s  Charter of 1838.

Jones became a proponent of Physical Force and follower of Feargus O’Connor, who had threatened to use force if radical reform did not take place.

He urged people to constantly organise to obtain the Charter but Jones was arrested on 6 June 1848 after he predicted that the “green flag of Chartism will soon be flying over Downing Street.” He was convicted of sedition and sentenced to two years’ solitary confinement, with no writing materials.  Friends helped him to write his epic poem, the Revolt of Hindostan. 

On his release from prison, Jones issued periodicals such as The Labourer, the Northern Star and Notes to the People. He set up the People’s Paper in 1852 and until it closed in September 1858 he saw its function as maintaining an independent working class party. 

In 1860 Jones began working again as a barrister, concentrating on defending radicals, including Irish Fenians. At his funeral it was estimated that 100,000 people lined the streets of Manchester.

For more on Ernest Jones see:- 

https://www.wcml.org.uk/wcml/en/our-collections/activists/ernest-jones/

https://spartacus-educational.com/CHjones.htm

http://gerald-massey.org.uk/Jones/index.htm

* What was Chartism:- https://markwrite.co.uk/2018/06/15/chartist-sculpture-and-plaque-newport/

For reviews on books on Chartism see:- https://markwrite.co.uk/halifax-1842-a-year-of-crisis/

https://markwrite.co.uk/the-general-strike-of-1842/

 

Remembering all those from Kirkcaldy who fought in Spain

There is a plaque and a memorial on Forth Avenue, Kirkcaldy which commemorates local fighters in the Spanish Civil War. This was erected by Kirkcaldy District Council and Friends of the International Brigades, May 1980 and September 1986. It was rededicated 4 April 2009.

The inscription on the plaque reads, somewhat poetically, as follows:

“To honour the memory of those who went from The Lothians and Fife to serve in the war in Spain, 1936 – 1939.”

“Not to a fanfare of trumpets

Nor even the skirl o’ the pipes

Not for the off’r of a shilling

Nor to see their names up in lights

Their call was a cry of anguish

From the hearts of the people of Spain

Some paid with their lives it is true

Their sacrifice was not in vain”

(The International Brigade Association)

The names on the memorial are as follows:-

G Adamson, H Archibald, L Ballinghall, T Bloomfield, F Cairns, W Campbell, G Carr, J Collier, M Conway, G Cornwallis, F Crombie, C Cunningham, J Donald (Methihill), J Donald (Methil), J Farmer, J Fisher, J Gillespie, S Glencraig, J Haig,  R Henderon, A Henderson. A Hillock, T Howie, G Jackson, J Jarvis, A Knight, W Leggie, E Louden, W Mackie, W.F. McCartney, H McCaskill Hill, J McCormack, C McCormack, W McDougall, A McKay, J McPherson-Murray, J Penman, G Robbison, H Sloan, R Smith, G Smith, H Smith, M Sneddon, G Stewart, J.L. Walker, Sister Wilson.

Tommy Bloomfield’s Spanish Civil War recollections appear in VOICES from the Spanish Civil War book edited by Ian MacDougall.

Leicester 

 

There is a memorial plaque in Peace Walk, Victoria Park, University Road, Leicester to Fred Sykes, Jack Watson and Roy Watts. All three Leicester volunteers were killed in the Spanish Civil War fighting for democracy and against the rise of fascism. The plaque was erected by Leicester Socialist Centre, 15 February 1993.

For more information on this go to:- http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Memorial-lives-lost-Spanish-Civil-War/story-19738907-detail/story.html

http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Leicester-volunteers-Spain-remembered/story-19863560-detail/story.html

Many thanks to Ross Galbraith for taking the photograph. In 1989, Ross and Gary Sherriff, both TGWU members, refused to work on a contract that their employer, Granby Plastics Limited, had accepted from South Africa. They were sacked for standing up to apartheid and for the next three years toured the UK and Ireland speaking about the need for workers to take direct action to disrupt British trade with South Africa.

Blantyre Memorial to Spanish Civil War martyrs 

A memorial to three local volunteers killed in the Spanish Civil War is located at Blantyre Miners’ Welfare Club. This was erected by East Kilbride and South Lanarkshire Trades Union Council on 24 October 2009.

Thomas Brannan, William Fox and Thomas Fleck were part of a larger group from Lanarkshire who joined the International Brigades to fight in support of the elected Spanish government against the military coup of General Franco, who enjoyed the military backing of German and Italian fascist leaders, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini respectively.

The bronze sculpture was designed by Hamilton man Frank Casey who at the time of the unveiling said: “In these days of bogus celebrity there has never been a greater need to commemorate those true heroes who had the foresight to see that another world war was not inevitable and that the threat to civilisation known as fascism could be buried in Spain.

“They were neither dupes nor adventurers, but courageous men. Fleck in particular knew all about the horrors of modern mechanised warfare. Having won the Military Medal in France, he still felt it necessary to take up arms again in defence of the Spanish people.

“This work came about through the generous support of the local community and the South Lanarkshire Trades Council.”

John Londragon 

Aberdeen Trades Union Council offices are named after John Londragan and the premises at 22a Adelphi have a plaque which states: John Londragan House: Communist, International Brigadier and Life Long Trade Unionist, 1911-1993. The plaque was erected in 1993.

An article by John Landragan appears in the book Voices from the Spanish Civil War: personal recollections of Scottish Volunteers in Republican Spain 1936-39, edited by Ian MacDougall. The railway worker describes his motivation for risking his life: ‘Being a member of the Communist Party and being an anti-Fascist I though it was my duty to go and help the people in Spain.

‘And the fight, whether it be here in Aberdeen against the British Union of Fascists or against Hitler and Mussolini in Spain, was exactly the same to me, no difference at all.’

The Scotsman served in the Anti-Tank Unit of the XVth International Brigade at Jarama, which is south-east of Madrid, before being sent to Brunette, which is where he got wounded in the leg and arm. This finished his career on the military side but when he came out of hospital he was employed on the organisational side of the Brigade. Londragan later served – again in an Anti-Tank Unit – in the British Army during the Second World War.

Writing in 1986, the Aberdeen man wrote: ‘ Looking back, there isn’t a thing changed since 1936 as regards my views…..When I went to Spain I thought I was trying to halt Hitler and Mussolini and their exploitation of Europe……..so when we went to war in 1939 I did exactly the same job…… Both were anti-Fascist wars.’

 

Ralph Fox, Halifax 

Go to:- https://writemark.blogspot.com/2015/02/why-jack-jones-house.html

 

 

Sam Wild was born in Ardwick, Manchester, to an Irish immigrant family, in 1908. 

A blue plaque commemorating him is now mounted on the former family home on Birch Hall Lane, Rusholme, Manchester. 

 

Here is a tribute to him by Gideon Long, his grandson. http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/content/my-granddad-and-spanish-civil-war

A news report on the plaque unveiling:- . 

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/local-news/a-band-of-brothers-that-fought-for-freedom-971115