Dictionary of Labour Biography: Volume XIII PDF
Preview Dictionary of Labour Biography: Volume XIII
DICTIONARY OF LABOUR BIOGRAPHY VOLUME XIII DICTIONARY OF LABOUR BIOGRAPHY Volume XIII Edited by KEITH GILDART Senior Lecturer in History, University of Wolverhampton and DAVID HOWELL Professor of Politics, University of York © Keith Gildart and David Howell 2010 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-00456-6 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, HampshireRG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-58213-6 ISBN 978-0-230-29348-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230293489 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii JOHNSAVILLEANDTHEDICTIONARY OFLABOURBIOGRAPHY ix NOTESTOREADERS xi LISTOFCONTRIBUTORS xiii LISTOFBIBLIOGRAPHIESAND SPECIALNOTES xv BIOGRAPHIES xix CONSOLIDATEDLISTOF NAMESINVOLUMESI–XIII 383 GENERALINDEX 397 v Acknowledgements Our contributors are essential to the intellectual strengths of the Dictionary of Labour Biography. Not least their contributions provide a rich demonstration of the diversity that has always been such a marked feature of the British labour movement. We thank them for their entries and for their patience in responding to our suggestions. The two previous volumes were funded generously by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. Although this volume did not directly benefit from this funding many of its entries began their lives under the previous regime. We are happy to acknowledge once again the major con- tribution that the Board’s funding made to our work. The research for this volume has benefited massively from the library and archival resources of many institutions. We should emphasise our continuing dependence on three institutions: that embodiment of the democratic intellect, the Manchester Central Reference Library, the rich collections and supportive staff of the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick and the Labour History Study and Archive Centre at the People’s History Museum Manchester. The resources of local depositories are essential for the exploration of Labour’s infinite variety. We are grateful to the Berkshire County Record Office, Birmingham City Archives, Crosby Public Library, Darlington Public Library, Denbighshire Record Office, Derbyshire County Record Office, Flintshire Record Office, Fulham Local History Centre, Kent County Record Office, Lancashire Record Office, Leeds City Archives, Liverpool Central Library, London Municipal Archive, Maidstone Public Library, Medway Local Studies Centre, Norfolk County Record Office, Oxfordshire County Record Office, Retford Public Library, Southwark Local Studies Library, Wigan Public Library, Worksop Public Library and Wrexham Museum. We remain thoroughly dependent on the holdings of the National Archive at Kew and on the British Newspaper Library and its combination of wonderful materials and Spartan catering. Vital help on specific entries was given by two other London institutions, the Bishopsgate Institute, and the India collections of the British Library. Our commitment to the exploration of labour movements in the context of diverse and con- tested national identities is evident in our continuing debts to the National Libraries of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, University College Dublin Archives, the Northern Ireland Public Record Office and the Mitchell Library Glasgow. Diversities in trade union cultures were explored in the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen Offices in Hampstead, the National Union of Mineworkers offices at Leigh and Wrexham, the South Wales Miners Library Swansea, Trades Union Congress Library London and the Working Class Movement Library Salford. We would also like to thank Dr Leighton James of Swansea University for his work on Welsh language translation. Tracing British labour lives often involves tracing journeys to and links with far off places. Within the United States we have benefited from collections at the Federal Bureau of Investigation Washington DC, Swarthmore College, University of California, Hal Draper Archive, University of Colorado Archives, University of South Carolina Archives, the Tamiment Library in New York, Vassar College Archives, and Yale University Archive. Further afield we have been aided by material at the National Archives of India and the National Library of Australia, Canberra. The understanding of Communist lives is enriched by the resources at Moscow’s Russian State Archive and continuing thanks go to the International Institute of Social History Amsterdam. This volume has been dependent on collections in several British academic institutions: Balliol College Oxford, Bodleian Library University of Oxford, Borthwick Insitute University of vii viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS York, Churchill College Cambridge, King’s College London, Nuffield College Oxford, Ruskin College Oxford, Trinity College Cambridge, University of Durham, University of Hull, University of Manchester John Rylands Library, University of Reading Library, University of Wales, Bangor University of Wolverhampton. With the closure of the Family Records Centre Finsbury we have discovered the enjoyment and frustrations of tracing family details on the internet. We owe much to Ancestry.com, the genealogist.com.uk and [email protected]. We are very happy to note our continuing link with the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography where Mark Curthoys offers help and reassurance. Our greatest debt was made painfully evident just a few weeks ago. For over thirty years the Dictionary of Labour Biographyand John Saville were synonymous. His achievement as editor epitomised the highest standard of scholarship. John died on 13 June 2009. To continue his work is both a privilege and a challenge. John Saville and the Dictionary of Labour Biography The year 1972 witnessed a successful miners’ strike, the discrediting of the Heath Government’s industrial relations legislation and the publication of the first volume of the Dictionary of Labour Biography (DLB). Publication in that year of power cuts, pickets and candles could seem fitting, yet the Dictionaryhad been a long time in the making. G. D. H. Cole had collated an inventory of labour movement personalities each supple- mented with the most basic of information. After Cole died in 1959 his widow Margaret Cole passed the material on to John Saville and Asa Briggs. They had recently edited a collection Essays in Labour History.Intended for her husband’s seventieth birthday it became a memorial volume. The demanding task of transforming Cole’s parsimonious survey and much more into a multi-volume dictionary was taken up by John Saville. In 1960 John was 44 years old. Employed at the University of Hull since 1947 he brought to this monumental task a rich intellectual and political experience. His strength as a scholar was evident in his edited volume of Ernest Jones’s writings and in his book on rural depopulation in England and Wales. His politics were central to his identity as a historian. He joined the Communist Party as a student at the London School of Economics in 1934 and was an active member not just in London and later in Hull but also while on military service in India. He was a committed member of that rare assembly of talents, the Communist Party Historians’ Group. John’s early years as an academic were profoundly shaped by the anathemas of the Cold War. For many within the Communist Party, 1956 was the year when all changed utterly. John’s initial criticisms were inspired by the events at the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s Twentieth Congress and by the British Communist Party’s evasive response to this limited admission of Stalinist crimes. John joined with Edward Thompson in producing a bulletin of internal criticism, theReasoner. Faced with pressure to cease publication the Soviet invasion of Hungary resolved any doubts. Like many others, including most of the leading historians, John left the party. Over the next three years he joined with Edward and other dissenters to produce ten issues of theNew Reasoner.When theNew Reasonercombined with the Universities and Left Review to produce the New Left Review in 1960 John’s intense involvement ended. From 1964 in his co-editorship of the Socialist Register with Ralph Miliband, he continued to explore once more the political controversies that had preoccupied him during and after 1956. John’s resignation from the party that he had joined 22 years earlier was a reasoned affair. There was no public recanting of past errors and no railing against failed gods. In many ways John remained influenced by his years within the party, most significantly for the fortunes of the DLB by a commitment to rigorous and methodical work practices. He seemed untroubled by his lack of any political home. Increasingly he saw his role in collective terms, inspiring, organising and contributing to activities that would expand knowledge, deepen understanding and hope- fully inform a more progressive politics. This outlook fuelled by his blend of scholarship and political passion shaped basic choices about the scope and format of the DLB. On his own account he arrived only slowly at these decisions. John followed Cole’s definition of the modern labour movement as beginning in the 1790s. The Dictionary would embrace not only the established pantheon of national figures; it would be a thorough demonstration of the power of a people’s history that would present the lives of forgotten activists whose creativity had made the labour movement. The choice reflected ix
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