Beckett, Francis
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Beckett, Francis
Francis Beckett (born 12 May 1945) is an English author, journalist, biographer, and contemporary historian. He has written biographies of Aneurin Bevan, Clement Attlee, Harold Macmillan, Gordon BrownMichael Whit"Gordon the saint – meet Brown the sinner" ''The Guardian'', 14 July 2007 and Tony Blair. He has also written on education for the ''New Statesman'', ''The Guardian'' and ''The Independent ''and is the editor of ''Third Age Matters'', the national magazine published by the University of the Third Age. Beckett has been described as "an Old Labour romantic" by ''Guardian'' associate editor Michael White. Early life Francis Beckett was born in 1945 in Chenies, Buckinghamshire, 21 miles from the centre of London, because his father, John Beckett, just released from wartime internment because of his fascist past, was under a form of house arrest, unable to live within 20 miles of the capital or to travel more than five miles away from his home. His mother, Anne ...
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Chenies
Chenies is a village and civil parish in south-east Buckinghamshire, England. It is on the border with Hertfordshire, east of Amersham and north of Chorleywood. History Until the 13th century, the village name was Isenhampstead. There were two villages here, called Isenhampstead Chenies and Isenhampstead Latimers, distinguished by the lords of the manors of those two places. In the 19th century the prefix was dropped and the two villages became known as Chenies and Latimer. Near this village there was once a royal hunting-box, where both King Edward I and King Edward II were known to have resided. It was the owner of this lodge, Edward III's shield bearer, Thomas Cheyne, who first gave his name to the village and his descendant, Sir John Cheyne, who built Chenies Manor House in around 1460 on the site. Several paper mills were once established in Chenies, operated by the River Chess, which flowed here from further west in Buckinghamshire. St Michael's Church The parish ...
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Beaumont College
Beaumont College was between 1861 and 1967 a public school in Old Windsor in Berkshire. Founded and run by the Society of Jesus, it offered a Roman Catholic public school education in rural surroundings, while lying, like the neighbouring Eton College, within easy reach of London. It was therefore for many professional Catholics with school-age children a choice preferable to Stonyhurst College, the longer-standing Jesuit public school in North Lancashire. After the college's closure in 1967 the property was used in turn as a training centre, a conference centre and an hôtel; St John's Beaumont, the college's preparatory school for boys aged 3–13, continues, functioning in part as a feeder school for Stonyhurst. History of the estate The estate lies by the River Thames on the historic highway from Staines to Windsor, Berkshire, Windsor, near Runnymede. It was originally known as Remenham, after Hugo de Remenham, who held the land at the end of the 14th century. The estate ...
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Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician during the 1920s and 1930s who rose to fame when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. He was a member of parliament and later founded and led the British Union of Fascists (BUF). After military service during the First World War, Mosley was one of the youngest members of parliament, representing Harrow from 1918 to 1924, first as a Conservative, then an independent, before joining the Labour Party. At the 1924 general election he stood in Birmingham Ladywood against the future prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, coming within 100 votes of defeating him. Mosley returned to Parliament as Labour MP for Smethwick at a by-election in 1926 and served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Labour Government of 1929–31. In 1928, he succeeded his father as the sixth Mosley baronet, a title that had been in his family for more th ...
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Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates, representing the interests of the majority. A sitting independent MP and prominent union organiser, Keir Hardie, became its first chairman. The party was positioned to the left of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Representation Committee, which was founded in 1900 and soon renamed the Labour Party, and to which the ILP was affiliated from 1906 to 1932. In 1947, the organisation's three parliamentary representatives defected to the Labour Party, and the organisation rejoined Labour as Independent Labour Publications in 1975. Organisational history Background As the nineteenth century came to a close, working-class representation in political office became a great concern for many Britons. Many who sought the election of working men and thei ...
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City Academies
An academy school in England is a state-funded school which is directly funded by the Department for Education and independent of local authority control. The terms of the arrangements are set out in individual Academy Funding Agreements. Most academies are secondary schools, though slightly more than 25% of primary schools (4,363 as of December 2017) are academies. Academies are self-governing non-profit charitable trusts and may receive additional support from personal or corporate sponsors, either financially or in kind. Academies are inspected and follow the same rules on admissions, special educational needs and exclusions as other state schools and students sit the same national exams. They have more autonomy with the National Curriculum, but do have to ensure that their curriculum is broad and balanced, and that it includes the core subjects of English, maths and science. They must also teach relationships and sex education, and religious education. They are free to c ...
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New Labour
New Labour was a period in the history of the British Labour Party from the mid to late 1990s until 2010 under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The name dates from a conference slogan first used by the party in 1994, later seen in a draft manifesto which was published in 1996 and titled ''New Labour, New Life for Britain''. It was presented as the brand of a newly reformed party that had altered Clause IV and endorsed market economics. The branding was extensively used while the party was in government between 1997 and 2010. New Labour was influenced by the political thinking of Anthony Crosland and the leadership of Blair and Brown as well as Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell's media campaigning. The political philosophy of New Labour was influenced by the party's development of Anthony Giddens' Third Way which attempted to provide a synthesis between capitalism and socialism. Mark Bevir argues that another motivation for the creation of New Labour was as a ...
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John Silkin
John Ernest Silkin (18 March 1923 – 26 April 1987) was a British left-wing Labour politician and solicitor. Early life He was the third son of Lewis Silkin, 1st Baron Silkin, and a younger brother of Samuel Silkin, Baron Silkin of Dulwich. He was educated at Dulwich College, the University of Wales and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Silkin served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve from 1942 to 1946. He was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in 1943, serving in the East Indies Fleet, Eastern Fleet and Pacific Fleet aboard and , and ashore at Anderson, Ceylon (FECB). He was later promoted lieutenant. He was demobilised in 1946 and returned to Cambridge. Silkin was admitted as a solicitor in 1950 and worked for his father's law practice in London. Parliamentary career He contested the seat of St Marylebone for the Labour Party at the 1950 general election, West Woolwich in 1951 and South Nottingham in 1959. He served as a councillor in the Metropolitan Borough of St Marylebone ...
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Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a political party in the United Kingdom that has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. The Labour Party sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum. In all general elections since 1922, Labour has been either the governing party or the Official Opposition. There have been six Labour prime ministers and thirteen Labour ministries. The party holds the annual Labour Party Conference, at which party policy is formulated. The party was founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the 19th century. It overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming two minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1920s and early 1930s. Labour served in the wartime coalition of 1940–1945, after which Clement Attlee's Labour government established the National Health Service and expanded the welfa ...
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National Union Of Journalists
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is a trade union for journalists in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was founded in 1907 and has 38,000 members. It is a member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). Structure There is a range of national councils below the NEC, covering different sections and areas of activity. There is an industrial council for each of the NUJ's "industrial" sectors – Newspapers and Agencies, Freelance, Magazine and Book, Broadcasting, New Media and Press and PR. There are also national Executive Councils, covering all sectors, for Ireland and Scotland. The Irish Executive Council, which has a higher degree of autonomy, covers Northern Ireland as well as the Republic. The union's structure is democratic and its supreme decision-making body is its Delegate Meeting, a gathering of elected delegates from all branches across the UK, Ireland and Europe. Between meetings, decisions lie with the NUJ's National Executive Council, a com ...
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National Union Of Students (United Kingdom)
The National Union of Students (NUS) is a confederation of Students' union, student unions in the United Kingdom. Around 600 student unions are affiliated, accounting for more than 95% of all higher and further education unions in the UK. Although the National Union of Students is the central organisation for all affiliated unions in the UK, there are also the devolved national sub-bodies NUS Scotland in Scotland, NUS Wales (''UCM Cymru'') in Wales and NUS-USI in Northern Ireland (the latter being co-administered by the Union of Students in Ireland). NUS is a member of the European Students' Union. Membership * Constituent membership is granted to students' unions by National Conference or National Executive Council by a two-thirds majority vote * Individual membership is granted automatically to members of students' unions with constituent membership, sabbatical officers of constituent members, members of the National Executive Council and sabbatical conveners of NUS Areas * ...
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Shelter (charity)
Shelter is a registered charity that campaigns for tenant rights in Great Britain. It gives advice, information and advocacy to people and lobbies government and local authorities for new laws and policies. It works in partnership with Shelter Cymru in Wales and the Housing Rights Service in Northern Ireland. The charity was founded in 1966 and raised 48.2 million pounds in 2020/21. Shelter helps people in housing need by providing advice and practical assistance, and campaigns for better investment in housing and for laws and policies to improve the lives of homeless and badly housed people. History Shelter was launched on 1 December 1966, evolving out of the work on behalf of homeless people then being carried on in Notting Hill in London. The launch of Shelter hugely benefited from the coincidental screening, in November 1966, of the BBC television play ''Cathy Come Home'' ten days before Shelter's launch. It was written by Jeremy Sandford and directed by Ken Loach – and hi ...
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English-Speaking Union
The English-Speaking Union (ESU) is an international educational membership organistation. Founded by the journalist Sir Evelyn Wrench in 1918, it aims to bring together and empower people of different languages and cultures, by building skills and confidence in communication, such that individuals realise their potential. With 35 branches in the United Kingdom and over 50 international ESUs in countries around the world, the ESU carries out a variety of activities such as debating, public speaking and student exchange programmes, runs conferences and seminars, and offers scholarships, to encourage the effective use of the English language around the globe. The aims of the English-Speaking Union (as stated on its website) are: # The mutual advancement of education of the English-speaking world, respecting the traditions and heritage of those with whom we work whilst acknowledging the current events and issues that affect them. # The use of English as a shared language and means ...
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