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Council Of Workers' And Soldiers' Delegates
The Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates was established on 3 June 1917 at the Leeds Convention held in Leeds, England. The founding conference was attended by 1,150 delegates. It was inspired by the events of the Russian February Revolution. When news of the February Revolution (8–12 March 1917) in Russia spread to the British Isles, it inspired the labour movement to celebrate the event. The first event was a meeting organised in the Royal Albert Hall, London, on 31 March. This was attended by 10,000 people with a further 5,000 outside, for whom there was no space. The Leeds Convention established the organisation, which had the support of both the Independent Labour Party and the British Socialist Party. However, a few months later, the Bolshevik October Revolution took place; the participants had different attitudes towards it, and the council collapsed. The Leeds Convention The Leeds Convention, originally to be held at the Albert Hall, Leeds but then moved to th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leeds Convention
The Leeds Convention was a socialist meeting in Leeds, England, held on 3 June 1917. It was organised by the British Socialist Party and Independent Labour Party in the wake of the February Revolution, which had seen the abdication of Nicholas II of Russia. The Labour Party organisers hoped it would instigate a shift within the party towards support of a peace treaty to end the First World War. Many leading British socialist figures spoke at the convention and it supported, almost unanimously, the four resolutions proposed. These were to support the Russian Revolution, to support a peace treaty, to support civil liberties and to establish a network of Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates, councils of workers' and soldiers' delegates. The convention was criticised in the right-wing press and raised the concerns of British king George V but ultimately led to little progress. The Labour Party came to dominate the movement and, with prominent member Philip Snowden, 1st Vi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William O'Brien (trade Unionist)
William O'Brien (23 January 1881 – 31 October 1968) was a politician and trade unionist in Ireland. While rarely dominating the political spotlight, O'Brien was incredibly powerful and influential behind the scenes, maintaining a firm grip over Ireland's trade unions for many decades. Besides his leadership in the trade unions, O'Brien was a founder, alongside James Larkin and James Connolly, of the Labour Party of Ireland. In later years a rift formed between Larkin and O'Brien that would last the rest of their lives and often divide the labour movement in Ireland. Early life O'Brien was born in Ballygurteen, Clonakilty, County Cork on 23 January 1881, and was christened as 'John William'. He was the fourth child and third son of Daniel O'Brien of County Tipperary and Mary O'Brien (née Butler) of County Kilkenny. His father Daniel, an Irish nationalist, devout Catholic, and Irish-language revivalist had been a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary before retiring at the ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sylvia Pankhurst
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst (5 May 1882 – 27 September 1960) was a campaigning English feminist and socialist. Committed to organising working-class women in London's East End, and unwilling in 1914 to enter into a wartime political truce with the government, she broke with the suffragette leadership of her mother and sister, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. She was inspired by the Russian Revolution and consulted with Lenin, but defied Moscow in endorsing a syndicalist programme of workers' control and by criticising the emerging Soviet dictatorship. Pankhurst was vocal in her support for Irish independence; for anti-colonial struggle throughout the British Empire; and for anti- fascist solidarity in Europe. Following the Italian invasion in 1935, she was devoted to the cause of Ethiopia where, after the Second World War, she spent her remaining years as a guest of the restored emperor Haile Selassie. The international circulation of her pan-Africanist weekly ''The New Tim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethel Snowden
Ethel Snowden, Viscountess Snowden (born Ethel Annakin; 8 September 1881 – 22 February 1951), was a British socialist, human rights activist, and feminist politician. From a middle-class background, she became a Christian Socialist through a radical preacher and initially promoted temperance and teetotalism in the slums of Liverpool. She aligned to the Fabian Society and later the Independent Labour Party, earning an income by lecturing in Britain and abroad. Snowden was one of the leading campaigners for women's suffrage before the First World War, then founding The Women's Peace Crusade to oppose the war and call for a negotiated peace. After a visit to the Soviet Union she developed a strong criticism of its system, which made her unpopular when relayed to the left-wing in Britain. Snowden married the prominent Labour Party politician and future Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Snowden. She rose up the social scale in the 1920s, much to her pleasure, and she welcom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Williams (trade Union Leader)
Robert Williams (1881 – 1 February 1936) was a British trade union organiser. He was born in Swansea, Wales, and began his working life as a coal trimmer at the docks. He became active in his union, the National Amalgamated Labourers' Union, at the age of 16 and eventually became its president. He also served as a Labour Party councillor in Swansea from 1910 to 1912. In 1912, Williams was elected as the first secretary of the National Transport Workers' Federation. In this role, he unsuccessfully campaigned for its affiliates to amalgamate into a single union. He opposed World War I, and was a leading member of the Union of Democratic Control. An active member of the Labour Party, he stood in Aberavon at the 1918 general election, but as a supporter of the October Revolution, he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920.Williams ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Crawford Anderson
William Crawford Anderson (13 February 1877 – 25 February 1919) was a British socialist politician. Born in 1877 at Findon, Aberdeenshire, the name Crawford in fact does not appear on his birth certificate. His father Francis Anderson was a blacksmith, who married in 1868, Barbara Cruickshank, an ardent radical; she being responsible for Anderson's education, she was an intelligent and widely read woman of strong, radical, Presbyterian views who encouraged William to read extensively. At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed in Aberdeen as a manufacturing chemist and began to attend meetings of the local Social Democratic Federation (SDF), at this time he also followed Tom Mann’s campaign for the by-election in 1896. After listening to an eloquent speech by Carrie Martyn at an SDF meeting, he became intent on improving himself and began to read rigorously; he read everything from Dickens, Ruskin, Thackeray and Hardy, to name but a few. Robert Blatchford’s '' Merrie Englan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science and various areas of analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy"Bertrand Russell" 1 May 2003. He was one of the early 20th century's most prominent logicians, and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British "revolt against idealism". Together with his former teacher A. N. Whitehead, Russell wrote ''Principia Mathematica'', a milestone in the development of classical logic, and a major attempt to reduce the whole ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence
Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence, PC (né Lawrence; 28 December 1871 – 10 September 1961) was a British Labour politician who, among other things, campaigned for women's suffrage. Background and education Born in London as Frederick William Lawrence, he was the son of wealthy Unitarians who were members of the Liberal Party. Three of his father's brothers, William, James, and Edwin, were politically active in various roles, including as Lord Mayor of London and as members of parliament. Frederick was educated at Wixenford, Eton, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a member of Cambridge University Liberal Club. He then became a barrister. Political career Lawrence met and fell in love with Emmeline Pethick, an active socialist and campaigner for women's votes. They finally married in 1901 after Lawrence converted to socialism. They kept separate bank accounts and they both took the surname 'Pethick Lawrence' (later Pethick-Lawrence ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlotte Despard
Charlotte Despard (née French; 15 June 1844 – 10 November 1939) was an Anglo-Irish suffragist, socialist, pacifist, Sinn Féin activist, and novelist. She was a founding member of the Women's Freedom League, Women's Peace Crusade, and the Irish Women's Franchise League, and an activist in a wide range of political organizations over the course of her life, including among others the Women's Social and Political Union, Humanitarian League, Labour Party, Cumann na mBan, and the Communist Party of Great Britain. Despard was imprisoned four times for her suffragette activism, and she continued actively campaigning for women's rights, poverty relief and world peace right into her 90s. Early life Charlotte French was born on 15 June 1844 in Edinburgh and lived as a child in Edinburgh and Campbeltown in Scotland and from around 1850 in England at Ripple, Kent, her father was Irish Captain John Tracy William French of the Royal Navy (who died in 1855) and her mother Margaret Frenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Ammon
Charles George Ammon, 1st Baron Ammon, PC, DL, JP (22 April 1873 – 2 April 1960) was a British Labour Party politician. Background and education The son of Charles George and Mary Ammon, he was educated at public elementary schools. He was active in the Independent Labour Party and was a conscientious objector in the First World War, becoming chief lobbyist at Parliament for the No-Conscription Fellowship. Career Ammon worked with the Post Office for twenty-four years. He became active in the Fawcett Association, and was then secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers from 1920 to 1928. He was also the first General Secretary of the National Union of Docks, Wharves and Shipping Staffs, and the Organising Secretary of the Civil Service Union. Local politics Ammon was London County Councillor for Camberwell North from 1919 to 1925 and from 1934 to 1946, and Chairman of London County Council from 1941 to 1942. He was an Alderman on Camberwell Borough Council from 1934 t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Mann
Thomas Mann (15 April 1856 – 13 March 1941), was an English trade unionist and is widely recognised as a leading, pioneering figure for the early labour movement in Britain. Largely self-educated, Mann became a successful organiser and a popular public speaker in the British labour movement. Early years Mann was born on 15 April 1856, on Grange Road, Foleshill. His birth house was previously maintained by Coventry City Council, but is now privately owned after being sold in 2004. The property still stands today. Mann was the son of a clerk who worked at a colliery. He attended school from the ages of six to nine, then began work doing odd jobs on the colliery farm. A year later he became a trapper, a labour-intensive job that involved clearing blockages from the narrow airways in the mining shafts. In 1870, the colliery was forced to close and the family moved to Birmingham. Mann soon found work as an engineering apprentice. He attended public meetings addressed by Anni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernest Bevin
Ernest Bevin (9 March 1881 – 14 April 1951) was a British statesman, trade union leader, and Labour Party politician. He co-founded and served as General Secretary of the powerful Transport and General Workers' Union in the years 1922–1940, and served as Minister of Labour and National Service in the war-time coalition government. He succeeded in maximising the British labour supply, for both the armed services and domestic industrial production, with a minimum of strikes and disruption. His most important role came as Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour government, 1945–1951. He gained American financial support, strongly opposed communism, and aided in the creation of NATO. Bevin was also instrumental to the founding of the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret propaganda wing of the UK Foreign Office which specialised in disinformation, anti-communism, and pro-colonial propaganda. Bevin's tenure also saw the end of British rule in India and the in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
