Freedom Defence Committee
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Freedom Defence Committee
The Freedom Defence Committee was a UK-based organisation set up on 3 March 1945 to "uphold the essential liberty of individuals and organisations, and to defend those who are persecuted for exercising their rights to freedom of speech, writing and action."Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds.). ''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose (1945-1950)'' (Penguin) Chaired by Herbert Read, with Fenner Brockway and Patrick Figgis as vice-chairmen, the committee's secretary was Ethel Mannin. Later, George Orwell became a vice-chair and George Woodcock, secretary."Orwell Today"
Retrieved 19 August 2013.
The Committee came into being as a result of

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Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read was co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. As well as being a prominent English anarchist, he was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism. He was co-editor with Michael Fordham of the British edition in English of '' The Collected Works of C. G. Jung''. Early life The eldest of four children of tenant farmer Herbert Edward Read (1868-1903), and his wife Eliza Strickland, Read was born at Muscoates Grange, near Nunnington, about four miles south of Kirkbymoorside in the North Riding of Yorkshire. George Woodcock, in ''Herbert Read- The Stream and the Source'' (1972), wrote: "rural memories are long... nearly sixty years after Read's father... had died and the family had left Muscoates, I heard it ...
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Central Criminal Court (England And Wales)
The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly referred to as the Old Bailey after the street on which it stands, is a criminal court building in central London, one of several that house the Crown Court of England and Wales. The street outside follows the route of London Wall, the ancient wall around the City of London, which was part of the fortification's ''Bailey (castle), bailey'', hence the metonymy, metonymic name. The Old Bailey has been housed in a succession of court buildings on the street since the sixteenth century, when it was attached to the medieval Newgate Prison, Newgate gaol. The current main building block was completed in 1902, designed by Edward William Mountford; its architecture is recognised and protected as a Grade II* listed building. An extension South Block was constructed in 1972, over the former site of Newgate gaol which was demolished in 1904. The Crown Court sitting in the Old Bailey hears major English criminal law, criminal cases ...
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Organizations Disestablished In 1949
An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived from the Greek word ''organon'', which means tool or instrument, musical instrument, and organ. Types There are a variety of legal types of organizations, including corporations, governments, non-governmental organizations, political organizations, international organizations, armed forces, charities, not-for-profit corporations, partnerships, cooperatives, and educational institutions, etc. A hybrid organization is a body that operates in both the public sector and the private sector simultaneously, fulfilling public duties and developing commercial market activities. A voluntary association is an organization consisting of volunteers. Such organizations may be able to operate without legal formalities, depending on jurisdiction, inclu ...
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Organizations Established In 1945
An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived from the Greek word ''organon'', which means tool or instrument, musical instrument, and organ. Types There are a variety of legal types of organizations, including corporations, governments, non-governmental organizations, political organizations, international organizations, armed forces, charities, not-for-profit corporations, partnerships, cooperatives, and educational institutions, etc. A hybrid organization is a body that operates in both the public sector and the private sector simultaneously, fulfilling public duties and developing commercial market activities. A voluntary association is an organization consisting of volunteers. Such organizations may be able to operate without legal formalities, depending on jurisdiction, includin ...
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Human Rights Organisations Based In The United Kingdom
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, and language. Humans are highly social and tend to live in complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families and kinship networks to political states. Social interactions between humans have established a wide variety of values, social norms, and rituals, which bolster human society. Its intelligence and its desire to understand and influence the environment and to explain and manipulate phenomena have motivated humanity's development of science, philosophy, mythology, religion, and other fields of study. Although some scientists equate the term ''humans'' with all members of the genus ''Homo'', in common usage, it generally refers to ''Homo sapiens'', the only extant member. Anatomically mode ...
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Osbert Sitwell
Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet CH CBE (6 December 1892 – 4 May 1969) was an English writer. His elder sister was Edith Sitwell and his younger brother was Sacheverell Sitwell. Like them, he devoted his life to art and literature. Early life Sitwell was born on 6 December 1892 at 3 Arlington Street, St James's, London. His parents were Sir George Reresby Sitwell, fourth baronet, genealogist and antiquarian, and Lady Ida Emily Augusta (''née'' Denison). He grew up in the family seat at Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire, and at family mansions in the region of Scarborough, and went to Ludgrove School, then Eton College from 1906 to 1909. For many years his entry in ''Who's Who'' contained the phrase "Educted during the holidays from Eton." In 1911 he joined the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry but, not cut out to be a cavalry officer, transferred to the Grenadier Guards at the Tower of London from where, in his off-duty time, he could frequent theatres and art galler ...
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Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sargent and Charles Wellington Furse "was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning." He was the younger brother of the painter Gwen John. Early life Born in Tenby, at 11,12 or 13 The Esplanade, now known as The Belgrave Hotel, Pembrokeshire, John was the younger son and third of four children. His father was Edwin William John, a Welsh solicitor; his mother, Augusta Smith, from a long line of Sussex master plumbers, died young when he was six, but not before inculcating a love of drawing in both Augustus and his older sister Gwen. At the age of seventeen he briefly attended the Tenby School of Art, then left Wales for London, studying at the Slade School of Art, University College London. He became the star pupil of drawing teacher Henry ...
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Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera '' Peter Grimes'' (1945), the '' War Requiem'' (1962) and the orchestral showpiece ''The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'' (1945). Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. Britten first came to public attention with the '' a cappella'' choral work '' A Boy was Born'' in 1934. With the premiere of ''Peter Grimes'' in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-sca ...
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Socialist Leader
The ''Labour Leader'' was a British socialist newspaper published for almost one hundred years. It was later renamed ''New Leader'' and ''Socialist Leader'', before finally taking the name ''Labour Leader'' again. 19th century The origins of the paper lay in ''The Miner'', a monthly paper founded by Keir Hardie in 1887. Its main purpose was to advocate for a federation of Scottish miners."Hardie, (James) Keir", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography The first issue contained an influential programme for labour, co-authored by Hardie and Chisholm Robertson,David Howell, ''British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, 1888-1906'', p.146 marking Hardie's switch from support for the Liberal Party to advocating independent labour candidacies. The paper was used as Hardie's platform in the 1888 Mid Lanarkshire by-election, following which Hardie became a founder member of the Scottish Labour Party and relaunched ''The Miner'' as the ''Labour Leader''. In 1893 the Scottish Labou ...
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National Council For Civil Liberties
Liberty, formerly, and still formally, called the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), is an advocacy group and membership organisation based in the United Kingdom, which challenges unjust laws, protects civil liberties and promotes human rights. It does this through the courts, in Parliament and in the wider community. Liberty also aims to engender a "rights culture" within British society. The NCCL was founded in 1934 by Ronald Kidd and Sylvia Crowther-Smith (later Scaffardi),Liberty
, Entry in the Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organisations
motivated by their

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Fenner Brockway
Archibald Fenner Brockway, Baron Brockway (1 November 1888 – 28 April 1988) was a British socialist politician, humanist campaigner and anti-war activist. Early life and career Brockway was born to W. G. Brockway and Frances Elizabeth Abbey in Calcutta, British India. While attending the School for the Sons of Missionaries, then in Blackheath, London (now Eltham College), from 1897 to 1905, he developed an interest in politics. In 1908, Brockway became a vegetarian. Several decades later, during a debate in a House of Lords on animal cruelty, he said: "I am a vegetarian and I have been so for 70 years. On the whole, I think, physically I am a pretty good advertisement for that practice." After leaving school, he worked as a journalist for newspapers and journals including ''The Quiver'', the ''Daily News'' and the ''Christian Commonwealth''. In 1907, Brockway joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and was a regular visitor to the Fabian Society. He was appointed editor of th ...
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John Hewetson
John Christopher Hewetson (10 January 1913 – 20 December 1990) was a British anarchist doctor, writer and newspaper editor. During the Second World War he was an editor of the anarchist newspaper '' War Commentary'', which saw him imprisoned on three occasions. From the 1940s onwards he was active in advocating for freely available contraception and abortions. Biography Hewetson was born in Birmingham to a wealthy family and was educated at Shrewsbury School before studying medicine at Magdalen College, the University of Oxford. In the run up to the Second War World he became active in the Forward Movement of the Peace Pledge Union with his companion Peta Edsall. In 1939 Hewetson and Edsall joined the anarchist movement and soon became involved in Freedom Press, editing the anarchist newspaper ''War Commentary''. During the war he worked as a hospital casualty officer. In 1940 Hewetson was imprisoned for a week for selling a "working class paper" outside Hyde Park having re ...
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