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Hands Off Russia
The Hands Off Russia campaign was an international political initiative first launched by British Socialists in 1919 to organise opposition to the British intervention on the side of the White armies against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War, as well as to oppose support for Poland during the Polish-Soviet war. The movement was funded partly with financial support from the Bolsheviks themselves. Their most prominent success was in stopping the sailing of the SS Jolly George with munitions bound for Poland. The movement was encouraged by the fledgling Communist International and ultimately emulated in several other countries, including the United States, Canada, and Australia. History Founding The National Committee for the Hands off Russia Movement was elected at a conference in London in January 1919. Sylvia Pankhurst obtained funds for the movement from Moscow. Socialists like William Paul, W. P. Coates (national secretary), Harry Pollitt (national organiser), David Ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alex Gossip
Alexander Gossip (11 September 1862 – 14 May 1952) was a Scottish trade union leader and political activist. Born at Crawford Priory in Fife, where his father was head gardener, Gossip was educated at Madras Academy, leaving at the age of fourteen to complete an apprenticeship as a cabinet-maker. On completing this, he joined the United Operative Cabinet and Chairmakers' Society of Scotland, soon becoming its assistant general secretary. Through his trade union activity, he befriended Keir Hardie, who converted him to socialism. Gossip was a founding member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1893. Three years later, he moved to Glasgow, where he became involved in the Socialist Sunday School movement. In 1901, he was elected as his union's general secretary, and immediately negotiated a merger between it and its English equivalent, the Alliance Cabinet Makers' Association, to form the National Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association (NAFTA). Gossip served as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communist Party Of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB founded the ''Daily Worker'' (renamed the ''Morning Star'' in 1966). In 1936, members of the party were present at the Battle of Cable Street, helping organise resistance against the British Union of Fascists. In the Spanish Civil War the CPGB worked with the USSR to create the British Battalion of the International Brigades, which party activist Bill Alexander commanded. In World War II, the CPGB mirrored the Soviet position, opposing or supporting the war in line with the involvement of the USSR. By the end of World War II, CPGB membership had nearly tripled and the party reached the height of its popularity. Many key CPGB members became leaders of Britain's trade union movement, including most notably Jessie Eden, Abraham Lazarus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Winstone
James Winstone (9 February 1863 – 27 July 1921) was a British trade unionist Born in Risca, Winstone worked from the age of eight, first at a local brickworks, then at Risca United Colliery. He was elected checkweighman, and worked with William Brace to campaign against the sliding pay scale. As a result, he was a prominent founder member of the South Wales Miners' Federation (SWMF) in 1898. Winstone was also active in the Independent Labour Party, and was a Baptist lay preacher. He was elected for the Labour Party to Risca Urban District Council, then to Abersychan council, which he chaired in 1911. In 1907, he was elected to Monmouthshire County Council. He stood at Monmouth Boroughs at the 1906 general election, but received no backing from his union, and was not elected. In 1912, he was elected as Vice President of the SWMF, the first socialist to such a position. He was selected as the Labour candidate for the 1915 Merthyr Tydfil by-election, the seat having pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ben Spoor
Benjamin Charles Spoor (2 June 1878 – 22 December 1928) was a British Labour Party politician. He took a particular interest in India. Born in Witton Park, County Durham, he went to Elmfield College, York, and came from a family of Primitive Methodists. An engineer by training, he later went into business as a builder's merchant. Before entering politics, he was a lay preacher in the Methodist Church. At the 1918 general election, he was elected as Member of Parliament for Bishop Auckland, and held the seat until his death at the age of fifty. In Parliament, he found himself at odds with many Labour MPs and contemplated joining the Liberal Party. He was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury and Chief Whip in 1924, when he was made a Privy Councillor. He had suffered from poor health since contracting malaria at Salonika during World War I. On a visit to London in December 1928, he was found dead in bed at the Regent Palace Hotel. At the inquest, his son said th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Smillie
Robert Smillie (17 March 1857 – 16 February 1940) was a Scottish trade unionist and Labour Party politician. He was a leader of the coal miners, and played a central role in moving support from the miners away from the Liberal Party to the Labour Party. He had a firm commitment to socialism as an ideal, and militancy as a tactic. Early life Born in Belfast, the second son of John Smillie, a Scottish crofter. Until his adult years, he spelt his name as "Smellie"; including on his wedding certificate in 1878. During his early years, he was orphaned and brought up by his grandmother who taught him how to read and write. By the age of nine, he was working as an errand boy and by the age of eleven, he was working at a spinning mill. He was able to obtain some books by authors such as Charles Dickens, Robert Burns and William Shakespeare, but his education suffered as he had to provide income for the family. By the age of fifteen, he had left Ireland for Glasgow, where he found em ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fred Shaw (socialist Activist)
Fred Shaw (25 May 1881 – 22 January 1951) was a British socialist activist and trade unionist. Early life Born in Lindley, Shaw attended elementary school before working at the Wellington Mills as a blacksmiths' assistant. He gradually became a socialist. Organiser By 1903 he was active in the Lindley Labour Representation Committee, and in 1905, he was a founder of the Huddersfield Socialist Labour Party. He became the first British agent for Charles H. Kerr & Co.'s socialist books and gradually became a popular speaker. In 1912, Shaw was elected as secretary of his branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and he had by this point joined the British Socialist Party (BSP), speaking on both their behalf and for the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Opposed to World War I, he was elected to the executive of the BSP in 1916, and at the 1918 general election, he stood for the party in Greenock, taking around 2,500 votes but not coming close to election. His employer f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Peet
George Peet (24 August 1883 – 21 November 1967) was a British communist activist and trade unionist. Born in Derby, Peet became a fitter in the railway works, and joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) in 1904. He soon moved to Manchester, where he worked at the Gorton Railway Works, and for the first time became active in the union, winning election as branch secretary.Edmund Frow, Ruth Frow and John Saville, "Peet, George", ''Dictionary of Labour Biography'', vol.5, pp.170-173 Peet became a socialist, joining the Openshaw Socialist Society, and developed an interest in syndicalism, representing Gorton at the First Conference on Industrial Syndicalism in 1910. Around the start of World War I, he joined the British Socialist Party (BSP), alongside Harry Pollitt. Increasingly prominent in his trade union work, in 1916 he came eighth out of twenty-two candidates for the assistant general secretaryship of the ASE. Inspired by the Clyde Workers' Committee, Peet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Myers (politician)
Tom Myers (15 February 1872 – 21 December 1949) was a British Labour Party politician. Born in Mirfield, Myers left school at the age of 12 and spent several years working in coal mines and factories in the West Riding of Yorkshire before taking up employment at a glass bottle works. An early supporter of the Labour Party, he was elected to Thornhill Urban District Council in 1904. In 1910 the urban district was absorbed by the municipal borough of Dewsbury, and Myers became a member of Dewsbury Borough Council. At the 1918 general election Myers contested the constituency of Spen Valley for the Labour Party, but failed to unseat the sitting Coalition Liberal Member of Parliament, Sir Thomas Whittaker. Whittaker died in November 1919, and Myers was selected to fight the ensuing by election. The by-election came at the same time as a serious split in the Liberal Party over continuing support for the coalition government: Colonel B C Fairfax was nominated as the Coalition Li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Edmund Mills
John Edmund Mills (2 September 1882 – 11 November 1951) was Labour MP for Dartford for three separate periods during the 1920s. Born in Perth in Australia, Mills grew up in Plymouth, being educated at the city's Higher Grade School. He became an engineer based at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, and was elected as chair of the works' Shop Stewards' Committee. Mills was a supporter of the Labour Party, and was elected as a Member of Parliament at the 1920 Dartford by-election. Although he lost the seat at the 1922 United Kingdom general election, he won it back in 1923, serving as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Josiah Wedgwood Josiah Wedgwood (12 July 1730 – 3 January 1795) was an English potter, entrepreneur and abolitionist. Founding the Wedgwood company in 1759, he developed improved pottery bodies by systematic experimentation, and was the leader in the indust .... He lost again in 1924, won in 1929, and was finally defeated in 1931. Mills also served on Woolw ... [...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 Mander
Alfred Ernest Mander (13 December 1894 – 26 February 1985) was a British psychology writer and political activist who became prominent in New Zealand and Australia. Born in Great Malvern in Worcestershire, Mander was educated at Queen's College, Taunton, and became a journalist before studying law at the University of Birmingham. During World War I, Mander served in France with the Royal Field Artillery, then from 1917 worked for the Ministries of Munitions and Labour. He became active in the socialist movement, serving on the first committee of Hands Off Russia. He became the general secretary of the National Union of Ex-Service Men, and sold his house in order to help finance it. However, the group dissolved late in 1920, and Mander emigrated to New Zealand, where he lectured at the Victoria University College.''Dictionary of Labour Biography'', vol.IX, p.106 Mander's political views had moved to the right, and in 1929 he became the dominion secretary of the Reform ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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