:
Mark Starr (27 April 1894,
Shoscombe
Shoscombe is a small village and civil parish in the valley of the Wellow Brook in north-east Somerset, about south of Bath, England. The parish has a population of 443.
From 23 September 1929 until the line closed on 7 March 1966, Shoscombe ...
– 24 April 1985,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
) was a British American labor historian and pedagogue. For 25 years he was educational director of the
International Ladies Garment Workers Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), whose members were employed in the Clothing#Gender differentiation, women's clothing industry, was once one of the largest trade union, labor unions in the United States, one of the firs ...
.
Born in
Shoscombe
Shoscombe is a small village and civil parish in the valley of the Wellow Brook in north-east Somerset, about south of Bath, England. The parish has a population of 443.
From 23 September 1929 until the line closed on 7 March 1966, Shoscombe ...
,
Somerset
( en, All The People of Somerset)
, locator_map =
, coordinates =
, region = South West England
, established_date = Ancient
, established_by =
, preceded_by =
, origin =
, lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset
, lord_ ...
he was the son of a staunch
Free Methodist
The Free Methodist Church (FMC) is a Methodist Christian denomination within the holiness movement, based in the United States. It is evangelical in nature and is Wesleyan–Arminian in theology.
The Free Methodist Church has members in over 100 ...
coal miner. From 1899 to 1907 he attended St Julian's National School. At age thirteen he began work in the mines, later migrating to
South Wales
South Wales ( cy, De Cymru) is a loosely defined region of Wales bordered by England to the east and mid Wales to the north. Generally considered to include the historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, south Wales extends westwards ...
. He joined the
Miners' Federation of Great Britain
The Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) was established after a meeting of local mining trade unions in Newport, Wales in 1888. The federation was formed to represent and co-ordinate the affairs of local and regional miners' unions in Engla ...
and the
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 ...
and also attended classes arranged by the
Workers Educational Association
The Workers' Educational Association (WEA), founded in 1903, is the UK's largest voluntary sector provider of adult education and one of Britain's biggest charities. The WEA is a democratic and voluntary adult education movement. It delivers lea ...
. In 1915 he won a scholarship to the
Central Labour College
The Central Labour College, also known as The Labour College, was a British higher education institution supported by trade unions. It functioned from 1909 to 1929. It was established on the basis of independent working class education.
The colle ...
in London, which helped broaden his intellectual horizons. In 1916 he returned to the coal fields and began teaching classes in industrial history under the auspices of the Aberdare District Miners' Federation. These lectures became the basis for his ''A Worker looks at History''.
In 1918 he was called up to service in the army but became a
conscientious objector
A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to object ...
on political grounds. While in prison his sister sent him a copy of the New Testament in
Esperanto
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
, which sparked a lifelong interest in the subject. Lobbying by his father got Starr transferred from prison to farm work in
Northumberland
Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey.
It is bordered by land on ...
. In Northumberland Starr came in contact with the
Plebs League The Plebs' League was a British educational and political organisation which originated around a Marxist way of thinking in 1908 and was active until 1926.
History
Central to the formation of the League was Noah Ablett, a miner from the Rhondda ...
and became a leading member of that group.
After his release from prison he returned to South Wales and continued his educational work. In 1921 he helped organize the National Council of Labour Colleges and was the Plebs League representative on its council. During the 1920s, the Plebs League and the NCLC became increasingly divided over personal and political animosities. The Plebs were dominated by the Horrabin family:
J. F. Horrabin
James Francis "Frank" Horrabin (1 November 1884 – 2 March 1962) was an English socialist and sometimes Communist radical writer and cartoonist. For two years he was Labour Member of Parliament for Peterborough. He attempted to construct a s ...
edited ''Plebs'' magazine, his wife
Winifred Horrabin
Winifred Horrabin, née Batho (1887–1971), was a British socialist activist and journalist.
She was born in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, on 9 August 1887, daughter of Arthur John Batho, a postal telegraph clerk, and his wife Lilian, ...
was national secretary and his sister Kathleen was a clerk in the national office. Starr married Kathleen. The NCLC was dominated by J. P. M. Millar and his wife Christine. When the NCLC absorbed the Plebs in 1927 Starr began to find his position in the group untenable and immigrated to the United States to become an instructor at
Brookwood Labor College
Brookwood Labor College (1921 to 1937) was a labor college located at 109 Cedar Road in Katonah, New York, United States. Founded as Brookwood School in 1919 and established as a college in 1921, it was the first residential labor college in the co ...
in Katonah, New York. Though seen as an ally of the Horrabins, his marriage with Kathleen was deteriorating and ended with a divorce.
Along with the Horrabins, Starr briefly joined the
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 CPG ...
during the early 1920s, but soon left, unable to stomach the group's discipline. A trip to Leningrad in 1926 to attend an Esperanto conference further alienated him from the Soviets. He stood as a
Labour Party candidate for
Wimbledon
Wimbledon most often refers to:
* Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London
* Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships
Wimbledon may also refer to:
Places London
* ...
in 1923 and 1924, obtaining about 30% of the vote each time.
In America, Starr continued as an instructor at Brookwood until 1935, when he became educational director of the powerful
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), whose members were employed in the women's clothing industry, was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first U.S. unions to have a primarily female membe ...
, a position he kept until 1960. He became active in the
American Labor Party
The American Labor Party (ALP) was a political party in the United States established in 1936 that was active almost exclusively in the state of New York. The organization was founded by labor leaders and former members of the Socialist Party of ...
and the
Liberal Party of New York
The Liberal Party of New York is a political party in New York. Its platform supports a standard set of socially liberal policies, including abortion rights, increased spending on education, and universal health care.
History
The Liberal Party wa ...
, both of which the ILGWU was affiliated with. He was chairmen of the Queens branch of the Liberal Party from 1945 to 1959. After retiring from ILGWU he represented the
International Labour Organization
The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is the first and o ...
in Singapore and East Africa and continued his Esperanto advocacy. He was listed as the chairman of the Esperanto Information Center in 1973 when he signed the
Humanist Manifesto II
''Humanist Manifesto II'', written in 1973 by humanists Paul Kurtz and Edwin H. Wilson, was an update to the previous ''Humanist Manifesto'' published in 1933, and the second entry in the ''Humanist Manifesto'' series. It begins with a statem ...
.
In 1932 Starr married Helen Norton, also a lecturer at Brookwood. They had two children, John, who died in infancy, and Emily. Mark Starr died on 24 April 1985.
Works
''A worker looks at history: being outlines of industrial history specially written for C.L.C.-Plebs classes''London: Plebs League, 1917
*''Trade unionism: past and future'' London: Plebs League, 1923
London: The British League of Esperantist Socialists, July 1923 (published anonymously)
*''A worker looks at economics'' London: Labour Pub. Co., 1925
*''Lies and hate in education'' London, Hogarth press 1929
*''British labor movement'' Katonah, N.Y.: Brookwood Labor College 1931
*''The worker as a consumer -- how he is exploited, how he may protect himself '' Katonah, N.Y.: Brookwood labor publications 1936
*''The eye route: visual aids, means and agencies, for workers' education'' New York: Education Dept., International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, 1938
*''Consumer education and labor'' New York: Education Dept., International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, 1940
*''Education, why and for what?'' New York: Education Dept., International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, 1940
''Workers' education today''New York City : League for Industrial Democracy, 1941
*''Labor in America'' (with Harold Underwood Faulkner) New York; London: Harper & Bros., 1944
*''Labor looks at education'' Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1946
*''Labour Politics in U.S.A'' London Fabian Publications, 1949
*''Labor and the American way'' New York, Oxford Book Co., 1952
''"Creeping socialism" vs. limping capitalism''New York: Union for Democratic Socialism, 1954
*''Garment workers: "welfare unionism"'' New York: Education Dept., International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, 1954
*''Communication vs. Madison Avenue manipulations'' New York, n.p. 1958
*''Seventh Avenue; road to improved labor-management relations.'' New York, Education Dept., International Ladies' Garment Workers's Union 1958
*''A summary of Minnesota labor's first hundred years: a unit for labor education short-courses'' New York, n.p. 1960
References
The information for this article was taken from Richard Lewis
The Dictionary of Labour Biography, Vol. 9, ed. Joyce M. Bellamy and
John Saville
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Second ...
. London: Macmillan, 1993.
External links
Mark Starr Papers Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, New York University Special Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Starr, Mark
1894 births
1985 deaths
People from Somerset
American Esperantists
Communist Party of Great Britain members
English Esperantists
British emigrants to the United States
American educational theorists
Labor historians
English educational theorists
People from Bath and North East Somerset
International Ladies Garment Workers Union leaders
Plebs' League members