Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Labour History Society, Newsletter March 2021

March 2021

Newsletter This is now the fifth edition of the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Labour History Society Newsletter. The primary purpose of the Newsletter is to keep contact between the NDLHS and its audience in these difficult days when face to face meetings are not possible. When the pandemic ebbs and meetings are possible will be the time to debate how, or even if, the Newsletter might continue and the role it could play.

We are planning for the future. On the evening of the April 21st we are lucky enough to have Professor Robert Poole, author of the acclaimed book “Peterloo: the English Uprising” to speak at a Zoom meeting on Peterloo: Authority on Trial. The months after Peterloo saw a dramatic series of protest meetings, followed by several attempted risings in northern England, Scotland, and London's Cato Street conspiracy. All this took place against the backdrop of the repressive Six Acts and the trial of Henry Hunt and other Peterloo organisers in York. Robert will look at how close Britain came to rebellion, and the place of Nottingham as a reputed hub of conspiracy.

The long-delayed talk on Chartism could be revisited. This was originally scheduled for April 25th 2020, but then, as McMillan might have said “Events, dear boy. Events!”

When restrictions ease, we are envisaging a series of outdoor events. Roger Tanner describes those in Nottingham below. We are also exploring an historical walk on the theme of Edward Carpenter as well as one based on the Eyam and Stoney Middleton women’s strike in the boot and shoe trade.

If people have material suitable for the Newsletter please send it to me for consideration. It could be a small piece or perhaps more substantial up to around 2,000 words.

Julian Atkinson

Edward Carpenter and Millthorpe “It was a bright March day, clusters of daffodils and snowdrops bordered the brook and hedgerow; all around were hills, woods and fields, and close by a stone-roofed hamlet and farmstead. Sitting at table, to a vegetarian meal, one looked through the open door down the sunlit garden to the hills.”

Thus wrote Charlie Sixsmith of his first visit to Edward Carpenter’s house at Millthorpe in 1895.1

1

Quoted in “Edward Carpenter, A Life of Liberty and Love” by Sheila Rowbotham.

Go to Millthorpe today and it is still, on a good day, an idyllic spot in the heart of the Derbyshire countryside. The setting of Edward Carpenter’s house, the design of the building, the garden and the small market garden in the grounds were all part and parcel of Carpenter’s vision of what would be of value in a socialist society of the future.

At Millthorpe, Carpenter was able to live a life consistent with his values and his ideas about what he considered important in life. The fruit and vegetables he grew (with help from others) and which were sold in Chesterfield and Sheffield markets, together with his hand-crafted sandal making enterprise, enabled him to support himself, largely through what he considered honest labour.

He liked being close to nature and to open countryside and enjoyed mixing with people of all classes, including the country folk close by. He drank with the local working men in the nearby Royal Oak and middle and upper class visitors to Millthorpe commented on the ease with which, for the period, he was able to communicate with ordinary working people. Carpenter’s epic prose poem, “Towards Democracy”, the first version of which was published in 1883, and which was subsequently added to, helps us understand why this was no accident, but a real belief in the equality of all, both in theory and in practice.

Edward Carpenter’s gift for making strong personal friendships, which included men of all classes, married couples and advanced women as well as many friends from overseas, resulted in the gradual transformation of the house at Millthorpe into a centre for socialists, Whitmanites and other people of progressive views. All were able to meet in convivial surroundings and, as we would say now, to network. Over time Millthorpe also came to epitomise to many an ideal socialistic way of living and eventually, by the early twentieth century, became a place of pilgrimage.

The situation of the house at Millthorpe was not only idyllic, it was also accessible to Chesterfield, where Carpenter frequently lectured, staying overnight with friends in the town. Sheffield was even more accessible, with Dore and Totley station less than an hour’s walking distance from the house.

Carpenter played a very active role in the Sheffield socialist movement and although this was not what he became famous for it took up a great deal of his time and energy. In 1886 forty-four socialists founded the Sheffield Socialist Society. Edward Carpenter helped with the mission statement and they were soon holding well attended outdoor public meetings. They set up a “Commonwealth Cafe”, described by a visiting speaker as a “smart and tempting coffee house”, and organised meetings with speakers including William Morris, Annie Besant, Havelock Ellis and the anarchist, Kropotkin. It was around this time that Carpenter compiled his book “Chants of Labour” – possibly the longest lasting, as a work of reference, of all his publications. Carpenter continued to be involved with socialist activity in Sheffield and two of the original founders of the Socialist Society, George Hukin and George Adams became lifelong close and intimate friends.

On the whole, Carpenter’s unconventional lifestyle was accepted by the local community. The eventual arrangement whereby his long-term partner, George Merrill, was established at Millthorpe as ‘housekeeper’ was indeed originally encouraged by his friendly, broad minded, Quaker neighbour, Mrs Doncaster.2 This is not to say that everything was problem free. Carpenter’s role on the parish council came to an end following a vindictive campaign against him by an individual called O’Brien.3 Today Carpenter is probably remembered primarily for his attempts to make homosexuality acceptable in society. However, his interests went much wider and deeper than simply the promotion of gay 2 3

“Edward Carpenter, A Life of Liberty and Love” by Sheila Rowbotham “Edward Carpenter, A Life of Liberty and Love” by Sheila Rowbotham

rights. In “The Intermediate Sex” he discussed the question of gender identity and masculine and feminine psychology. “Nature, in mixing the elements which go to compose each individual, does not

always keep her two groups of ingredients – which represent the two sexes – properly apart, but often throws them crosswise in a somewhat baffling manner” and he cited Ulrichs (who argued that masculinity and femininity should be seen as a continuum): “there were men . . . who might be described as of feminine soul enclosed in a male body, or in other cases, women whose definition would be just the reverse.”4 Of himself, he asked the question: “Was I really a woman born in some unknown region of my nature”5 At home in Millthorpe he liked to wear his “Saxon tunic” which friends dissuaded him from wearing out and about in public.

In his almost forty years spent in Millthorpe Edward Carpenter not only succeeded in making the personal political, but he influenced several generations of socialists with his unique combination of his style of living, his writings (both widely read publications and an extensive correspondence) and his enormously popular lecture tours. His biographer, Sheila Rowbotham, writes: “Carpenter had an

established lecturing circuit, speaking not only in Sheffield, Rotherham and Chesterfield, but extending outwards to West Yorkshire and Lancashire, along with Nottingham and Derby. He was also frequently in Bristol and London and did tours of Scotland . . . he could gather huge crowds of around a thousand people to some of these meetings”.

Carpenter’s brand of socialism was impossible to pigeonhole. He was a visionary who drew his inspiration from many sources. He joined the Socialist League, he described himself as an anarchist, giving much support to the imprisoned anarchists; he had links with the Fabians and with ILPers and when Tom Mann returned from Australia he became a supporter of Mann’s syndicalist movement. This “larger socialism” and his dislike of any form of sectarianism was probably part of his wide appeal.

Today much of the countryside Carpenter liked to hike over is within the Peak District National Park, a body he would no doubt have approved of given his views on public access to the countryside.

Rambles up the valley to Smeekley Wood and over the surrounding hills were very much a part of the communal life at Millthorpe - Carpenter sometimes organising who should walk with whom. Bert Ward, the lifelong Sheffield campaigner for access to the countryside, was a friend and visitor to Carpenter’s house at Millthorpe and later became a key figure in the long struggle which eventually led to the creation of the National Park in 1951 and then to the access to open country legislation of 2004.

It is not easy to fully evaluate the legacy of Edward Carpenter and his establishment at Millthorpe.

Apart from the socialist anthem “England Arise”, Carpenter’s writings did not remain in print long after his death, despite being extremely popular during his lifetime, both at home and abroad. There is no doubt that, in his day, he was an inspiration to many. Perhaps his influence and his long-term legacy must, in the end, be that which has passed from person to person down the generations – the importance of nature and the environment, the vision of a more inclusive, tolerant society and a belief in the possibility of replacing the materialistic capitalist world he and we were, and are, forced to suffer with something better – the ideal as Carpenter put it of “the common life conjoined to the free individuality”.

Gwyneth Francis

Bibliography

“My Days and Dreams”, Edward Carpenter “The Selected Works”, Edward Carpenter (First Prism Key Press Edition 2012) “Towards Democracy”, Edward Carpenter “The Intermediate Sex”, Edward Carpenter “Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure” Edward Carpenter “Love’s Coming of Age” Edward Carpenter “Edward Carpenter, A Life of Liberty and Love” Sheila Rowbotham “Sheffield and Socialism” an extract from “My Days and Dreams”, Edward Carpenter “The Chesterfield Letters of Edward Carpenter” Edited by Ed Fordham and Luke Povey

4 “The Intermediate Sex” by Edward Carpenter 5 Edward Carpenter, Autobiographical Notes, July 1911 quoted in “Edward Carpenter A Life of Liberty and Love” by Sheila Rowbotham

Walking Local Labour History The Covid restrictions have forced me to look at labour history in a different way. While access to archives has been restricted, interview with participants have been curtailed and public meetings brought to a halt, other avenues to explore labour history have opened up. Zoom meetings have been brilliant, especially those organised by NDLHS, but there is more that can be offered.

Daily walks from my front door have led me to focus on labour history in my immediate locality. Living on the north side of Nottingham it has been possible to walk in the footsteps of Luddites as they gathered to right injustices in Bulwell or Sutton-in-Ashfield. I have explored the site of the Davidson and Hawksley Worsted Mill on the Day Brook, one of the largest in the country in the 1790s, and followed the story of its labour disputes. I have explored the sites of battles to gain better wages and conditions in the former villages of Arnold and Basford. I have traced the movements of the Chartists in the former village of Carrington and early miners strikes and lock-outs along the Leen Valley.

The 2017 Pentrich Revolution Bicentenary included fifteen local guided walks in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire following the footsteps of the Rising. Over 700 people participated with over one hundred joining the ‘march’ to Giltbrook in June. In 2018 a march through Eyam and Stoney Middleton commemorated the centenary of the start of the Boot and Shoe Workers’ strike and retraced the events of this brave stand for union recognition and decent wages and conditions. These walks have helped to remind local people of our rich heritage in the fight for a better world.

Where else could labour history be brought to life? One NDLHS member is planning a guided walk around Millthorpe, near Chesterfield, as a result of her research into the socialist writer and activist Edward Carpenter. Other possible locations are the Derby Silk Workers lockout of 1831 , already commemorated by a march each summer (in normal circumstances!), or Selston as local people opposed enclosure in the 1870s. If you would like to suggest a local walk near you which would bring to life a moment in labour history, please contact NDLHS. NDLHS members are planning to organise guided walks in these and other local areas when restrictions ease and make this possible. We will be advertising guided walks and producing self-guide brochures for each one.

Meanwhile enjoy your daily walk.

Roger Tanner

Not Robin Hood but Robbin’ Bastard: How the Free Grammar school became Nottingham High School The Free Grammar School was started as a foundation of Dame Agnes Mellers in 1513 “for the teaching and instruction of boys in good manners and literature”. After an initial period, when the boys were taught in the porch of Saint Mary’s Church, a school was built in Stoney Street around 1550.

During the C.19th many schools endowed for the poor were transformed into schools for the children of the middle-class. This was often opposed and this was particularly the case in Nottingham where the

old leaders of Chartism - James Sweet, William Mott and David Heath - led the opposition. The transition being attempted was from a Free Grammar school to a fee paying oxymoronically titled Public School that would become Nottingham High School.

The nineteenth century saw a series of efforts, initially by the Charity Commissioners, to rid schools of restrictions in their endowments that made at least partial provision for poorer pupils. The schools liberated from that impediment could properly cater for the richer members of society. In 1864 the Taunton commission looked into the endowed schools, except for the nine premier Public Schools, and reported in 1868. The commission was anti free education or “Indiscriminate gratuitous instruction… as invariably mischievous as indiscriminate almsgiving” and that was a waste of the endowments.

The commission proposed that there should be a tripartite system for the middle class: for the lower middle class the pupils would study until age fourteen, the middle middle class school would teach until sixteen, and, at the apex, the higher middle class school would prepare pupils up to entry to university. Not surprisingly this tidy vision was not enacted. However, the Endowed Schools Act of 1869 enabled the revision of the statutes and foundations of Grammar schools so that they might achieve public school rank and also revise their endowments.1 The working class children were not forgotten as the 1870 Education Act corralled them into Elementary Schools where they were given an education to fit them for their station in life.

The looting of endowments was vigorously opposed in Nottingham. In 1855 it was not merely the Agnes Mellers endowment that was to be altered but the Thomas White Charity as well. A report of the Charity Commissioners proposed that the Thomas White Charity, which gave loans to poor and often young trades people, should be changed so that it might give money to the Free Grammar School. This proposal generated a massive controversy in which working people were vocal in defence of their Charity and in denunciation of the Grammar School board. James Sweet and William Mott were active in this campaign; Sweet in the Town Council and Mott leading the opposition outside the Council. When the proposal first came to the Council Sweet gave notice that he would fight the proposal and the School was attacked for not helping the working class.2 The first public protest meeting was called in December 1855 dealing with appropriation of Sir Thomas White’s charity money for the Grammar school. Mott said that the so-called free school was not for the poor but those who could pay. Sweet said that the original proposal of the Town Council to accept the change had been thrown out by 23 votes to 6. This led to prolonged cheering. Mott said that the income of the school was £956 p.a. and the 4 masters got £580. Mott was in favour of good wages but there were only 80 pupils.

Furthermore, Dame Agnes Mellors’ will had specified that the headmaster should devote his whole time to the school whereas the present head took private pupils and was Chaplain to the County Gaol. This multitasking was common during this period and many of these Headmasters achieved very comfortable salaries.3 Mott moved a resolution opposing the moving any of the White charity loan scheme money to the school. The headmaster the Rev. W. Butler was brave or foolhardy enough to be at the meeting.

He said that a majority of the scholars were sons of tradesmen “or persons in subordinate situations.”

He only had 10 private students. He was stopped speaking by laughter when a voice interjected “There’s no stockingers”. A resolution was passed opposing the change in the White charity and Marriott, another old Chartist, moved that the resolution be sent to the Charity Commissioner dealing with the issue and Board of the Charity Commissioners.4 The Charity Commissioners proposed a scheme for the Free Grammar School of the Agnes Mellors trust. Any money in the White Charity above £5000 should be transferred to the Free Grammar School. The trustees might sell the present school site on Stoney Street. The new school should be called “The Nottingham High School of the foundation of Agnes Mellors and Sir Thomas White, and others,” and the object of such school shall be “to provide for the sons of inhabitants of the town of Brian Simon Education and the Labour Movement: 1870-1918, London 1965,pp99-107 and Brian Simon, Studies in the History of Education 1780-1870, London 1960, pp 323-5 2 Nottingham Review 23 November 1855 1

3

Brian Simon, 1965 p.103

4

Nottinghamshire Guardian 13 December 1855, N.R. 14 December 1855

Nottingham a sound classical, commercial, and generally useful education, at a moderate cost…”

Previously 40 pupils had been educated for free but that would end.5

The campaign continued in January 1856 at a public meeting convened by the Mayor to protest against using part of the Sir Thomas White Charity for the Free Grammar School. Mott and Sweet were on the platform and Mott moved the resolution. He had met with the Charity Commission inspector. The White Charity was to help young tradesmen by loans. The resolution opposed the Charity Commission proposal that the White Charity should make a “loan” to the Grammar School. It wished to make the Grammar School a free school in accordance with the intention of Dame Agnes Mellors and to administer the White loans as the founder had wished. The Charity Commission had also specified that loans be only made to those of age 35 or over and also limited the total loans that might be made.

Mott had busied himself finding details about the Rev. Butler and had asked him the occupations of the parents of the last 100 boys admitted to the school but had received no reply.

Mott said that Butler now had a handsome income of £400 but had also received a loan of £3,000 from the White Charity to build a large house for the Butler family and their private pupils. The house was so large that those portions not required by the Rev. Butler had been rented out as a warehouse. Mott went on to say “they built a large mansion for the master, and a small school for the boys…” Mott had stated he would never “be found opposing the wishes and interests of the working classes of Nottingham.” The charities for the benefit of the people were being “filched” from them.

The resolution opposed the misappropriation of part of the White loan fund and was unanimously carried.6 The Charity Commission later enabled the £3,000 “loan” for Butler’s house to be written off.

The Town Council heard confirmation that the school was to charge and commented: “…this expense would exclude every poor boy from experiencing the benefit of

the Free Grammar School…There were formerly forty free scholars … but all were hitherto to be charged…” £15,000 was to be transferred from the White Charity to the new High School. 7 Sweet, on behalf of the Town Council, met the Charity Commission to put the case for free education. The Commission was not to be moved. To remind ourselves, the orthodox view was that “Indiscriminate gratuitous instruction … (was) as invariably mischievous as indiscriminate almsgiving”. Charity money was put to the use of a new Nottingham High school which charged fees of eight guineas a year to provide a sound classical and commercial education. 8 The Free Grammar School was dead and the poor were successfully excluded.

The Charitable Trustees of the new High School wanted a new building, which cost no more than £2,500. It was first planned to be at the junction of Goldsmith and Chaucer Streets. The Liberal Nottingham Daily Express presented its pious wish list for the new school after its move from Stoney Street which had been “Originally, a low, ill-ventilated one storeyed building”. The new school, the dream went, “shelters under its beneficent wings, the poor as well as the rich … It should not be a school for the affluent, nor even the middle class; it should seek the elevation of the industrious poor.”9 Neither the location of the new school and definitely not this rose tinted view of its role were anywhere near the mark.

5 6 7 8 9

N.G. 10 January 1856 N.G.10 January 1856, Nottingham Journal 11 January 1856 N.J. 18 January 1856 N.R. 25 January 1856, 7 March 1856, 13 March 1868 NDE 16 July 1861, NDE 24 July 1861

The Trustees owned a two and a half acre site north of the Arboretum and that is where the foundation stone was laid. The Charity Commissioners gave permission for the selling of land to Midland railways in the Meadows for £8400 and the expenditure of £6000 on the new school. The Tory Nottinghamshire Guardian was in ecstasies: ”… the Nottingham Grammar School will hereafter assume

a prominent position among the Public Schools of the United Kingdom … How would it gladden the spirit of Agnes Mellers, if from her place of rest she could contemplate the blessings which have flowed from the gift of her substance for the religious and secular education of youth …”10 The reality was that fees were confirmed to be eight guineas a year and the school Trustees confidently stated that the school was meant for the middle class.11 W J Douse spoke to a large meeting in the Market Square on the still worrying issue of the High School in 1878. Later he claimed that it numbered 3000 but there is a suspicion that he had an optimistic frame of mind as far as numbers were concerned at protest meetings. Rouse was a founder member of the Nottingham and Lenton Cooperative Society, an active member of the Liberal Party, an indefatigable writer of letters to the local papers and he also chaired the protest meeting in opposition to the Selston enclosure that led to the so called Selston “riots” against the enclosure of common land.

Douse quoted the Town Council stipulation of 1827 that the staff of the school should not be granted “perquisites or gratuities”. He went on to point out that the Headmaster had in 1876 been given £170 for home improvements and that staff were being given the reward of dinners that cost up to the huge amount of £24. These had originally been camouflaged in the school accounts as “sundries”. The outraged meeting passed a resolution criticising the High School and its Board.12 In 1880 the Charity Commissioners took a further £7,000 out of the Thomas White Charity and gave it to the High School.13 The Commission then changed the composition of the School Board of Governors and the representatives of the Town Council were cut in number.14 The removal of the previously Free Grammar School from effective public control was complete.

The idea that “their Free School” had been stolen from the working class persisted for a long time.

When, in 1904, a proposal was made to transfer £7000 from the White Charity to buy a cricket ground for the High School, it was the Trades Council that spearheaded the successful opposition 15 The meeting of the Trades Council was attended by several members of the Town Council. The point was forcibly made that the money was not the enable poorer children to attend the school but to help the wealthy. A resolution opposing the transfer was carried unanimously.16 The High School countered by arguing that it did help poorer pupils as the School offered no less than three Agnes Mellers Scholarships which paid the school fees for three years. It was also pointed out that some pupils were recruited from the City elementary schools; but only if the parents could pay their fees.17 The campaign of the Trades Council triumphed. The Nottingham Education Committee was unanimous in refusing the High School an annual grant of £500 and handing over £7000 from the White Charity.

There was a counter proposal that the school should be “taken over lock, stock and barrel by the

Education Authority … (it) was too much the preserve of the wealthier classes – which was certainly not the idea of the founder.” 18 This radical counter proposal was not carried out and still remains

purely at the level of aspiration. The transfer of money from endowments meant to support all into a scrounged benefit for the better off was a persistent feature of the nineteenth century. Some may argue that the robbin’ bastards are still at it.

NG 26 October 1866 NR 13 March 1868 12 Nottinghamshire and Midland Counties Daily Express 1 July 1878 13 NG 9 April 1880 14 NMCDE 6 June 1882 15 Trades Council Minutes 29 June 1904 16 Nottingham Evening Post 30 June 1904 17 NDE 25 June 1904 18 NDE 28 July 1904 10 11

Julian Atkinson

The Typical Labour Stalwart?

Frank Manning Dunkley and Loughborough In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, drawn by the developing industries of the town, there were ‘incomers’ to Loughborough’s labour market. Some were from the surrounding villages, others from further away. One of those ‘incomers’ worked on the Midland Railway, initially as a platelayer and eventually becoming a foreman ganger. He was Frank Manning Dunkley, born in the small village of Great Brington, Northamptonshire in 1868. He was to become a prominent figure in the area’s Trade Union movement and in the Labour Party.

In the early twentieth century Frank was a prominent figure in Loughborough Trades Council, which had been formed in 1893 with the major involvement of the hosiery, engineering and railway unions.1 At that time, Frank was probably a member of the General Railway Workers Union.2 The earliest record of him holding office in the Trades Council was in 1902 when he was elected President – a post to which he was elected many times, through to the early 1930s.3 At the local level, Frank often spoke at public meetings in support of various disputes within the rail industry or encouraging better organisation of workers in the industry. He was a keen supporter of extending the payment of the political levy by union members.4 Ironically, the 1919 dispute led to the postponement of Loughborough Labour Party’s meeting to select a new Parliamentary Candidate, since some nominees could not get to the meeting.5 But Frank was by no means parochial in his union activity. In 1906 he presided at the formation meeting of the Loughborough Workers’ Union Branch and publicly supported their recruitment activities in the following year.6 When a lace factory in nearby Shepshed issued a ‘your union or your job’ ultimatum in 1914, Frank chaired a public meeting in defence of the workers and their union. He noted that the workers “…chose the union, and have been idle during the week.”7 Union solidarity was successful. “The men had

all returned to work under better conditions and the employer had acknowledged that he was wrong in not recognising the union in the first place.”8 Later that year, in an initiative supported by the Trades Council, Frank was encouraging women workers to join their respective unions.9 In 1919 he was supporting the organisation of white collar workers through the National Union of Clerks. In June, trainees at Loughborough College, some of whom were demobilised or disabled ex-servicemen, were in dispute with the College over their allowances. It was Frank who chaired their protest meeting at the Town Hall.10 Later in 1919, with the Moulders Union in dispute, Frank presided at a public meeting to support the local branch and the “… 98 children and 198 women dependent upon them.”11 Father to two children, Frank was also a prominent supporter of children’s causes. In November 1908, he presided at a meeting in the town’s Market Place in support of the local unemployed. There were

1

Notes from a lecture by Chris Wrigley to the Loughborough & District Trades Council in the author’s possession.

Formed in 1889 ‘designed to attract the poorly paid grades’ (including platelayers) it supported ‘militant trade unionism’.

Bagwell, Philip, The Railwaymen, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1963, Vol1, p132.

3 For 1902, see notes from a lecture by Chris Wrigley to the Loughborough & District Trades Council in the author’s possession. For the 1930s see Loughborough Echo (hereinafter LE) 31 January 1930, p5 and 1932 editions, passim.

4 See, for example, LE, 31 October 1907, p5; 3 October 1919, p5 and 10 October 1919, p3.

5 LE, 24 October 1919, p2.

6 Loughborough Herald (hereinafter LH), 13 September 1906, p5 and 7 November 1907, p5.

7 LE, 13 February 1914, p3.

8 LE, 13 March 1914, p2.

9 LH, 28 May 1914, p5.

10 LE. 2 May 1919, p3 and LH, 12 June 1919, p5 respectively.

11 LH, 7 November 1919, p3.

2

370 men (217 of them married) on the unemployed register.

470 local children were dependent on those men and Frank urged the Town Council “…to take immediate steps to relieve

the distress.”12

He was frequently involved in local activities to support the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants Orphans’ Fund.13 These included a daytime fund-raising parade and Frank often merged this charitable work with his politics in his address to the evening public meeting associated with the event. In the summer of 1913, for example, he called for a campaign for ‘complete organisation amongst workers’ citing non-unionists who benefitted from members’ organising as ‘a dead load’ whom trades unionists ‘had carried on their backs long enough.’ He was supporting a minimum wage and an 8 hour day to help counter the costs of living outstripping wages.14 With the support of an ‘anonymous benefactor’ (who was probably local), Frank founded the Loughborough Children’s Holiday Camp which aimed to provide holidays for disadvantaged local children and he was involved in arranging its activities for a number of years. 15 Frank had had political interests for a long time. In 1920, he recollected having attended a conference on land nationalisation in 1899.16 In 1902, when serving one of his terms as President of the Trades Council, he contested the nomination of a seat ‘opened up’ by the Liberals to allow a ‘working man’ to stand. He was defeated by the nominee of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), Fred Morley.17 In 1906 the first local election candidate supported by the local ‘Labour Representation Committee’ was the serving Trades Council Secretary, Joseph Jarrom, who unsuccessfully stood in the Town’s Storer Ward.18 Five years later, described as a ‘Labour’ candidate on his nomination papers, Frank contested the town’s Hastings Ward. At a Market Place meeting prior to the poll he claimed that low wages were a “…disgrace to the town…” and promised “…he would create a bit of dust in the council…” if returned. He came bottom of the poll with 250 votes. The next year he stood again in the same ward – unsuccessfully. The Liberal supporting Loughborough Herald noted that “With a large

working class electorate it seems strange that Labour cannot get any official footing on the Council.”

Frank felt that he had been let down by the working class electorate and did not stand as a candidate again until 1919.19 However, Frank was still prominent in local community activity as well as in his union and on the Trades Council. In August 1913, William Murphy (owner of many Irish and international interests) and the Dublin Employers’ Federation attempted to break the growing Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) by locking out any employees who would not give up their ITGWU membership. By late September the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) had issued an appeal for funds to support the locked out Dublin workers and their families.20 Loughborough Trades Council established a fund raising committee in October, with Frank serving as the Treasurer. At its initial collections, a sum of £10/10s/0d was raised. The current equivalent is £847.00.21

12 13

LH, 12 November 1908, p6.

After amalgamation with the General Railway Workers Union and the Pointsmen and Signalmens Society, the Uniion became the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) in March 1913.

14 LH, 26 June 1913, p5.

15 LE regularly covered the camp’s activities.

16 LE, 13 February 1920, p3.

17 Notes from a lecture by Chris Wrigley to the Loughborough & District Trades Council in the author’s possession.

18 Shuker, Mike, The Formation of Loughborough Labour Party, Leicestershire Labour History Society, Loughborough, 2018, p6.

19 See LH, 2 October 1911 pp 5 and 8 for 1911 and LH, 7 November 1912, p8 for 1912.

20 See Devine, Francis and Shuker, Mike, To Make a Universe of Love, Not a Universe of Hate – Leicestershire Labour and the Dublin Lock Out, 1913 -1914, Irish Labour History Society and Leicestershire Labour History Society, Dublin and Loughborough, 2020, p25.

21 Ibid, p35.

Like many Labour activists to hold office after the 1914 – 1918 conflict, Frank had gained administrative and political experience from committee work in wartime. He was appointed to the Loughborough Council’s War Distress Committee, served as a delegate to the Volunteer Training Corps, was a member of the War Pensions Committee locally, chaired the local Prince of Wales Fund for war relief and, towards the end of the war, presided over a Labour committee to raise funds for Leicestershire Prisoners of War.22 The Mayor’s attitude to Labour’s participation in the Prisoners of War fund was patronising at best. In raising £352/16s/0d (£352.80, currently £14, 025) the Mayor said that he “…had not expected anything like such an amount … he was glad he had taken the right course in asking organised Labour to help him.” At the same time, he was part of the Council which turned down the Trades Council’s request for further representation of ‘organised labour’ on the local Food Control Committee.23 Throughout the conflict, the Trades Council had fought against profiteering, be it in food pricing or rents.24 These campaigns continued after the armistice and Frank was often one of the key speakers at the Trades Council’s meetings. He made contributions which often highlighted the hypocrisies of those in authority.

By 1919. 641 houses in Loughborough were ‘condemnable’. Speaking to the Trades Council, Frank highlighted that “The difficulty was on many public authorities the members who should deal with such matters were themselves slum landlords.”25 When local lads were convicted by the town JPs for playing games on local meadowland, many of the recreation grounds having been turned into allotments, Frank pointed out that a number of the JPs were also the Councillors who had a responsibility for providing recreation grounds. Later, Frank himself was nominated and confirmed as a JP.26 Frank had been involved as a Trades Council nominee to the various bodies which had contributed to the establishment of a Labour Party organisation in the Loughborough Constituency (1918). When two by-elections were due in the Hastings Ward for Loughborough Council in 1919, Frank and another railway worker, Arthur Wright, stood and were elected: Loughborough’s first Labour Councillors.27 He lost his seat in elections in November 1921 but continued activity in both the Labour Party and Trades Council, often holding office in both organisations.

In 1926 Frank suffered sunstroke “…whilst sitting on a railway waggon” (sic). From then on his health was not always good. The next year he declined the Presidency of the Trades Council on the basis of ‘inconsistent health’ although he was well enough to serve as Trades Council President again for the year 1930.28 At some stage, he became involved in the Loughborough Old Age Pensioners’ Association and was President of that organisation in 1945/6.29 Having been an ‘invalid’ for some time, Frank was looked after by his daughter and died on December 27th 1963 in Loughborough. He also left a son.30 He had given long service to his union, to the Trades Council, to the Labour Party and to a number of community organisations in the town and there is also evidence of his supporting various Independent Labour Party activities locally as well as supporting opening up trade with the Soviet Union after the Revolution.

Research into FMD’s background is continuing, although access to many of the resources necessary have been restricted over the past year. Attempts have been made to trace any surviving family and it is hoped that a fuller profile will be published once conditions allow the research to continue.

Mike Shuker 22 See LH, 10 September 1914, p5 and LE, 11 September p4 for War Distress Committee; LH, 12 October 1916, p1 and LE, 13 October 1916, p2 for War Pensions Committee; LE, 22 March 1918, p3 for the Prince of Wales Fund and LH, 21 March 1918, p1 for the Leicestershire Prisoners of War Fund.

23 LH, 21 March 1918, p1.

24 See, for example, LE, 30 April 1915 and 7 May 1915 on rent rises and 4 September 1916 on food prices and supply.

25 On ‘condemnable’ houses see LH, 30 October 1919, p5. On housing conditions see LH, 10 April 1919, p7.

26 On the prosecutions, see LE, 13 August 1920, p5. On Frank’s appointment as a JP see LE, 23 November 1923, p2.

27 LE, 20 June 1919, p6.

28 LE, 31 January 1930, p5.

29 LE, 4 May 1945, p2 and 1 February 1946, p4.

30 LE, 3 January 1964, p9.

Archiving in the time of Corona - Report from the Feminist Archive Midlands Pretty much everyone reading this will know that the November 1970 Miss World pageant at the Royal Albert Hall was disrupted by protesters from the Women's Liberation Movement throwing flour bombs and heckling.

Less well known is a demonstration at a beauty contest at the Nottingham Palais at the end of March 1971. Two students from Trent Poly entered and got through to the final whereupon one of them ripped open a wraparound skirt to display a women's liberation banner. They both ran through the hall shouting 'Women's liberation' while supporters threw leaflets from the balcony.

Over the past few years a group of us have been enjoying hearing fascinating stories like this while interviewing local women activists from the 1970's onwards and recording their memories of the activities and campaigns they were involved with. There were consciousness raising groups, Women's refuges, demonstrations, conferences, theatre groups, campaigns, newsletters, four different Women's Centres, festivals, life changing energy and enthusiasm.

Many interviewees produced folders of old leaflets or newsletters or bemoaned precious papers that had gone mouldy in the cellar or been mislaid during a house move. Some documents are rare and precious. These oral histories and proffered papers led inexorably to the need for permanent, accessible storage. After many meetings, negotiations, a visit to the Feminist Archive North in Leeds, and a training session at the Nottingham University archive we were ready to transport our precious files and folders to the university and start cataloguing. We had a regular Tuesday slot in our diaries.

The start date was March 24th... with exquisite timing this turned out to be the day after Lockdown started.

In the second 'looser' phase of lockdown we managed some socially distanced meetings and spent happy afternoons extracting rusty staples and replacing them with brass paper clips. We sorted papers into topics in archive boxes from the university and heard that we were one of a few successful bids to the National Archive for a 'Scoping Grant' for a consultant to look at the potential extent, viability and value of the Feminist Archive Midlands. Katy Thornton from Leeds managed to start this work just before we went into Tier 3 in Nottingham.

We were also successful in obtaining a grant towards publicity for the archive. A banner is being professionally produced using illustrations from Women Now, a magazine first produced by the Nottingham W.L.M. In 1971.

We will be using Lockdown 2 to transcribe the interviews and maybe start to plan future talks, exhibitions, publications, those everyday activities of history groups which seem from a different, pre-covid era. And one day we may actually load the boxes into our cars and claim our space in the archive and start work.

If you were involved in any aspects of the Women's Movement in Nottingham and would like to get in touch to be interviewed or clear your attic we'd love to hear from you.

Update January 2021: Groundhog Day. Tina Pamplin tinapamplin@ntlworld.com

Hidden “There’s an alternate history of British society that isn’t taught and isn’t known about or understood” Red Saunders is a London based socialist photographer. He sees his photographs as modern versions of the Victorian tradition of “tableaux vivantes” and believes they can help us to remember and debate such obscured moments in our shared cultural history.

Saunders’ photographs are steeped in the principles of community engagement and group creativity, with each historical moment recreated by volunteer, non-professional models. “’Hidden’ was like

creating a piece of performance art in which lots of people came together who were enthusiastic about the work.”

“These photographs come from a wish to shine a bit of light on these great matters of struggle to establish freedom and democracy in this country that have been hidden away.”

"Red Saunders 'Hidden' project is a most imaginative idea, allowing us to visualize the key moments in the long struggle of working people for Democracy and Social Justice, a struggle which the establishment has tried so hard to conceal from us" Tony Benn He has produced works on Peterloo, the Peasants’ Revolt, the Swing Riots and William Cuffay and the London Chartists among others. His latest works look at the Derby Silk Mill Lock-out and the Enlightenment and 19th century technological advancements in Derbyshire. They will be unveiled in the new Museum of Making (the silk mill) at the launch of the Format Festival. This year’s festival is due to run from 12 March to 12th April.

RPS Journal, vol. 161, No.1 www.formatfestival.com www.red saundersphoto.com

Helen Chester

Breaking the Colour Bar at Raleigh The Afro West Indian Union (AAWIU i) was set up by George Powe and others in 1957 to represent ‘colonial workers’ fighting racial discrimination and to support anti-colonial struggles. AAWIU stood for ‘complete unity with the trade unions, co-operatives and labour movements’ and argued that ‘(o)nly by organising can we overcome the imperialist oppression in the colonies, and our own difficulties here in Britain’ ii As observers at Nottingham Trades Council (NTUC) from January 1958, the AAWIU reported on anticolonial strugglesiii like the Nassau General Strike, called to opposed a colour bar in the Bahamas capital. However, when bringing forward a case of racial discrimination at British Railways they made little progress, the Secretary advising that it be referred to a councillor. Previously a complaint against British Celanese had also got nowhere after the company issued a denial despite clear evidence. There were clearly limitations to how far NTUC could or would take up such cases.

A new challenge for the Trades Council was then set by events over two weekends of August 1958 in the streets of St. Ann’s. West Indians were blamed for the stabbing of four people in a brawl outside The Chase pub. A thousand or more gathered in the streets, with hostility shown to any black people that were seen. On the following Saturday, 30th August, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 white people gathered, drawn by publicity given to the previous week’s disturbances. It included a large crowd of teddy boys and members of far right organisations. Members of the black community stayed at home as advised by the police and community leaders. As a result many in the frustrated crowd turned on the police. No one was seriously hurt but a number were arrested.

The far right had tried to stir up street violence and local Tory M.P.s called for immigration controls.

The NTUC issued a statement which put the blame for “the shortage of work and house building on Government Policy” and condemned “the reactionary elements who deliberately seek to make the coloured worker the scapegoat for these failures”. By condemning the “actions of a tiny minority of both black and white people who are making the colour problem an excuse for lawlessness and criminal behaviour”, they also ignored the evidence of growing pressures on the black community.

“As a West Indian, you could not walk on your own in certain places or at certain times. You had to walk in threes and fours. The ‘Teddy Boys’ went around with bicycle chains. When they saw three or four Jamaicans together they would not attack us as we were in a group.”iv Nor did the NTUC use this opportunity to highlight continuing colour bars in city workplaces, including at one of the largest employers, Raleigh Industries. The AAWIU had made representations to the firm without success but an opportunity was presented by one outcome of the riots in Nottingham and in Notting Hill.

The West Indian Gazette had been set up in London by Claudia Jones earlier in 1958 and her reports ensured that the point of view of Jamaicans in Nottingham were being heard in the West Indies as well as that of the British press. The impact of these reports was clear.

Norman Manley, the Prime Minister of Jamaica visited Jones when he came to London later in August.

“While “normally liberal” national dailies analysed the situation in Nottingham and Notting Hill as an inevitable clash between white hooligans and Black criminals …. This brought home the shallow depth at which racism lurked under the social fabric.” v Within three weeks politicians from the West Indies visited Nottingham and St Ann’s and met West Indians living in the area. Norman Manley, the Prime Minister of the West Indian Federation, Grantly Adams, Prime Minister of Barbados and Hugh Foot, Governor of Jamaica, came to Nottingham. Norman Manley “toured

St Ann’s and vowed to bring about better relations between coloured and white people, both in Nottingham and throughout the country.”vi George Powe and Dick Skyers of AAWIU were among those who met with the politicians above the Co-op grocery store at 279, Alfred Street Central, in a room rented by the Commonwealth Citizen’s Association.vii They told Manley about the colour bar at Raleigh and asked for his support. The AAWIU’s intervention at the meeting came at an opportune time.

In 1948, Manley’s party, the Jamaican Peoples National Party (PNP), still in opposition, had called for an embargo on imports from South Africa in protest at the racial policies of the National Party government. Reports of the economic embargo of South African goods by the newly independent Indian government had spread to the West Indies with calls for boycott by trade unionists in St Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, Barbados and Trinidad.

When the PNP won power in the 1955 elections in the colony, the party came under pressure from its supporters to revive the policy. In September 1957 the PNP national executive had resolved in favour of embargo and in November 1958 the Jamaican cabinet did the same. With repeated calls from the South African foreign minister, who feared that the boycott would spread, the British Government strenuously opposed the decision. Julian Amery, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, travelled to Jamaica in May 1959 to attempt to persuade the Jamaican ministers to re-consider. But the Jamaican Government was constitutionally responsible for its own ‘regulation of trade’.

With action already being taken by dockers across the West Indies, the boycott was announced on 2nd July 1959. The Government of the British Colony of Jamaica announced that it was banning trade with South Africa as a protest against that government’s racial policies. viii

Talk of sanctions against South Africa was growing in the pan-African movement through 1958 and 1959. In December 1958 the All-African Peoples Conference met in Accra, capital of newly independent Ghana, representing 60 political, labour, youth and women’s organisations from 28 African territories. They voted for economic sanctions, despite Nkrumah’s initial opposition. Again the trade unions acted first, in Ghana and then Kenya, refusing to unload South African goods.

Raleigh had been proud of its global market, especially in the colonies and former colonies. As well as its European factories it had established another in South Africa in 1951 at Vereeniging. This was four years after the National Party had come to power with its racial policies. However a slump in trade had been developing since 1957, hitting export markets even more seriously than the home market.

At the end of 1958, George Wilson, Chairman of Raleigh, wrote in the Raligram: “We have sustained a serious fall of 50% in our profits. The principal cause of this is that for the first time in our experience we have faced during one year a sharp and unforeseeable recession both in our home and export markets.”ix In response Raleigh went into talks to merge with British Cycle Corporation/Tube Investments, which also had a plant in South Africa, at Springs. The threat of boycott could not have come at a worse time for the Raleigh Company.

The refusal of dockers in Kingston, and in other ports in the West Indies, to unload Raleigh bicycles while a colour bar was practised in their Nottingham factories became caught up in this growing movement. A recent writer sees “a highly visual image of rebellion” in the “container loads of Nottingham-made Raleigh bicycles sent back to Britain from all parts of the Caribbean.” x Back in Nottingham “Raleigh management was soon to call together their employees’ unions, and said

they had to employ black people because if they didn't there was going to be terrible redundancies because people would refuse to buy bicycles.” xi

Dick Skyers remembers “meeting with a Metal Mechanics shop steward at the Union Stewards Club on Gordon Road”. When telling him that Raleigh management had blamed the unions for insisting on a colour bar, he responded “I don’t know why they told us that because we have never objected to the employment of black people. Management was using the Union as an excuse to discriminate.”

Raleigh management had not previously taken on black employees and did not do so even when representations were made to them by members of the black community. Nor had the Raleigh trade unions taken a stand on this and pressed for an end to the colour bar. Both had questions to answer.

By 1960 Milton Crossdale, recently arrived from Jamaica, could get a job at Raleigh. When Pushka Lail began working at Raleigh in 1962 he joined the Metal Mechanics Union. He remembers joining a strike on wages and conditions. He went to join the picket line and was told by picketing white workers that they had thought that he was coming to break the strike not to join them. In fact, he encouraged other Asian workers not to break the strike.xii Black and Asian workers were still seen as a threat not as equal partners in the union.

“Don’t Blame the Blacks” had argued: “The first and most elementary step is to ensure the unionisation

of all the workers, white and coloured. The same gang of useless profiteers live off the labour of white and coloured workers alike, in Britain and in the Colonies.” It also stated; “We can show them that as workers of the world we can unite! The way to do this is to help the coloured workers fight in their own country for a better standard of living. The English workers should join in the struggle because the colonial struggle is part of the whole working class struggle.”

The dockers in Jamaica and the other colonies of the West Indies had dramatically demonstrated this in the effect of their boycott and now a such unity of purpose was to be expected of the unions in the U.K..

Just after this article was submitted to the Newsletter we heard the sad news that Pushkar Lail had passed away. Pushkar spent a lifetime committed to the labour movement and his community. He followed in the

footsteps of his father, a member of the Communist Party of India, who was imprisoned because of his activities in the Quit India Movement. Pushkar came to Britain in 1962 and worked at Raleigh. In1964 Pushkar became a conductor and then driver on Nottingham City Transport. He joined the T.G.W.U. and was active as a shop steward as well as representing members at branch, district and national levels. Pushkar supported his community as Secretary of the Nottingham Indian Workers Association and helped to set up the Indian Community Centre. He was very well known in Nottingham through his membership of the Trades Council, the Anti-Nazi League, the Community Relations Council and the Labour Party. He will be remembered as a committed activist and lovely man who will be greatly missed by all who knew him. We send our sincere condolences to Janet and his family.

i The Afro West Indian Union changed its name to Afro Asian West Indian Union after several years. AAWIU is used throughout. ii Aims and Objectives of the Afro West Indian Union, attached to “’Don’t Blame the Blacks” (George Powe’s papers) iii https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1958/jan/30/general-strike accessed 12.01.2021 iv Calvin Wallace in “Jamaicans in Nottingham” Norma Gregory, 2015 v Donald Hinds “Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette” in “Race and Class July 3rd 2008 vi Evening Post (1958), recorded in Evening Post 21st October 2016 vii p. 380 Ruth I. Johns “St Ann’s, Nottingham: inner-city voices.” Warwick 2006 viii “Boycotts and Sanctions against South Africa: An International History 1946 – 1970” - Simon Stevens ( 2016) https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8HT2P74 ( accessed 14.01.21) ix p.88 “The Story of Raleigh Cycle” - Gregory Houston Bowden, (London 1975) x T.Kew “Rebel Music in a Rebel City” in “Narratives from Beyond the U.K. Reggae Bassline” ( accessed on-line on 17.01.2021) xi Interview by author with Dick Skyers, Nottingham 18.01.2019 xii Pushkar Lail. Conversation with the author, and in “Pushkar Singh Lail: Political Activism and Inspiration.” (unpublished paper)

Publications Pamphlets published by NDLHS 1. “Volunteers for Liberty: Notts and Derbys Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War” (Out of Stock at present. Reprint ordered) 2. “Who Dips in the Tin? The Butty System in Notts Coalfield”, Barry Johnson, £2.50 3. “Women in British Coal Mining”, Chris Wrigley, £2.00 4. “Bravery and Deception: The Pentrich Revolt of 1817”, Julian Atkinson, £2.00 5. “Luddism in the East Midlands”, Julian Atkinson and Roger Tanner, £3.00 6. “Florence Paton M.P.”, Val Wood, £2.50 7. “Chartism in Nottingham”, Julian Atkinson and Roger Tanner, £5.00 NDLHS Members and Supporters books/pamphlets from other publishers: 1. “Rebel's Way”, Gwyneth Francis, £5 2. “Glossop's Oldest Textile Trade Unionist”, Joe Doyle’s interview with Mr E Watts, pub. ‘The Wheatsheaf’ Co-op paper, February 1926, £2 3. “The Co-operative Movement in Nottingham”, Christopher Richardson, £3 4. “Remembering the 1968 Revolts: Voices from Nottingham”, Various, £4.99 5. “Nine Days That Shook Mansfield”, Barry Johnson, £3 6. “Nottingham Miners Do Strike”, Keith Stanley, £7 7. “The Lost Missionary”, Chris Richardson, £2 8. “Nottingham and the Pentrich Rising of 1817”, Roger Tanner, £5 9. “Pentrich to Peterloo”, Ed. Richard Gaunt, £8 10. “Kettling the Unions”, Alan Tuckman, £14.99 11. “How Glossop Supported the Miners”, Gwyneth Francis, £3 12. “Changing Derbyshire NUM”, Malcolm Ball, £5 13. “The Air of Freedom: the story of the striking boot and shoe makers in Eyam and Stoney Middleton 1918 – 1920” - Steve Bond and Philip Taylor £6

If you wish to buy one, please send the name or number of the pamphlet plus your name and postal address together with a cheque made out to NDLHS to: Roger Tanner, 35, Compton Road, Sherwood, Nottingham NG5 2NH Alternatively pay by BACS transfer to the NDLHS Santander Account No 29032134, sort code 09-01-29 with your surname as reference. If paying by BACS also email your order to:

rogerntanner@yahoo.co.uk