Mansfield’s new Honorary Fellows

In October 2020, we welcomed the first ever cohort of Kofi Annan Scholars to our College. In partnership with the University of Oxford’s prestigious Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Scholarships and Leadership Programme, Mansfield plans to offer seven new fully funded graduate scholarships for exceptional students from low-income countries, for the next five years.

The Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Scholarships and Leadership Programme aims to provide outstanding university graduates and professionals from developing and emerging economies with the opportunity to pursue study at Oxford. In addition to their studies, the graduates participate in a tailor-made leadership programme to give them additional practical skills and opportunities.

The new scholarships are named after the former SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kofi Annan (1938-2018), who officially opened the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at Mansfield in June 2018, just weeks before he died. We are delighted that the Kofi Annan Foundation has granted us permission to name this endeavour in honour of Kofi Annan, and to be working closely with the Foundation on this initiative.

The Kofi Annan Scholarships have been made possible thanks to the generosity of Mansfield alumnus, Jan Fischer (PPE, 1989), of Germany.

At an online event in late October, Mansfield’s Principal joined representatives from the Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Trust, the Kofi Annan Foundation, and our sponsor, Jan Fischer, to hear from each of the scholars about their aims and aspirations in pursuing graduate studies at Oxford. All the scholars talked about the warm welcome they had received at Mansfield and how this College’s ethos and values reflected their own.

In what was an inspiring moment for everyone, Kofi Annan’s widow, Mrs Nane Annan, our special guest at the event, talked to us about how much she felt Kofi would have approved of the scholarships: ‘Young people should be at the forefront of global change and innovation’.

At a time when, globally, inequalities in society are deepening, we at Mansfield believe that universities can help, by enabling people from a broad range of backgrounds to develop their talents and to make a positive contribution to the world.

If you would like to know more about this year’s scholars, and their areas of research, please consult the Kofi Annan Scholars page on the Mansfield College website.

‘At Mansfield we aim to educate, equip, and empower our students to realise their ambitions, ask questions, and make a positive impact on the world around them. We wanted these new scholarships at Mansfield to be associated with a figure whose name provides inspiration and honour to those in receipt of them, and to reflect the intended purpose of the scholarships in educating people to make the world a better place. With Kofi Annan’s deep commitment to education for the benefit of international peace, collaboration and development, and our proud link with him, we could think of no better name to achieve that intention.’

Helen Mountfield QC, Principal, Mansfield College

Mansfield was founded to welcome students who had up until the mid-19th century been excluded from an Oxford education because of their religious beliefs. Today we remain true to this inclusive tradition and, in conjunction with the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, we are proud to stand up for equal dignity, respect and rights for all.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), half the refugees worldwide are under the age of 18, and only about three per cent of them enter higher education. Funding is a major barrier.

From October 2021, thanks to new support from the Council of Lutheran Churches, Mansfield College will offer a fully funded graduate scholarship to an outstanding student who has been forced to migrate from their home and has sought sanctuary in the UK.

We are delighted that through our shared commitment to supporting refugees, and also through our new Chaplain, Sarah Farrow, we have re-established Mansfield’s historic partnership with the Lutheran Church. From the mid-1950s to the 1990s, Mansfield was the only educational foundation in the UK to offer training for Lutheran pastors, through a tutorship established by the Lutheran World Foundation (LWF) in co-operation with the Council of Lutheran Churches. Interestingly, one of the LWF tutors, Dr Jan Womer, acted as Principal of the College from 1986 to 1988.

The Council of Lutheran Churches Scholarship is intended to meet the needs of a highly able student whose education has been disrupted by forced migration, and reflects Mansfield’s continued commitment to the College’s founding principles. This scholarship will cover living costs and, in partnership with the University of Oxford, all fees.

The new scholarship is part of an initiative by Mansfield – working with Somerville College, which is also launching a Sanctuary Scholarship – to engage more closely with people seeking asylum in the United Kingdom. We commit to learning what it means to be seeking sanctuary, and celebrating sanctuary seekers’ contributions to society, through a varied programme of activities. These will include: student-led and Collegesupported initiatives; collaborations with the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights; and an annual event organised jointly with Somerville College. The first of the joint events took place in July 2020 with the principals of both colleges welcoming Lord Alf Dubs to speak, interviewed by broadcaster Natasha Kaplinsky.

Mansfield and Somerville Colleges are together applying for College of Sanctuary status. This scheme, which grew from the City of Sanctuary movement, involves pledging to provide the most welcoming and accessible environment possible for refugees and asylum seekers.

The scholarships reflect the University of Oxford’s broadening efforts to support refugees. The Oxford Students Refugee Campaign, a student-led initiative, has provided financial support for seven refugee students at Oxford in recent years and work is taking place to create new provision across the collegiate University.

‘I am delighted that our community was universally so supportive of offering a refugee scholar the opportunity to study at Mansfield, and that Mansfield and Somerville Colleges are working together to apply for College of Sanctuary status.’

Helen Mountfield QC, Principal, Mansfield College

Mansfield’s proud tradition of helping disadvantaged groups goes back to its Victorian inception. Here Timothy MM Baker (Corpus Christi, 1979) reveals the roots, the growth and the legacy of Mansfield House University Settlement in east London.

Almost as soon as Mansfield College was established in the late 19th century, it became active in the University Settlement movement, bringing practical help to London’s poor. Mansfield’s focus was Canning Town, then one of London’s newest and poorest slums. The pastor of the local Congregational Church, Frederick Newland, invited Mansfield students to spend fortnights working there during vacations. This practice was supported by Principal Andrew Fairbairn and Mansfield student Will Reason, and formalised in 1890 with the foundation of Mansfield House: the third University Settlement, and the first to be Nonconformist. Canning Town Women’s Settlement followed in 1892.

The Settlers’ energy, and their impact on the life of Canning Town and the wider world, was prodigious. Their achievement still influences British administrative and social structures today.

Canning Town was a new port and industrial suburb of West Ham, which had a long history of Nonconformity. After 1844 West Ham became ‘London over the border’, the closest district to the booming metropolis without controls over polluting industry and housing quality. Its Thames-side marshes, beside London’s main commercial artery, were ripe for exploitation. The Royal Docks became London’s main port, and a magnet for factories producing chemicals and foodstuffs, along with electrical telegraphs, gasworks, ironworks, and shipyards.

Just inland, Canning Town sprang up to house dockers and labourers, who flocked from all over London and Essex seeking new opportunities. Housing was cheap, shoddy, densely packed; drainage inadequate; and amenities sparse. Casual and sweated labour, insecurity, exploitation, and poverty prevailed. A workingclass boom town, heavily dependent on pubs for recreation, it was London’s ‘Wild East’. When the College Bursar viewed premises for Mansfield House’s first ‘residence’, he encountered a drunken bar brawl fought with ginger beer bottles.

Canning Town attracted missions from all denominations. My great-great-grandfather Thomas Perfect founded its Congregational Church in 1859, offering practical charity, education, and social activity, as well as pastoral support: ‘one of the few people who lived what he preached’, his daughter recalled. ‘ The Settlers had a delicate task: to support the people of a deprived industrial suburb and, without patronising them, organise and train them to help themselves.’

From 1884 Perfect’s successor Frederick Newland, and then Mansfield House and the Women’s Settlement, hugely expanded this tradition. Percy Alden, a Mansfield student, became Mansfield House’s first Warden, assisted by Will Reason. The Settlers had a delicate task: to support the people of a deprived industrial suburb and, without patronising them, organise and train them to help themselves. Eschewing sectarianism, their purpose was practical Christianity, as a preliminary to pursuing a pastoral career. Mansfield graduate Silvester Horne described Mansfield House as ‘an extension of Mansfield College’.

Elementary, adult, and university extension education was provided on a range of academic and practical subjects. Evening lectures covered scientific, literary, historical, and social subjects. A ‘Local Parliament’ club offered debating practice. A ‘Brotherhood Society’ dealt with public authorities on local problems.

Among the abundance of initiatives and amenities provided, there was a loan society; a penny-savings bank; a sickness benefit society (one of the forerunners of National Insurance); a ‘Hospital Letter Society’ (an early form of medical insurance); free children’s meals; old-age pensions; and orchestral, choral, dramatic, gymnastic, boxing, cricket, football, and cycling clubs. Annual outings to Oxford were also arranged, including a cricket match against Mansfield College.

The Women’s Settlement organised an employment agency; day nursery; medical and hospital services; workrooms; disabled care; and second-hand clothes markets. Mental health pioneer, Dr Helen Boyle, worked nearby at Canning Town Mission Hospital, the experience prompting her later ground-breaking work on preventive treatment of mental illness.

Frank Tillyard, a barrister, gave free legal assistance in a weekly evening ‘clinic’: the ‘Poor Man’s Lawyer’. People from Canning Town and across London sought advice on tenancy, employment, wages, compensation for accidents, and marital law. Other university settlements took up the scheme, which eventually became Citizens Advice.

Percy Alden went on to participate in local government. As Councillor and Deputy Mayor of West Ham he promoted public baths, libraries, parks, recreation grounds, tree planting, and better sanitary inspection. He was a pioneer advocate of state support for the unemployed, and became an MP first for the Liberal and then the Labour party. Knighted in 1933, Sir Percy was killed by a flying bomb on Tottenham Court Road in 1944. His name is inscribed on the World War II memorial in Mansfield’s Chapel.

Though the state gradually took over many of the services first provided by the Settlements, the latter continued to thrive until World War II, when the Blitz devastated Canning Town. Post-war movement of population to New Towns, and the decline of docks and industry, further disrupted the district’s social fabric. The Settlements never properly recovered.

They were eventually absorbed by the Aston Trust, and to this day Aston-Mansfield continues to support disadvantaged people across east London. But the main legacy of Mansfield House, the Women’s Settlement, and the Canning Town Congregational Church that spawned them, is how they helped shape the fabric of today’s social services.

This article is abridged from the unpublished history of Canning Town Congregationalism by amateur historian Timothy MM Baker, which can be found in the College Archives.