Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Labour History Newsletter (April 2023)

Newsletter April 2023

Frame breaking before Luddism

by Julian Atkinson

The main period of Luddite activity in the East Midlands was between 1811 and 1816. One of its major characteristics was the breaking of knitting frames by stockingers as they attempted to achieve higher wages, lower frame rent, control over excessive numbers of apprentices that lowered the price of labour and legal protection of their conditions of employment. However, frame-breaking as a method of struggle had begun far earlier than this period. This tactic went back to a successor of the mediaeval Guild system, the Framework Knitters Company.

In 1664 the Framework Knitters Company received a Charter from King Charles II. At this stage most framework knitting was carried out in London with a relatively small amount in the East Midlands. The Company, a guild that combined the roles of employers’ organisation and a proto trade union, was given considerable powers. (For a discussion of the relationship between Guilds and early unions see Malcolm Chase, Early Trade Unionism: Fraternity, Skill and the Politics of Labour, London 2000 pp.3-34.)

The Charter gave power “to certain persons in the daytime, with the assistance and in the presence of a Constable or other lawful officer, to go into all manner of places, privileged or not privileged, where there shall be any suspicion of deceitful frames or manufactures; and if upon search, they shall find any stocking tops, waistcoats, trousers, or any other thing whatsoever, made and wrought by the said frame or engine, or unartificially made, or to be made of bad or deceitful stuff, they may cause the same to be cut to pieces and defaced, besides the power of imposing fines and penalties” (Derby Mercury 11 June 1812).

The dual nature of the Company as both trade union and trade association contained contradictions. At a time when the trade was overwhelmingly carried out by artisans or small masters the strains within the Company were manageable. However, with the growth of Master Hosiers who rented out frames, provided the yarn and paid the stockingers by pieces produced, the pantomime horse threatened to come apart. The interests of the masters and the workers had become very different. One of the most contentious issues was the number of apprentices employed. The Company rules specified a maximum

of three. This limited entry into the trade and helped keep up the price of labour. Master Hosiers, however, not only got cheap workers in apprentices but were also paid a signing on fee when a new apprentice was indentured.

The issue of apprentices was a growing source of conflict. The Company demanded a fee of 8s. per indenture. In 1730 a court refused to uphold its right to charge for indenturing an apprentice (Richard Gurnham, 200 Years: The Hosiery Unions 1776-1976, 1976 Leicester p3). This was just one of several contrary attempts to erode and then to renew the authority of the Company.

In 1720 many journeymen knitters in London were out of work. The bye laws of the Company that limited the number of apprentices were thrown out by a Magistrate in Spitalfields. In response almost 100 frames were broken. Most London masters then accepted the Company rules on apprentices but Samuel Fellows with 49 apprentices and Cartwright who had 23 moved their frames out of London to the more hosier friendly East Midlands. In 1727 and 1728 there was flouting of byelaws in the East Midlands and the Company failed to impose its will due to the pressure from local magistrates.

In 1730 the Company attempted to discipline Cartwright and Fellows for having too many apprentices and fined them £150 and £ 400 respectively. Cartwright refused to pay so the Company Beadle was instructed to enter his premises and seize and sell goods and frames in line with the Bye-laws. The Nottingham authorities supported Cartwright because, for a mere £5, they could use apprenticeships as a cheap way of getting rid of their responsibility for pauper children, reducing the Poor Law burden as well as helping the regional economy. In February the case went to a London legal court where the judge refused to accept the legality of the bye-laws.

In 1745, however, the Law Lords accepted a redrafted set of bye-laws from the Company, thus making them legal. These bye-laws included the controversial Clause 14 which allowed the Company officials to seize defective (sometimes described as fraudulent) goods and also frames. The Company had won a significant victory but this was the last time it was helped by the legal system. The Hosiers then proceeded to erode the impact of the judgement (Sheila A Mason The History of the Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters Leicester 2000. pp,99-107).

There was officially sanctioned destruction of knitting frames as far back as 1710 (Malcolm Chase Early Trade Unionism: Fraternity, Skill and the Politics of Labour, London 2000 reprinted 2012 p.75). Clause 14, legitimised by the Law lords, was only slightly revised from the original. “It shall be lawful for the master and wardens, or any two of them with two or more assistants, and also their sworn deputies, four times a year, or oftener, in the presence of a constable, to enter into shops, &., to view, search, and prove all frame-work knitted goods, frames, &., and if found defective to seize the same…” (Mason op.cit. p.235). At times of stress “assistants” became to mean any group of aggrieved frame-work knitters and the requirement to be accompanied by a constable was conveniently forgotten.

The hosiery trade rapidly moved to the East Midlands where the reach of the Company was impeded by local magistrates. The lace maker and historian William Felkin paints an idyllic picture of the life of stockingers in the C.18: “…every village had its wake; the lower orders lived in comparative ease and plenty, having the right of common for pig and poultry, and sometimes a cow. The stocking makers each had a garden, a barrel of home-brewed ale, a weekday suit of clothes and one for Sundays, and plenty of leisure, seldom working more than three days a week. Moreover music was much cultivated

by them” (William Felkin, A History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures, London 1867 p.99). All we need is a “bee loud glade” where “peace comes dropping slow” to complete the picture of a lost paradise. The catastrophic decline of the standard of living of stockingers after 1810 made Felkin a misty eyed optimist about the years before that catastrophe. The reality was less satisfactory.

The Framework Knitters’ Company attempted to control the Midlands trade but in 1753 a Committee of the House of Commons decided its regulations were “injurious, vexatious and injurious to the trade.”

This was a victory for the Masters (J and B Hammond, The Skilled Labourer 1760-1832, London 1919 reprinted 1995 p.222). In the mid 1750s knitters began to realise the Company was not fully effective and the Stocking-makers Association for Mutual Protection was set up to try and enforce the bye-laws.

In this they were supported by the Company. From 1771 to 1778 earnings fell from 9s. to 5s.6d. p.w.

(Mason op.cit. p.125).

A meeting of the framework-knitters of Nottingham and Derby was held on 12 January 1761 at Newthorpe in Nottinghamshire to send a petition to the Hosiers of the counties of Nottingham, Derby and Leicester noting that: “…the price of labour is greatly lower … than in 1740…”. They ask the hosiers “to find ways and means to enhance our price of labour … all necessaries of life, as food, raiment and all implements are becoming dearer” (Derby Mercury 20 February 1761). To use a phrase now familiar to us, there was a “cost of living crisis.”

The difficulties of the framework-knitters persisted into the 1770’s and they met to consider a petition to raise wages to alleviate their distress since the price of food had doubled (DM 12 July 1771). The Derby Hosiers met to consider the petition of the framework-knitters’ about wages. They agreed to stay in line with whatever the Nottingham and Leicester hosiers decided. “We would think ourselves wanting in duty, were we to neglect paying a proper regard to your request, particularly when desired with such civility and respect… It would give us great satisfaction to comply with any of your desires, which might be beneficial to you, without being detrimental to the manufactory.” The caveat in the last clause indicated what was to follow: a but, capital letter BUT “…how justly you complain of the enormous price of the necessities of life, we wish it was in our power to make them otherways. The chief dependence, in our branch of commerce, is on foreign markets, which can be secured by no other means than producing our goods on terms, low as other manufactors; which that cannot be done, the consequence will be no demand for goods, which must make us unable to keep you in employ”. There was then a jam tomorrow hint in that the issue could be reconsidered for “a few articles if there was buoyant demand” (DM 2 August 1771). The reply might serve as an exemplar for a modern employer or even the present Government.

The power of the Company was waning. This was one of the reasons why an early union, the Stocking Makers Association for Mutual Protection, had been formed in 1776. This body decided to petition Parliament to increase wages.

The Master Hosiers were to oppose the petition. Indeed, several Hosiers had taken “umbrage” with the Amicable Association of Framework Knitters when it had asked for a rise in prices opaid for goods produced. The Association argued that two-needle workers (these produced the least fine knit) could earn at most 8s.6d. p.w. but deductions by the hosiers left just 6s. Prices paid must increase they argued: “If not, we are (in that respect) of all men most miserable!” (Nottingham Journal 22 September 1777). The deductions were for frame rent, the cost of needles and candles and, most contentiously, for bad work or lost yarn. There were even allegations that a few Hosiers weighed out the yarn to be knitted damp, weighed the stockings made dry and deducted money for the apparent loss.

The stockingers’ petition was presented to Parliament in 1778. The petitions were presented to Parliament by Daniel Parker Coke, Esq., M.P. for Derby, during the Session 1777-8, from the frame-work knitters of London, and of the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Nottingham, Leicester, Derby, Northampton, and Gloucester stating that: “The petitioners had served a regular apprenticeship to their business, but were unable with their utmost industry to obtain by their labour the common necessaries of life, by reason of low wages, frame rent, and other charges made upon them, incident to the working their frames and keeping them in repair” and asking for a Bill to settle and regulate their wages. This

petition was referred to a select committee of the House of Commons, which reported in favour of a Bill to fix the rate of wages for each gauge, size, and quality then made, being brought in but this was refused upon a division, by fifty-two against twenty-seven. The employers in the silk branch of the trade soon after sought to reduce the prices paid for work by 25 per cent, or 6d. to 10d. a pair; and great excitement was the immediate result. This induced other classes in Nottingham to subscribe in aid of resisting this reduction. Mr. Meadows, one of the members for Nottinghamshire, introduced another Bill in 1779, having the same objects as that of the previous year. This was strenuously supported by Mr. Robert Smith, (afterwards Lord Carrington), who said: "the measure was moistened and saturated by the tears of the poor distressed families of frame-work knitters." Leave was given to bring in the Bill with only one dissenting voice; it was so introduced at once, and read a first time. The second reading was carried by twenty-four against twenty-three (Felkin p.116).

The Bill was, however, thrown out upon the third reading by a majority of fifty-seven to eighteen. The Hosiers had presented a counter petition stating that it is impossible to settle a wages increase because of foreign competition and different skill levels amongst the workers (DM 6 February 1778).

The stockingers, many of whom had completed their seven-year apprenticeship in Nottingham, were thus able to vote as Freemen of the city. This gave them considerable political influence in the city. In October 1778 Abel Smith was their candidate for a Parliamentary election which he won. The victory was welcomed by a march of the frame-work knitters. The Beadle of the Framework-knitters Company together with two Company deputies led the march under the banner of the Nottingham Knitters inscribed with “Strength, Fortitude and Unity surmount the greatest Difficulties” (DM 9 October 1778).

There was a further attempt in 1779 to obtain relief for the suffering of the stockingers by a Parliamentary Act to regulate wages but again the Master Hosiers were opposed. Tensions rapidly grew in Nottingham and a large crowd in the Market square burnt an effigy representing an opponent of the Knitters Bill (DM 30 April 1779). The Hosiers told the Parliamentary Committee considering the Bill that knitters earned from 18 to 20/- for a four day week. The knitters were particularly incensed when an apprentice of Mr Wilkinson claimed to be able to earn 20/- a week. He was sarcastically termed “the miraculous boy”. The Hosier Samuel Need, a partner of Richard Arkwright, played a leading role before the Committee: “... the workmen were adequately paid; that such were the advantages of manufacture, that the more children a workman had, the better was his condition in life; and that reduction of frame-rent would prove ruinous to the manufacture, and prevent persons owning frames; and that if the Bill passed to restrict their business, they would sell their frames, and retire from the trade….” (Gravenor Henson, History of the Framework Knitters, Newton Abbot 1831 reprinted 1970 pp.395-6). This sad picture of the impending penury of the richest man in Nottingham may have won the day. It was also suggested that Need had bribed some West Country MPs to oppose the Bill which fell on the third reading.

News of the Parliamentary defeat came to Nottingham on the 10th June when several days of rioting took place: “… all was peaceable and quiet till about Ten o’Clock, when a Number of riotous Persons (chiefly Women and Boys) formed themselves together, went in a Body, and attacked the House of Mr. Joynes till every Pane of Glass in the Front was entirely demolished. They then went to Mr. James’s in Bearward-lane, where after destroying the Front Windows of the House, walked peaceably off to Mr. Need’s, Hosier on the Low Pavement; here not only the Windows were all broke, but the Shutters and Frames also did not escape their resistless Impetuosity. …the Rioters were not content with breaking the Windows of Mr. Need’s House in Nottingham, but they also went on Friday Evening to his House in Arnold, where they broke all the Windows, and unroofed some part of the Building. They likewise broke open his Coach-house; the Body

of the Coach being at the Painter’s, consequently escaped, but the Wheels &c. were cut to pieces, and thrown into the River Leen” (DM 11 June 1779). Mr Wilkinson of Woolpack Lane, the employer of the “miraculous boy” was also targeted and his house destroyed in 15 minutes (Henson op. cit. p 408). The soldiers were called out; the officers had been at a ball and turned up in all their finery. Despite this the disturbances went on from Friday until Tuesday, with rioters leading the troops a merry dance. Some 300 frames were smashed. On Tuesday morning the union committee addressed a mass meeting, told the knitters that a meeting had been arranged with the hosiers of the three counties and the rioting ceased. Three of the union committee were arrested including Wright who had told his members “that when law and justice were denied, the people had a right to resort to the law of nature”.

The Nottingham hosiers announced on 17th June that they “would remove EVERY OPPRESSION, provided the cessation of riot took place” (Henson op. cit. pp.409-414). The reality was different and the hosiers had formed an organisation of their own and, when the ferment had subsided stated “that they would oppose all regulations, whether by charter or Acts of Parliament...” (Felkin op. cit. p 117) .

The Nottingham hosiers met the union committee for five hours without agreement. The meeting was inconclusive since the Leicestershire hosiers refused to give ground. A strike was then declared and Hosiers were visited and threatened that their frames would be broken if they were required to work.

The magistrates swore in 300 constables to combat this threat but the knitters went to Arnold and broke 50 frames. The army intervened again and the knitters, in order to eat, returned to work (DM 24 June 1779, 25 June 1779).

Mephringham (also known as Anthony Metheringham ) who had led the destruction of Need’s house, was charged with a capital offence. The witness against him was abducted and taken to Essex until the end of the trial. Both sides began to pull back and a series of charges was withdrawn. Mephringham was fined 6s 8d and given three weeks in gaol. Three were charged with “breaking the windows of the cotton mill in Hockley, belonging to Messrs Need, Arkwright and Strutt.” Two of them were found not guilty and one fined ten shillings. The two union Committee members Pilkington and Wright who had called the knitters general meeting on the Forest were simply discharged since no crime had been committed (DM 23 July 1779). To some extent the court decisions indicate that the hosiers wanted to appear placatory but it was not until 1787 that a list of prices was negotiated agreeable to both sides.

The frame breaking carried out by the Luddites in 1811-1816 had past precedents and relied on several older traditions. Matthew Roberts made the useful point that the past agrarian protest played a role (Matthew Roberts, Rural Luddism and the makeshift economy in the Nottinghamshire framework knitters, Social History, 42, 3,2017). However, the model of protest definitely harked back to the 1720 breaking of frames in London. Those roots also stretched back to the Guild system of the Framework Knitters Company with its cherished Charter which, significantly, was sold by the Luddites house to house as a money raiser and also formed the basis of several Luddite addresses (Kevin Binfield, Writings of the Luddites, Baltimore, 2004 pp 21-25).

North East History (Vol 53 2022. ISSN 14743248)

by Mike Hamlin

We reviewed Volume 52 in our April 2022 Newsletter, and this new publication, published at the very end of that year, continues the high-quality work we have come to expect from the NE Labour History Society.

A number of articles in this edition celebrate the life of Nigel Todd, who died in 2021. Nigel was a long serving member of the NELHS, a veteran Labour Councillor in Newcastle upon Tyne, a well published radical historian, a committed educationalist with the WEA and an anti-fascist activist. He was also the father of Selina Todd – Oxford Professor of Modern History and author of a number of important works on the social history of working-class women, including the magnificent biography of Shelagh Delaney: Tastes of Honey. The Making of Shelagh Delaney and a Cultural Revolution (Vintage 2021).

Of the half dozen articles included here linked to the work of Nigel Todd, one of the most rewarding is by Nigel himself: Black-On-Tyne: The Black Prescence on Tyneside in the 1860’s.

This article was first published in 1987 and reflects a desire to capture the lives of people who are often ‘hidden from history’.

Prompted by Peter Fryer’s Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London 1984) and Ron Ramdin’s The Making of the Black Working-Class in Britain (London 1987) Nigel approaches this work by selecting a number of themes and sweeps them through Tyneside’s available historical data from the 1860s.

One theme ‘Culture’, for example, discovers that the first Australian cricket team to visit England was black. They came in 1868 and one of the places they played was North Shields. A steady stream of black singers, dancers and comedians performed in Tyneside throughout the 1860s. The Tyne Concert Hall, was the usual venue and in December 1860, the all black Female Christi Minstrels performed a programme of light opera extracts, peppered with contemporary political jokes - sometimes relating to the exploits of General Garibaldi - a popular hero on Tyneside at the time. The multi-talented Cedar Family were a great hit in May 1862 and were followed by a company of Indian jugglers and acrobats in 1868. Black people were also active in other leisure trades and one of Newcastle’s few restaurants at the time, a chop-house in Grey Street, was owned and run by a black man.

Another theme ‘Class’, points out that a number of black seamen from Africa and the West Indies had based themselves on Tyneside by the mid-century and local records show the part played by black sailors in a seamen’s strike on the Tyne in June 1866. For several days hundreds of seamen struck for higher wages in ports along the Tyne, organising mass pickets of ships and open-air meetings.

Finally, the theme ‘Race’, shows that racial prejudice was of course, evident on Tyneside at this time.

The Newcastle Daily Chronicle stated in January 1865 that ‘We deplore the prejudice against colour, and we are severely censorious towards those who exhibit it’ - but unfortunately, this editorial position didn’t stop them using abusive descriptions of black people in a number of their other reports.

The article continues by describing some of the examples of working class solidarity with a black cause – the abolition of slavery in the United States. Here working class communities, launched campaigns to collect money and clothing in support of the campaign and a number of speaking tours by noted black American Abolitionists were organised. The role of the Newcastle Daily Chronicle is again covered in considerable detail, especially in relation to the abolitionist cause and the American Civil war more generally.

Written almost forty years ago, this important article by Nigel Todd reflects some of the cultural shifts in local labour history that were taking place at the time. It’s certainly worth reading today and it can be found in its entirety at www.newcastle.antiquaries.org.uk – just search for Nigel Todd on the Home page.

Other articles of note, include a piece by Dr Cathy Hunt, well known to us at NDLHS as she delivered two talks for us just a couple of years ago - one on the National Federation of Women Workers 1906-21, and its founder, Mary Macarthur; the other on the campaign against sweated labour in early 20 th century Britain.

Here, Cathy returns to the work of the National Federation of Women Workers and focusses specifically on the Newcastle on Tyne branch 1912-13, through a study of its hand-written minute book recently donated to the TUC Library.

Before the First World War the Federation of Women Workers was essentially a union for those women considered by the more established labour movement to be ‘too difficult to organise’. Whether they were rope workers in Dorset, lace workers in Nottingham, school cleaners in London or chainmakers in the Black country. Kathy points out that in the North East, which was dominated by varieties of heavy industry, women workers were to be found in small factories, workshops, laundries and shops. Trying to recruit women when they worked together in such small numbers was never easy.

And, as Kathy concludes, the significance of this unique minute book: ‘….lies in what it says about the struggles facing women workers in the years before the First World War. It shows what an uphill task it was to organise among women who were overworked, underpaid and vulnerable to employer intimidation. At the same time, many of these women were learning how to be union members’.

Next, John Griffiths provides a fascinating piece on Labour politics in 1950s Newcastle. His account of the rise of the notorious T Dan Smith from the early 50s onwards is absolutely riveting.

Expelled from the Trotskyist, Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) in the late ‘40s, he was first elected as a Labour Councillor in 1950. From humble beginnings as member for the Libraries Committee, he quickly progressed onto the Health Committee in ‘52 with a shared responsibility for Housing. This move also allowed him to become a member of the Joint Committee on Slum Clearance. From here he gradually built his base and reputation, campaigning mainly on housing and environmental issues. He became Chair of the less significant City Labour Party in ‘53 but remained politically estranged from the more influential Labour group of municipal councillors. However, from this power base Smith began to put together a group of ‘energetic’ and ‘forward thinking’ candidates and new councillors, some but not all with a distinctly left outlook.

The City Party executive began to create working groups on ‘every activity in the political spectrum’.

And by 1954 the City Party was confident enough to censure the recently elected Labour group leader but didn’t quite manage to gain control. However, because of the serious policy input from the various working groups, the City Party was now well placed to oversee the construction of the manifesto for the 1955 municipal elections – which focused overwhelmingly on housing. The Labour group needed just one seat to gain overall control at this time, but they failed to take it! Tensions between the City Party and the more traditional Labour councillors remained strained but eventually, Labour secured overall control of Newcastle Council in 1958, retaining a majority until 1967; the planning ideas from the earlier working groups inevitably became overall council policy, with some of them achieving a broader national significance.

What became of T Dan Smith is another story. Suffice to say, he resigned as Council leader in 1965 to take up a role offered to him by the then Labour Deputy Leader, George Brown, as Chair of the Northern Economic Planning Council - this lasted until 1970. Smith was heavily involved in a large number of redevelopment ventures by this time, several of which were linked to the architect John Poulson. In 1972 Poulson was declared bankrupt, and the subsequent examination of his books led to corruption charges being made against the then Tory Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling. These charges forced Maudling to resign, and a national scandal ensued. Other accusations of corruption began to be made, a number of which focused on developments in the North East. Smith was arrested in 1973 on various corruption charges covering the previous seven years. He pleaded guilty in 1974 and was sentenced to six years imprisonment.

The value of the Griffiths article is that it looks beyond the exploits of a single man - T Dan Smith, and manages to appreciate and assess the impressive range of reforming policies generated by Labour in Newcastle during the ‘50s. These were both important and influential but hardly revolutionary – as its still claimed by some. Griffiths maintains that Smith broke decisively with his Marxist past in the ‘40s and developed an ‘increasing awareness of the potentialities of science and new technologies, and by the mid-1950s he had views on national prosperity not dissimilar to those that were to be advanced by Anthony Crossland’. Major aspects of this programme – an extended educational provision, social welfare and housing, as well as a broad concern for arts, culture, the environment and inner city

renewal ‘offered ample opportunities for change at local and regional levels and as such would have appealed to Smith and many of his Newcastle colleagues.’

Finally, Matt Perry, author of ‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson: her Ideas, Movements and World (Manchester University Press. 2014) writes about Caroline Bird’s play ‘Red Ellen’ which ran for two week at the Northern Stage in early spring 2022 before touring to the Nottingham Playhouse in April and the Edinburgh Lyceum in May. As an historian and biographer, Perry looks at some of the differences in approach between his work and that of a playwright and dramatist. ‘Occupying the same space of public history, the playwright and the biographer exercise two different and complementary crafts. With a responsibility to the audience, the playwright must plot a coherent narrative arc. The dramatist is free of the historian’s constraints hesitating before every lack of evidence. Conversely, where the biographer can ask the reader to decide or outline provisional alternatives, the playwright cannot and ultimately has to be braver about the past’.

Perry concludes that though her play Caroline Bird brings Ellen Wilkinson successfully to a much wider audience than he could by using dramatic licence to reorder some events and, to fill gaps where evidence was missing. ‘The play personalizes Ellen Wilkinson without depoliticizing her, engaging in her private life without sacrificing her public one.’

Perry also uses the article to develop some aspects of Ellen’s life which the play doesn’t fully address.

This is especially true of her relationship with Otto Katz and Isabel Brown, and through them her involvement with the Relief Committee for the Victims of German Fascism as well as other campaigns orchestrated by the enigmatic German Communist and Comintern propaganda chief Willi Munzenberg.

The article is rich in detail and full of intriguing ‘what if..?’ political possibilities. The defeat in Spain and the significance of the ‘Hitler/Stalin’ pact, were crucial to her shift in political perspective from a forthright ‘anti-fascism to Cold war anti-communism, albeit with a Labourist inflection, with 1940 as the turning point.’ Perry provides a number of tantalizing new pieces to the jigsaw that was Ellen Wilkinson’s life yet others remain missing, including her MI5 file which apparently was destroyed in 1946 when she was Minister of Education!

Due to time and space it has only been possible to touch on four of the articles from this volume of NE Labour History but the quality remains high throughout. More details can be found at their website: www.nelh.net - it is certainly worth spending time with and encouragingly, it reflects well on the state of Labour History scholarship taking place in Britain today.

The Social Democratic Federation in Ilkeston

by Phil Henshaw

Inspired by the writings of Karl Marx, the SDF was the first socialist party in Britain, founded in 1881 (as the Democratic Federation) by Henry Hyndman, a wealthy stockbroker. Capitalising on the revival of socialist thought, his interpretation of Marxism, England for All, inspired a generation of intellectuals and workers to join the Federation, whose cause was principally to destroy capitalism, with its intolerable extremes of wealth and poverty.

Hyndman had a reputation as domineering and dogmatic, and the party, with its rigid doctrine, lacked a coherent or credible strategy and never resolved its central dilemma: reform or revolution. Studies have shown, however, that individual branches of the SDF were allowed considerable autonomy in their outlook and activities, perhaps reflecting the true nature of a federation. In contrast to a top-down centralism which characterised later examples of Marxist parties, the SDF held within it a diverse set of ideas and convictions, a situation which, perhaps inevitably, led to multiple disputes over strategy. The

first schism came in 1884, when the majority of the Council, including William Morris and Eleanor Marx, resigned to form the Socialist League.

Histories of the SDF have concentrated on its strongholds in London, Lancashire and Yorkshire, whilst their activities in the Midlands, particularly the East Midlands, have been largely ignored. Nottingham was an SDF stronghold as early as 1885, with three branches and John Burns as a Parliamentary candidate. Branches were later formed in Ilkeston (1895), Derby (1899) and Chesterfield (1904).

Ilkeston provided fertile ground for recruitment, with its large concentration of miners and hosiery workers. The SDF paper Justice, launched in 1884, had for years monitored and reported on strikes and lockouts in the Ilkeston collieries, expressing its ‘sincere sympathy’ in August 1885 with the miners on strike for six weeks against a reduction in pay. A riot had occurred in Ilkeston that month, in which several rioters were shot by the manager of Cossall Colliery, and others arrested. In response, Justice expressed its ‘indignation at the conduct of the police in maltreating working men – whose servants they are – in the interest of the capitalist class’ (Justice 22/8/1885).

The Derbyshire Miners Association was active in the area, but most local miners were not unionised at the time. In truth, the SDF was ambivalent about trade unions, and its early manifesto actively hostile, accusing them of class collaboration and describing them as an aristocracy of labour happy to use the ‘middle-class capitalistic House of Commons’ as their mouthpiece. The SDF were scathing about union leaders’ support for the Liberal Party and their collaboration as Lib-Lab members of Parliament. Trade unions were seen as a distraction from the struggle for socialism, indeed an obstacle to achieving it.

Central to the strategy of the SDF was education of the working classes, to enable them to understand the current political and economic situation and prepare them for the imminent revolution. Lectures and public meetings in the Market Square addressed by travelling speakers were held throughout the 1880’s and early 1890’s, and these efforts paid off with the formation in January 1895 of a new branch in Ilkeston, the first in Derbyshire, started, according to Justice, by ‘one or two earnest socialists’. The branch quickly grew to 30 members ‘with a much larger number of possible recruits hovering in the distance’, Justice noted. ‘Ilkeston appears to be an especially favourable place for socialistic propaganda … it is the centre of Sir Walter Foster’s (Liberal MP) Parliamentary constituency. The occupation of workers is principally mining and the people seem to be fairly well alive to their own interests. Surrounding Ilkeston are a large number of towns and villages that ought to be worked up and made alive to the propaganda’ (Justice 25/5/1895).

The ’earnest socialists’ who founded the Ilkeston branch were Richard Riley, a china and glass dealer, who had a shop at 38 Bath Street for many years, and Harry Silburn, of 3 Bath Street, a bootmaker originally from Northamptonshire. Riley, an admirer of free thinker and secularist George Holyoake, had stood for the Town Council in 1887 as a representative of the Working Men’s Ratepayers Association. Silburn himself ran for the Council in Central Ward as an SDF candidate in 1896, polling 47 votes. By late 1896, the branch had reportedly doubled in size, and the party’s itinerant speakers looked forward to visiting the town: ‘The distinctive feature of the Ilkeston branch is that the members, of both sexes, turn up in time to sing one or more socialist songs, and sing them well, before the speaking commences’.

In 1902, the branch launched its own paper, The Dawn, with a monthly circulation of 3,000. Its first edition stated the objects of the SDF as ‘The socialisation of essential means and instruments of wealth production, to be controlled by a democratic state in the interests of the entire community’. Similarities with Clause Four of the constitution of the Labour Party, adopted many years later, are clear. A few copies of The Dawn from 1902-5 survive (in poor condition) in the British Library, but the issues raised in the paper and debate around them are illuminating and many still resound today – the role of private companies in running public transport, speculators making fortunes on the stock market at others’ expense, the shaming of exploitative employers and landlords, and which party best represented working people. The Dawn, with its uncompromising views on King and clergy, the main political parties and even trade union leaders, highlighted the struggle for independent labour representation and the hearts and minds of the working classes of Ilkeston.

Its leader ran: ‘This, the first issue of our little journal, marks a new departure in Ilkeston of the Socialist propaganda. It is not all we could have wished it to be, but with all its failings it represents a greater sacrifice and a larger burden of Love to those responsible for its birth than many will readily believe. It is the outcome of a sincere conviction that the majority of our fellow citizens are as anxious as we are to see an improvement in the condition of the toiling masses, and need only to have an intelligent exposition of Socialism laid before them to see the truth, the justice, the practicability, and the inevitability of our cause. We trust, therefore, that our little paper will be the medium whereby many will be enabled to learn something of the principles of Socialism who cannot be reached by the ordinary propaganda methods’. Producing and distributing the paper was a sizeable and expensive undertaking for a relatively small group of activists, but they clearly approached their task with an almost religious fervour and were determined to persuade the townsfolk of the truth of their arguments.

It was a time of great change in Ilkeston, with the opening of the Free Library, Victoria Park (the first public park in the town), the new tram network and improvements in sanitation. The Dawn commented on all of these developments, but with a very different viewpoint from the established local papers, the Pioneer and Advertiser. In October 1902, for example, The Dawn criticised local councillors for considering privatisation of the trams, Richard Riley claiming : ‘A great question of principle is involved…are we to be masters of our own streets, of our own public services, or are we going to hand over our town to the tender mercies of monopolies and dividend hunters? It is the choice of private greed or the common good. Either the tram service is a public necessity or it is not’.

From the 1890’s, the SDF began to involve itself much more in municipal politics, where previously it regarded such activity as ‘palliatives’ which made capitalism more tolerable. As the dream of revolution faded, local campaigns and electioneering became commonplace for SDF branches as they realised that socialists could carry the struggle into town halls. In Ilkeston, Thomas Mayfield was elected for the School Board in June 1899 with 996 votes, followed by Samuel Bostock’s successful candidacy for borough auditor in 1902, a position to which he was re-elected annually until his death in 1908.

Attitudes to the trade union movement also shifted within the SDF, as the new unionism of the 1890’s led to exponential growth, and party activists such as Will Thorne and Tom Mann immersed themselves in union agitation. The leadership continued to be sceptical, believing strikes would only lead to ‘petty gains’, but activists on the ground could see the benefit of embracing union struggles. For the SDF in Ilkeston, solidarity with the workers was essential, reaching a high point in 1912 when local activists became embroiled in a nationally publicised drama, dubbed ‘The Ilkeston Sensation’ by the Ilkeston Pioneer. By this time, many SDF members, including those at Ilkeston, had joined the British Socialist Party, formed at a socialist unity conference in 1911. Heavily influenced by the syndicalists, the BSP was formed against a backdrop of industrial strife which lasted until 1914, and one of the most bitter struggles was the Miners’ Strike of 1912.

Following the failure of negotiations to establish a minimum wage in the mining industry, the strike quickly became acrimonious, with troops and police deployed against striking miners.

Writing in The Dawn, Ilkeston publican James Morley urged the strikers to arm themselves in order to meet the forces of repression on equal terms: ‘Strikes and lockouts may continue for years, and the worker pay his 6d a week into his union.

Why not save 3d per week for a revolver? ... If your masters are getting extra police and supplying them with shooting irons, surely you are justified in getting a gun yourself?’ Soldiers and police, he continued, ‘had proved themselves to be the enemy of the workers, and when the time comes, take Seely’s advice and shoot low, not too low but low enough … If it would take too long to get a shooter by saving 3d per week, ask that the unions get them for you, it would be money well spent I am sure. Or join the territorials; here you would get guns and instruction’ (Ilkeston Pioneer 15th March 1912).

Amid fears of revolution, the article led to a swift backlash from the establishment - it was the subject of press condemnation and a question in Parliament. Morley and two other Ilkeston BSP members, Thomas Mayfield and Nelson King, were quickly arrested and charged with incitement to murder. They were imprisoned, bail refused and committed to trial at Derby Assizes. By the time the case was heard in June, the charge of incitement to murder had been dropped, the men expressed regret for their actions and were released with fines of £50 each.

Although the SDF were ideologically rigid and self-damagingly sectarian, as evidenced by their withdrawal from the Labour Representation Committee in 1901, they had an impact on local politics disproportionate to their size. The party produced a generation of socialist intellectuals and militant activists, who championed the cause of the workers and unemployed, and who should be celebrated as pioneers of British socialism. The Ilkeston branch, via their relentless propaganda, public meetings, education programme and interventions in local politics, certainly won support among the town’s workers, but doubtless alienated others with their uncompromising stance.

Women were certainly present and active in the SDF, locally and nationally, although their numbers made up only a fraction of the total membership. The party’s official policy advocated universal suffrage, but in reality it was ambivalent about votes for women, the suffragette campaign seen as a distraction from the struggle for full adult suffrage. The suffragettes were viewed as a middle-class grouping aiming to ‘create another privileged class of voters’ (Social Democrat, July 1910).

An examination of the activists we know about in Ilkeston shows that, rather than being drawn from the ranks of the industrial working class, they were primarily small businessmen. Richard Riley was a glass and china dealer, Thomas Mayfield a cycle agent, Nelson King a tailor and stationer, Harry Silburn a bootmaker and James Morley a publican, reflecting the make-up of the SDF nationally. Whilst they were not part of the town’s working classes, they were certainly not alienated from them.

They were largely autodidacts who developed a keen awareness and understanding of the world around them. They witnessed the privations of late-Victorian and Edwardian industrial capitalism, the precarious nature of waged labour and pitiable housing conditions, all of which were in evidence in Ilkeston at the time and believed in the creation of a more equal and fairer society. It is easy with hindsight to dismiss them as utopian, but we should admire their commitment to a cause they believed would change the world for the better.

Further reading: History of the Social Democratic Federation – Martin Crick; The Dawn, Ilkeston’s Socialist Newspaper – Philip Henshaw; Old Ilkeston website – www.oldIlkeston.co.uk

Workers Socialist Federation branches in the Nottingham area, 1916-1920

By Roger Tanner With the outbreak of war in 1914 Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst agreed to suspend the campaigning of the WSPU and to support the war effort. Sylvia Pankhurst, a committed international socialist, broke irrevocably from her sister and mother and, with the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS), continued to campaign for women’s suffrage with working class women in East London while also opposing the war. Initially their focus was on easing the burdens on women and their families; food shortages, increasing rents, lack of child care, low wages. By April 1916 working people became increasingly war-weary and now faced the threat of conscription. Support for the ELFS spread, with branches across London and wide circulation of their newspaper Women’s Dreadnought.

On 9th April the ELFS lead a procession of women the six miles from the East End to Trafalgar Square, where Sylvia and other ELFS speakers demanded ‘human suffrage’ (for all adult women and men), repeal of the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA ) and the Munitions Act, an end to conscription and lifting of the deportation of the Clydeside shop stewards. The Times reported crowds of 20,000.

Following this success the ELFS, now renamed the Workers Suffrage Federation (WSF) to better reflect their demands, was ready to take its message across the country, supported by the renamed Workers’ Dreadnought (WD).

The Netherfield and Carlton Branch By the end of April 1916 Sylvia was on a speaking tour of the North East and on her return spoke to Netherfield ILP at a crowded meeting in the Carlton Co-operative Hall. ‘There was a good sale of ‘Dreadnoughts’ and we have to thank the branch for a collection for our babies’ fund.’

On 20th May WD reported that the 18 year old Patricia Lynch had been sent to set up a branch of the WSF in Netherfield and Carlton. Miss Lynch reported she ‘has been invited to address meetings of societies to explain the objects of the WSF and that the local branches of the ILP and Railway Women’s Guilds, the NUR, the Socialist Sunday Schools … have given great help.’

She held a meeting on The Green in Carlton, speaking with ILP member, Cllr. Kneeshaw, and in the evening addressed a meeting in the Labour Club with sympathetic local leaders of the ILP. On Tuesday she addressed Women Trade Unionists and on Wednesday members of the Women’s Co-operative Guild and could report that she was making arrangements to address the NUR and Railway Women’s Guild, reflecting the importance of the Netherfield Sidings. She also reported that she spoke on the Market Place at Bulwell, attracting 200 people.

There is no report on her speeches but the demands of the Trafalgar Square demonstration and the consistent themes in the Workers Dreadnought were against conscription, against the war-time restrictions to personal liberties, for universal adult suffrage and against food shortages. The events in Dublin that Easter would have also been uppermost in Patricia Lynch’s mind, as only a few weeks before she had been sent to compile an eye-witness report, published as a pamphlet by WSF. Sylvia and the WSF campaigned against British ‘atrocities’ in Ireland, for the release of rebel leaders, and published the political statements of Sinn Fein.

The focus on the ILP, working class women’s organisations and the National Union of Railwaymen reflected the approach taken in other areas. Sylvia and the WSF were building on the support for suffrage among working class women and their organisations from the pre-war years, on the political divisions in the ILP, divided over the war and open to political debate, and the growing rank and file militancy within the National Union of Railwaymen, especially in the District Councils and Vigilance Committees. The NUR was also one the few unions which accepted women’s employment on the railways in the war years, and recruited women into the union, although with the understanding that this was only until the end of the war.

Patricia Lynch stayed as Organiser into the summer of 1916. A committee was elected for the branch, with Mrs Johnstone as secretary, Mrs Hough, literature secretary and later branch secretary, Miss Nicholls, treasurer, Mr Turner as president and committee members Mr Freeborough, Mrs Hurst, Mrs Pilkington, Mrs Walton and Mr Walton. All lived in the Carlton and Netherfield area. The committee reflected the unique feature of the WSF that challenged male domination in the socialist movement with leadership being held overwhelmingly by women. A branch and social meeting was held every fortnight in the Labour Hall in Carlton and a campaign of open-air meetings was arranged. The branch was listed in WD, sometimes as the Carlton, Netherfield and Nottingham branch, until June 1917.

Census returns in 1911 and 1921 record James Walton and John Turner, both in their 40s with families, as railway engine drivers. John Freeborough, 60 in 1916, was a clay miner/brick maker.

Thomas Nicholls, in his 60’s, worked as a miner at Digby Colliery in Gedling. The female members of the committee are recorded as housewives or home keepers in census returns although during the war years they were likely to be working, possibly on the railway or in munitions. Mrs Hurst’s husband was a framework knitter, both in their 50s. Mrs Hough’s husband was 34 in 1916 and already conscripted.

There is no record of when or why the branch failed in 1917. It could have been over political disagreements or just the difficulty of maintaining an active political life in a period of war. Patricia Lynch was clearly very effective and when she moved on to be organiser in Leicester in September 1916 she had again established a WSF branch in a matter of weeks. However, during the following year another branch of WSF had become established and active in the Nottingham area.

The Bulwell Branch On 16th March 1918 a report in the Workers Dreadnought is from the Bulwell branch of the WSF, now the Workers Socialist Federation, reflecting the political focus of the organisation since the February 1917 Russian Revolution and Sylvia’s support for the Bolsheviks. As editor of The Workers’ Dreadnought she now focused on defence of the Russian Revolution and argued for a new form of government, of soviets or workers councils.

The Bulwell branch was active in the union or work-place through the NUR, campaigning on food prices and adulteration, and fighting for free speech in public places where they could present their political views, especially support for defence of the Russian Revolution, with sales of Workers’ Dreadnought .

Through the summer of 1918 the WSF fought the Watch Committee for the right to free speech on Bulwell Market Place. Mr Croft of the WSF and an NUR member challenged the ban, as well as applying for further meetings to be held on Vernon Park on Sundays. Writing to the local newspaper he stated that ‘the residents of the district intend to fight for the liberty of free speech’. The campaign was a success and the restrictions were removed.

The WSL had called for Food Vigilance Committees, made up of trade unionists, co-operators and working class women, to be formed in all areas. Croft was chairman of the Nottingham Food Vigilance Committee, campaigning for fair food prices and distribution, as well as exposing food adulteration. He took issue with Nottingham Council for their refusal to allow local Cooperative Societies to have a representative on the Food Control Committee. His critical comment in his letter on the role of local NUR official and ILP member Walter Halls may have been a reflection of the growing division in his union between officials and rank and file (see Philip Bagwell p.349).

Ernest Croft, 106 Coventry Road, was born in Mexborough, Yorkshire. He was 31 in 1918. A Railway Shunter, he had previously worked in Grimsby (1911). Married to Mary Croft, they had three children.

The branch secretary in March 1918 was 18 year old Miss Elsie Smith, 9 Commercial Road. Census returns are less complete for women but it is likely that she was one of the family on Whyburn Street, Hucknall of Joseph Smith (a Railway Labourer Sandman on the Great Central by 1921). As a member of a ‘railway family’ she could well have been in the Railway Women’s Guild of the NUR and working on the railways during the war years.

Both were speaking on platforms with Sylvia Pankhurst in 1918.

What part the NUM members played in the Vigilance Committees or local District Committee, the forums of the militant rank and file, is not known, although there were clearly links through the WSF activists with other activists. They organised a ‘Grand Concert in April 1918, held at New Annesley, ‘for the benefit of Miss A. Rudd who has lost her foot at Annesley Sidings’. The Chairman was Mr W. Carter, Kentish Town (NUR), a frequent speaker for the WSF around London and around the country. Mr Croft was the speaker.

The WSF ensured that events which they organised were ‘respectable’ so as to enable the full participation of women, although from the evidence I can find so far, the key figures in the Bulwell branch in 1918 were more often male than female.

On Sunday April 28th Mr Carter spoke at a public meeting on ‘Trade Unions and Political Action’ at Albert Street School. The chair was taken by Mr R. Boswell, WSF and local Secretary of NUR branch, supported by other local officials of NUR and WSF. ‘All WSF members are asked to wear colours.’ It was

reported that numbers were disappointing but ‘those present were very interested in what Mr Croft had to say and Dreadnoughts and other literature sold well’.

Robert Plowman Boswell, NUR branch secretary and WSF member,14 Nansen Street was born in Catworth, Hampshire. He was 35 in 1918 and married to Margaret. The 1911 Census showed him living in Lingfield, Surrey where he worked as an attendant on a Farm Training Colony.

The WSF found common ground with many in the NUR as the national NUR had opposed conscription and profiteering since 1916 and from 1917 called for an end to the war and was against armed intervention in Russia. The NUR was also to affiliate to the People’s Russian Information Bureau, initiated by WSF in July 1918.

Sylvia Pankhurst in Bulwell The visits by Sylvia Pankhurst to Bulwell give an indication of its importance as a branch for the WSF. On Saturday 10th March 1918 the Bulwell WSF held a social and dance at Basford Adult School (also held in the Albert Street Schools in Highbury Vale). ‘Misses Cooper, Turner and Draper provided musical entertainment.’ Mr Forsyth took the chair and Miss Sylvia Pankhurst gave a short address. Again, care was taken that the meeting was ‘respectable’ to encourage female participation, and being held in a school building under the auspices of the well established Adult Education movement which had a large following in Bulwell.

Edwin Forsyth, also a secretary of WSF, was a Colliery Checkweigh Clerk at Cinderhill Colliery. He was born in 1869 in Carlisle and aged 49 in 1918. He had lived in Fulham where he met his wife Alice and started their family but had been in Bulwell since before 1901, first at Turton Street and then at 114 Logan Street.

On Sunday afternoon, 11th March, Miss Pankhurst addressed the Basford Adult School. The chair was taken by the Nottingham City Coroner, Mr Charles Z. Rothera. In the evening a ‘largely attended’ public meeting was held by the WSF at the Albert Street Schools, where Miss Pankhurst spoke. The chair was taken by Mr Baldwin, and short speeches delivered by Mr Croft and Miss E. Smith, ‘Many new members were made’ (WD 23.03.18).

Charles Rothera was active in the campaign against Regulation 40D of DORA. A long standing supporter of women’s suffrage, Rothera had set up the Men’s Association for Promoting Women’s Suffrage in Nottingham and his sister-in-law, Mrs Dulce Rothera, was an ‘ardent feminist’ and member of NUWSS. He spoke of the discredited Contagious Diseases Acts, a common cause with the WD and Sylvia and attacked Government support for a ‘house for soldiers’ at Cayeux ‘where women were registered and clean’. Rothera questioned the use of the word ‘clean’ with 15 women receiving over 300 men in a day. Mr Rothera said that in Nottingham there was free treatment offered for venereal disease, suggesting in the minds of many that this disease is susceptible of quick and easy cure. We believe that many cases were absolutely incapable of complete cure.

Sylvia Pankhurst came to Nottingham in September 1918. She spoke at a public meeting at the Corn Exchange on Thurland Street, Nottingham on Sunday 1st September 1918. The meeting was advertised as speaking on ‘Our Present Outlook’. It is also not known if she spoke for a WSF branch or for another organisation. There is no record of how successful the meeting was.

On September 5th 1918 Sylvia Pankhurst spoke again to the members of the Nottingham, Bulwell and Basford WSF branch at The Homesteads, Basford (usually the address given for The Homestead was Highbury Vale or the Albert Street Schools, Bulwell). Mr Arthur Pendleton, (WSF and NUR) was in the chair. It was decided to organise a series of lectures on ‘Socialism’, ‘Socialism and the Workers Committee Movement’, ‘The Russian Revolution’ and ‘International Socialism’.

Arthur Pendleton, 41 in 1918, was recorded as a secretary of the WSF branch. He lived at 498 Vernon Road, Basford and was an NUR member. He was a member of the Basford branch of Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants before its amalgamation into the NUR. Evidence for the presence of the WSF in Bulwell or the Nottingham area ends in 1919. We do not know if the proposed lectures took place or who attended. With the end of the war circumstances dramatically changed for many people. 1919 was a year of labour unrest with a national strike of rail workers but also many laid off as men returned from the forces. Women lost jobs in munitions and most railway work, while many were laid off in the coming year in every industry from textiles to tobacco.

The families in Carlton and Basford were affected by this like all others. By 1921 Elsie Smith, now back living with her parents, was laid off from Dexters’ Cigar Makers, where she had found work as a cigar trade stripper, as were her two sisters. John Croft,16, the son of Ernest Croft, who was now a Railway Guard on Great Central Railway (GCR) at Annesley Sidings, was in work as a ‘Caller-up’ for the GCR. John Turner, of the Carlton branch, was unable to work due to illness by 1921. Mrs Hough’s husband was 34 in 1916 and most likely in the armed forces. He returned to be an Insurance Agent.

The WSF was to be one of four political parties and organisations which came together in 1920 to form the Communist Party of Great Britain. Sylvia was in the minority who held an abstentionist position towards working in the Labour Party or participating in Parliament. At the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin met Sylvia and also set out his opposition in ‘Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder’. Sylvia returned to Britain to support unity with the other parties, while still holding a minority view. It was her refusal to hand over control of The Workers’ Dreadnought to the new party’s leadership which led to her expulsion.

Former WSF members played an important part in the struggles to come, some as members of CPGB, others in the ILP, in their trade unions or in opposing fascism. What continuing role was played by those who had joined the Carlton, Netherfield, Bulwell and Basford WSF? There is much more to still uncover.

Quotations are from The Workers’ Dreadnought or local press unless otherwise stated.

For further reading on Sylvia Pankhurst, the East London Federation of Suffragettes and Workers Socialist Federation see: Barbara Wislow “Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual Politics and Politival Activism” (Verso, London 2021) Katherine Connelly “Sylvia Pankhurst “ (Pluto Press, London 2013) Acknowledgement Thanks to Val Wood who first pointed me to the visits by Sylvia Pankhurst to Bulwell in 1918.

Don’t Miss our Next Meeting!

Nottinghamshire & Derbyshire Labour History Society Women and Chartism

A talk by Associate Professor Dr Matthew Roberts, Sheffield Hallam University Dr. Matthew Roberts is a specialist in 19th century British political and cultural history with a special interest in radical politics and protest. He has explored the organisation and activities of movements such as Luddism and Chartism (the campaign by working people to gain the vote and reform Parliament). In this talk he will look particularly at the role of women in the Chartist movement.

Saturday 13th May 2023, 2.00 p.m.

Doors open at 1.30 p.m.

The St. Thomas Centre Hall, Chatsworth Road, Chesterfield. S40 3AW https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89081191159 Free on-site car parking Refreshments available For more information, please contact rogerntanner@yahoo.co.uk www.ndlhsoc.wordpress. com

Pamphlets published by NDLHS 1.

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“Volunteers for Liberty: Notts and Derbys Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War”, £2.00 “Who Dips in the Tin? The Butty System in Notts Coalfield”, Barry Johnson, £2.50 “Women in British Coal Mining”, Chris Wrigley, £2.00 “Bravery and Deception: The Pentrich Revolt of 1817”, Julian Atkinson, £2.00 “Luddism in the East Midlands”, Julian Atkinson and Roger Tanner, £3.00 “Florence Paton M.P.”, Val Wood, £2.50 “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. “The Air of Freedom: the story of the striking boot and shoemakers in Eyam and Stoney Middleton 1918 – 1920” - Steve Bond and Philip Taylor £6 13. “The Derby Lock-out 1833-34 and the Origins of the Labour Movement”, Bill Whitehead, £1.00 14. “A Radical History of Heanor, Derbyshire 1800-1850” Paul Jones, £3.50 (or more as the proceeds from this sale are given to Heanor Food Bank, so please give generously.) (“Changing Derbyshire NUM”, Malcolm Ball is currently out of print) 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, email your order to: rogerntanner@yahoo.co.uk and pay by BACS transfer to the NDLHS Santander Account No. 29032134, sort code 09-01-29 with your surname as reference.