The Virtual Stoa

Robert Jospin, French pacifist, socialist, Lavaliste, and father of Lionel; born 9 June 1899, died 9 May 1990.

Stella Browne, socialist feminist campaigner for the reform of abortion law. After Somerville College, Oxford and spells as a teacher and librarian she began to make a name for herself in the debates concerning women’s sexual desire before and after the First World War. She conducted a twenty-five year correspondence with Havelock Ellis and translated a number of works of continental sexology in the interwar period. An active participant in the work of the Malthusian League, she was a significant champion of birth control and far-reaching abortion rights, as well as campaigning around divorce law and against the stigma still attached to illegitimacy. At various times she was a Communist, Fabian, member of the Chelsea branch of the Labour Party, and – for a few years – member of the Eugenics Society, though she opposed its preferred criterion of ‘fitness’, and her ODNB biographer remarks that she probably joined the society “to represent the interests of the Abortion Law Reform Association of which she was a founder”. A page with links to some of her writings is here. Born Halifax, Nova Scotia, 9 May 1880, died Sefton Park, Liverpool, 8 May 1955.

Margaret Cole, Fabian socialist and wife of G. D. H., with whom she wrote detective novels. Born 6 May 1893, died 7 May 1980. Some quotes over here.

Ian Mikardo, Labour MP, born 9 July 1908, died 6 May 1993.

Barbara Castle, the “Red Queen”, born 6 October 1910, died 3 May 2002.

Pierre Bérégovoy, French socialist and Prime Minister, 1992-3; born Déville-lès-Rouen in Normandy, 23 December 1925; shot himself 1 May 1993.

Beatrice Webb, Fabian, born 2 January 1858, died 30 April 1943.

Anton Pannekoek, Dutchman, astronomer, Marxist; born 2 January 1873, died 28 April 1960. An archive of some writings is here.

Antonio Gramsci, born Cagliari, 22 January 1891, died in Rome, 27 April 1937.

Strini Moodley, Black Consciousness militant and prisoner on Robben Island, 1976-1981; born in Durban, 22 December 1945, died, also in Durban, 27 April 2006.

There’s the transcript of a long interview with Moodley here.

Marcel Liebman, Belgian Marxist historian, author of the Deutscher prize-winning book Leninism Under Lenin; born 7 July, 1929; died 2 March 1986.

[The DSW is unfazed by 29 February.]

Dorothy Jewson, socialist and feminist; from the Jewson sawmill family, Dorothy became a socialist while studying classics at Girton College, Cambridge. After a short spell as a teacher, she returned to Norwich to be active in the WSPU and she published The Destitute of Norwich and how they Live: a Report into the Administration of out Relief (1912), and during the First World War she managed a training centre for unemployed girls. She became an organizer for the National Federation of Women Workers in London in 1916, and was elected Labour MP for Norwich in 1923 — her maiden speech was on the extension of voting rights to younger women — though was defeated in 1924, 1929 and 1931. She served on lots of committees in the 1920s and 1930s, for the ILP as well as on the county council, and was a partisan of family allowances and easier access to birth control. A pacifist, in later years she joined the Quakers. Born in Norwich 17 August 1884, died, also in Norwich, 29 February 1964.

Tommy Douglas, leader of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and the New Democratic Party, and the founding father of Medicare; born 20 October, 1904, died 24 February 1986.

Elizabeth Wright Macauley, actress, feminist and Owenite socialist. After twenty years as an actress, going “from one low-paid and badly reviewed theatrical production to another” [ODNB], she joined the Owenite co-operative socialists, their emphasis on gender equality being “well suited to Macauley’s insubordinate temperament” [ditto]. “Women have too long been considered as playthings, or as slaves”, she said in 1832, “but I hope the time is at hand, when we shall hold a more honourable rank in the scale of creation”. The ODNB also reports the useful information that she gave acting lessons to a group of French Saint-Simonians visiting London in the early 1830s, which sound fun. Born in York around 1785, she died, also in York, 22 February 1837.

Annie Barnes, née Cappuccio, socialist and suffragist. Involved in suffragette activities in East London from 1912 (on one occasion scattering leaflets from the Monument in London), she joined the Labour Party in 1919 and served on Stepney Council 1934-7 and 1941-9.  Born c.1887, probably in Stepney, died in East Ham, 22 February 1982.

Jennie Baines, suffragette. Growing up in the Salvation Army, she found her way into temperance and then into suffragist activism. She joined the WSPU in 1905, and became a paid organiser in 1908. Briefly imprisoned in 1908, she attempted to burn down the Theatre Royal in Dublin in 1912 ahead of a speech by Asquith, and was sentenced to seven months hard labour (but went on hunger strike and was released after five days). Back in prison the following year after allegedly attempting to bomb train carriages in a railway siding, she was eventually acquitted, and emigrated in Australia, where she carried on with her militancy, campaigning against conscription and flying the (banned) red flag — being jailed again on both occasions. She helped to found the Victorian branch of the Community Party in 1920, was expelled in 1925, and rejoined in ALP. Born in Birmingham, 30 November 1866, she died in Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 20 February 1951.

Tony Crosland, Labour politician, Cabinet Minister and author of The Future of Socialism, back in the days when being on the revisionist wing of the Labour Party entailed a commitment to a politics of equality. Born 29 August 1918, died 19 February 1977.

Georg Büchner, playwright, propagandist, fish scientist; born 17 October 1813, died 19 February 1837.

Catherine Carswell, née Macfarlane, novelist and critic. Became a socialist at 14 after reading Robert Blatchford; married Herbert Jackson, who later became mentally unstable, and the Jackson v Jackson annulment case (1908) was an important one until the marriage law reforms of the 1930s. She made her way in London literary life with an epistolary novel, The Camomile (1922), a demythologising Life of Robert Burns (1930) and The Savage Pilgrimage, a portrait of her friend D. H. Lawrence. Born in Garnethill, Glasgow, 27 March 1879, died in the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, just round the corner from me, 18 February 1946.

And while we’re on the subject of the New Statesman, here’s Kingsley Martin, who edited the thing for thirty years, 1930-1960, back in the days when it was a moderately important publication. Born Hereford, 28 July 1897; died in Cairo, 16 February 1969.

Hugh Dalton, Labour politician; born Neath, Glamorgan, 26 August 1887; died St Pancras, 13 February 1962.

Gustav Bergenroth, historian and Saint-Simonian. A ‘48er, he later emigrated to California in 1850 to found an agricultural commune at Pillar Point, 20 miles south of San Francisco, but returned to Europe a year later. He settled in London and became a Tudor historian and an expert on the Spanish state papers of the period. Born in Treuberg, East Prussia, 26 February 1813; died in Madrid, Spain, 13 February 1869.

Paul Levi, Spartacist, born 11 March 1883, died 9 February 1930.

Pyotr Lavrov, Russian philosopher of narodnikism, born 14 June 1823, died 6 February 1890.