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Phillip Spratt

Philip Spratt Spratt, born in 1902, was a writer who had joined the Communist Party and was sent to India by it to aid the development of a local Communist Party and trade union movement. […]

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Bertha Sokoloff

As she was growing up in a closely knit Jewish family in the East End of London, poverty and fatherlessness shaped the radical spirit of my mother Bertha Sokoloff, who has died aged 98. Her […]

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Jean & Maurice Styles

Jean Esther Styles was born on October 19th 1927; she joined the Communist Party in 1947. As branch secretary for the Streatham Communist Party in the mid-1960s, she formally engaged in correspondence with the national YCL […]

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Bill Thornycroft

Born Francis Thornycroft in 1926 near Worthing, he was the last of the five children of Oliver and Dorothy Thornycroft. His father was from the Thornycroft engineering family and was a senior engineer at the […]

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Platt, Laurence

Born David Laurence Platt in 1950 to George and Winfred (nee Haigh), a couple from Huddersfield, who were then living in Melton Mowbray, Laurence’s roots were always firmly planted in what used to be called […]

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Barrington, Hanna

By Helen Braunholtz Smith, reprinted from the Guardian 26 June 2019 Hanna Barrington, Battersea’s ‘empress of Habsburg’, fled the Nazis and set up a Viennese wine bar in London. My friend Hanna Barrington has died […]

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Gurney, Ronald

Ronald Gurney Ronald Wilfred (or Wilfrid) Gurney was born in 1898 in Cheltenham. He became a theoretical physicist as a pupil of William Lawrence Bragg at the Victoria University of Manchester during the 1920s, where […]

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Gunson, Madge

Madge Gunson was an ardent trade unionist, born in 1898. When she was 11 years’ old, her parents joined the British Socialist Party and Madge began attending the North West Ham Socialist Sunday School, “for […]

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Dubowski, Ben

Ben Dubowski During the First World War, Ben Dubowski was imprisoned as a conscientious objector. He then devoted himself to organising clothing workers in East London, and for a number of years was secretary of […]