anti-imperialism

Indian Writing

About:

The Indian Writing magazine ran irregularly from 1940 to 1945. Ostensibly a literary magazine, Indian Writing was a platform for the radical, anti-colonial, broadly Marxist South Asian activists based in London to articulate their critique of Indo-British relations, alongside their own views on politics and culture, which would have been seen as extremist at the time.

The first issue of Indian Writing was written in 1940 with war ‘an immediate reality’ and the possibility of anti-colonial ‘revolutions’ imminent. Contributions to Indian Writing charted the Cripps mission to India, alongside a critique of the BBC’s Allied War Propaganda. Editors Iqbal Singh and Ahmed Ali forcefully voiced their objection to the use of Indian soldiers as ‘cannon fodder’ and to ‘the spectacle of innocent nations and peoples being dragged into the homicidal delirium of rival imperialist powers’ in the Second World War (Indian Writing 1.2 (1940), p. 68). In this way the magazine revealed the tensions between nationalism, anti-fascism and anti-imperialism of this period. The Book Review section of the Indian Writing magazine, served as a key space for South Asian writers like Ahmed Ali and Mulk Raj Anand to comment on each other’s novels as well as on other books on South Asia. This coverage was particularly important in the context of a broader, insular reviewing culture notably the resistance these South Asian fictional texts met from the more conservative, parochial elements of the British literary establishment, regarding their politics and use of Indian English.

Secondary works:

Ranasinha, Ruvani, South Asian Writers in Twentieth-Century Britain: Culture in Translation (Oxford: Clarendon, 2007)

Content:

Indian Writing 1.1 (1940), p. 3

Date began:

01 Apr 1940

Extract:

As Gorky observed: 'Culture is more necessary in storm than in peace.' it is more necessary because it is precisely in the stormy periods of transition that it becomes imperative to maintain some sense of the continuity of human thought and endeavour, and even more, to understand the processes which lead to new cultural integrations.

In launching Indian Writing we take Gorky’s view. And for good reason. It does not seem altogether fantastic to suggest that we are witnessing today a significant shift of the bases of culture, that initiative in cultural matters is passing to those vast masses of humanity who have so far served only as pawns for the profit of Western Imperialism. In this respect, the awakening of India is one of the most important facts of contemporary history. No single magazine could possibly claim to represent this great movement in all its complex aspects. We only hope to interpret its specifically cultural implications. […] We are interested primarily in publishing imaginative literature which is alive with the realities of to-day.

Precise date began unknown:

Key Individuals' Details:

Editors: Ahmed Ali, Krishnarao Shelvankar, Iqbal Singh, Alagu Subramaniam.

Roland Hardless (business manager)

Relevance:

The magazine reflects the Indian Writing editors’ perceived need to literally create their own space in the form of a literary magazine, to articulate their own views on politics and culture. The magazine demonstrates London’s role as a global centre and facilitator for anti-imperialism and diasporic nationalism.

Connections:

Contributors: K. Ahmed Abbas, Mulk Raj Anand, Peter Blackman, Jack Chen, Ismat Chughtai, Cedric Dover, Attia Habibullah, Sher Jung, Pieter Keuneman, Enver Kureishi, Krishna Menon, Saadat Hussain Manto, R. K. Narayan, Jawaharlal Nehru, Clemens Palme Dutt, Raja Rao, S. Raja Ratnam, Bharati Sarabhai, Rabindranath Tagore, Suresh Vaidya.

Date ended:

01 Jul 1942

Precise date ended unknown:

Books Reviewed Include:

Ali, Ahmed, Twilight in Delhi. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Anand, Mulk Raj, Across the Black Waters. Reviewed by Iqbal Singh.

Barns, Margarita, The Indian Press. Reviewed by Krishnarao Shelvankar.

Bromfield, Louise, Night in Bombay. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Chintamani, C. Y., Indian Politics since the Mutiny. Reviewed by Krishnarao Shelvankar.

Coatman, John, India: The Road to Self-Government. Reviewed by Krishna Menon.

Hemingway, Ernest, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Indian Progressive Writers Association, Naya Adab: Anthology of Progressive Literature. Reviewed by Ahmed Ali.

Koestler, Arthur, Scum of the Earth. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Montagu, Ivor, The Traitor Class. Reviewed by Krishnarao Shelvankar.

Nehru, Jawaharlal, the Unity of India. Reviewed by Clemens Palme Dutt.

Palme Dutt, Rajani, India to-day. Reviewed by Iqbal Singh.

Rao, P. Kodanda, East versus West: A denial of contrasts, reviewed by Krishnarao Shelvankar.

Rilke, R. M., Selected Poems, reviewed by Iqbal Singh.

Shelvankar, Krishnarao, The Problem of India. Reviewed by Iqbal Singh.

Singh, Anup, Nehru: The Rising Star of India. Reviewed by Krishnarao Shelvankar.

Smith, Nicol, Burma Road, reviewed by Pieter Keuneman.

Spender, Stephen, The Backward Son. Reviewed by MulkRaj Anand.

Thompson, Edward, Enlist India for Freedom. Reviewed by Cedric Dover.

Zaheer, Sajjad, One Night in London. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Zoshchenko, Michael, The Woman who could not Read. Reviewed by Iqbal Singh.

Location

16 Little Russell Street

London, WC1A 2HN

United Kingdom

See map: Google Maps

Tags for Making Britain:

Paul Robeson

About:

Paul Leroy Robeson was born in 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey, to William Drew Robeson and Maria Louisa Bustill. In 1915 he enrolled at Rutgers College, New Jersey, and in 1920 he entered Columbia University Law School. In 1922 he married his life-long partner Eslanda 'Essie' Cardozo Goode, and the following year he graduated from Columbia. Robeson launched his acting career in 1920 - a career that brought him to London in 1922, and again in 1925 to star in the Eugene O'Neill Play, The Emperor Jones.

Robeson returned to London in April 1928 and spring 1930 to act in Show Boat and Othello, respectively. After a visit to Moscow in 1934, his political views became increasingly influenced by socialist and Communist ideals. He also started associating with key African figures such as Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah. In 1934, he acted in Alexander Korda's Sanders of the River, a performance he later repudiated as glorifying British imperialism. His repudiation of British imperialism and growing support of the working class was applauded by Stafford Cripps, the leading Labour politician. There is also evidence that Robeson attended a League of Coloured Peoples meeting, led by Harold Moody, in 1934 (Duberman, p. 624, n. 38).

In the mid-1930s, Robeson met Cedric Dover who broadcast on Robeson for BBC Radio to India. The talk is published in George Orwell's collection Talking to India (1943). In Half-Caste (1937), Dover lauded Robeson: 'To know him, to feel his charm and unusually wide culture, is a privilege; to hear him sing at a packed Albert Hall recital is a spiritual experience' (p. 226). In the late 1930s, Robeson met Krishna Menon, Secretary of the India League. Menon enlisted Robeson's support in the struggle for Indian independence. In January 1938, Robeson visited Spain to support the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. In June of that year, Robeson acted in Plant in the Sun. In the audience were Jawaharlal Nehru, his sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Krishna Menon who had just come back to London after touring Spain; the four of them became friends, and Robeson and Nehru met on several other occasions. On 27 June 1938, at the India League meeting in Kingsway Hall, Nehru and Robeson spoke on internationalism and the need for unified action against Fascism. Among the other speakers were Stafford Cripps, Harold Laski, Ellen Wilkinson and Rajani Palme Dutt.

Robeson's left-leaning politics were put to the test at the outbreak of the Second World War and the Nazi-Soviet agreement. He had discussed his views on the Soviet Union with other English socialists such as Harold Laski and George Bernard Shaw. Now in the United States, Robeson continued his socialist agitations and with the onset of the Cold War he was under surveillance, his passport was revoked and he was called before the Un-American Activities Committee. When his passport was returned in 1958, he immediately travelled to Europe again. In the 1960s, he went into semi-retirement and he died of a stroke on 23 January 1976 in Philadelphia.

Published works:

Forge Negro-Labor Unity for Peace and Jobs (New York: Harlem Trade Union Council, 1950)

The Negro People and the Soviet Union (New York: New Century Publishers, 1950)

Here I Stand (London: Dennis Dobson, 1958)

Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, Interviews, 1918-1974 (London: Quartet Books, 1978)

Date of birth:

09 Apr 1898

Connections:

Stafford Cripps, Cedric Dover, W. E. B. Du Bois, Rajani Palme Dutt, C. L. R. James, Jomo Kenyatta, Harold Laski, Krishna Menon, Jawaharlal Nehru, Ellen Wilkinson.

Contributions to periodicals:

Daily Worker

Secondary works:

Adi, Hakim, 'Robeson, Paul Leroy (1898-1976)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/67911]

Balaji, Murali, The Professor and the Pupil: The Politics of W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson (New York: Nation Books, 2007)

Boyle, Sheila Tully, and Bunie, Andrew, Paul Robeson: The Years of Promise and Acheivement (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001)

Brown, Lloyd L., Lift Every Voice for Paul Robeson (New York: Freedom Associates, 1951)

Brown, Lloyd L., Paul Robeson Rediscovered (New York: American Institute for Marxist Studies, 1976)

Brown, Lloyd L., The Young Paul Robeson: On My Journey Now (Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 1997)

Chambers, Colin, Here We Stand: Politics, Performers and Performance: Paul Robeson, Isadora Duncon and Charlie Chaplin (London: Nick Hern, 2006)

David, Lenwood D., A Paul Robeson Research Guide: A Selected Annotated Bibliography (Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1982)

Dorinson, Joseph, and Pencak, William, Paul Robeson: Essays on His Life and Legacy (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland, 2002)

Dover, Cedric, 'Paul Robeson', in George Orwell (ed.), Talking to India (London: Allen & Unwin, 1943), pp. 17-21

Dover, Cedric, Half-Caste (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1937)

Duberman, Martin B., Paul Robeson (London: Bodley Head, 1989)

Dyer, Richard, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986)

Fryer, Peter, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto, 1984)

Gerlach, L. R., 'Robeson, Paul', in J. A. Garraty and M. C. Carnes (eds) American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 629-31

Gilliam, Dorothy Butler, Paul Robeson: All-American (Washington: New Republic, 1976)

Graham, Shirley, Paul Robeson: Citizen of the World (Westport, CT: Negro Universities Press, 1971)

Hamilton, Virginia, Paul Robeson: The Life and Times of a Free Black Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1974)

Horne, Gerald, The End of Empires; African Americans and India (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008; Chesham: Combined Academic, 2008)

Hoyt, Edwin P., Paul Robeson: The American Othello (World Publishing, 1967)

Kwayana, Eusi, Paul Robeson, 9 March 1898 - 23 January 1976: Tributes (London: Paul Robeson Society, 1990)

McKissack, Patricia, Paul Robeson: A Voice to Remember (Hillside, NJ, and Aldershot: Enslow, 1992)

Nazel, Joseph, Paul Robeson: Biography of a Proud Man (Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1980)

Paul Robeson: The Great Forerunner (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1978)

Ramdin, Ron, Paul Robeson: The Man and His Mission (London: Owen, 1987)

Robeson, Eslanda Goode, Paul Robeson: Negro (London: Victor Gollancz, 1930)

Robeson, Paul, Jr, The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: An Artist's Journey, 1898-1939 (New York and Chichester: Wiley, 2001)

Robeson, Susan, The Whole World in His Hands: A Pictorial History of Paul Robeson (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1981)

Seton, Marie, Paul Robeson (London: Dennis Dobson, 1958)

Stewart, Jeffrey C., Paul Robeson: Artist and Citizen (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 1998)

Stuart, Marie, Paul Robeson (Bristol: West Bristol Adult Education Centre, 1993)

Thompson, Allan L., Paul Robeson: Artist and Activist: On Records, Radio and Television (Wellingborough: A. L. Thompson, 1998)

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Von Eschen, Penny M., Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997)

Wright, Charles H., Robeson: Labor's Forgotten Champion (Detroit: Balamp Publishing, 1975)

Archive source:

Robeson Family Archives, Moorland-Spingarn Research Centre, Howard University, Washington, DC

New York Public Library

Archive, Berlin, Germany

'Paul Robeson', BBC, 26 November 1978, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

Black on Black, LWT, 23 April 1985, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

'Songs of Freedom: Paul Robeson and the Black American Struggle', Mirus Productions, 3 June 1986, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

'Speak of Me as I Am', 7 June 1998, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

'Paul Robeson: Here I stand', WNET, 1999, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

Advertising film footage, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

Current affairs footage, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

Documentary footage, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

News footage, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

Performance footage, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

Performance recordings, National Sound Archive, British Library, St Pancras

City of birth:

Princeton

Country of birth:

United States of America

Other names:

Paul Leroy Robeson

Date of death:

23 Jan 1976

Location of death:

Philadelphia

Date of 1st arrival in Britain:

01 Jan 1922

Precise 1st arrival date unknown:

Dates of time spent in Britain:

1922, 1925, April 1928 - 29, 1930-9 (mostly in England and continental Europe)

Location:

12 Glebe Place, Chelsea, London

Carlton Hill, St John's Wood, London

Tags for Making Britain:

Ceylon Students' Association

About:

The Ceylon Students' Association in London worked closely with the Majlis and the India League. It was very active in the 1920s. D. B. Jayatilleke and S. A. Wickremasinghe worked with Krishna Menon and Shapurji Saklatvala. They wrote the Study of the Report on Constitution together in 1928, on their responses to British constitutional reforms with particular reference to Ceylon’s Donoughmore Constitution. Many of its members were Sinhala-speaking socialist students from Buddhist Theosophist Schools who came to Britain for undergraduate or postgraduate study at the University of London. Its members went on to found the Marxist Lanka Sama Samaja Party in Sri Lanka in 1935. This London group opposed both A. E. Goonesinghe and the British Labour Party’s claims that the Ceylon National Congress were oligarchs, arguing that they preferred indigenous oligarchs to foreign rule. The Ceylon Students' Association along with the Pan-African Federation, WASU, the Federation of Indian Associations in Britain and the Burma Association, organized the Anti-Colonial Peoples' Conference in June 1945, which called for an end to imperialism.

Published works:

Wickremasinghe, S. A., Ceylon: A Study of the 'Report of the Special Commission on the Constitution'

Articles in Fourth International and British Militant

Secondary works:

Visram, Rozina, South Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Date began:

01 Jan 1920

Precise date began unknown:

Key Individuals' Details:

D. B. Jayatilleke, N. M. Perera, C. R. de Silva (Secretary), S. A. Wickremasinghe.

Connections:

Fenner Brockway, Rajani Palme Dutt, Philip Goonewardene, Pieter Keneuman, Harold Laski, Krishna Menon, Selina Perera, Shapurji Saklatvala, Drummond Shiels.

Tags for Making Britain:

India League

About:

The India League was a Britain-based organization whose aim was to campaign for full independence and self-government for India. The activist, lawyer and editor V. K. Krishna Menon was the driving force behind it. It evolved from the Commonwealth of India League (est. 1922) – which in turn evolved from Annie Besant’s Home Rule for India League (est. 1916). Menon became joint secretary of the Commonwealth of India League in 1928 and radicalized the organization, rejecting its objective of Dominion Status for the greater goal of full independence and alienating figures such as Besant in the process. It was in the early 1930s, with Menon at its helm, that the organization flourished, expanding into multiple branches across London and in a range of other British cities including Bournemouth, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Dublin, Hull, Lancashire, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield, Southampton and Wolverhampton.

The India League sought to raise consciousness among the British people of the injustice of British colonial rule in India and to mobilize them to protest against it. Organized into a range of committees, including a Women’s Committee and an Action Committee, its active members did so through a variety of means and on a voluntary, unpaid basis. For example, its Parliamentary Committee lobbied MPs – several of whom spoke on behalf of the League in the House of Commons – as well as arranging for Indians to address the House of Commons, and discussing policy based on events and opinion in India. Menon, as well as other members of the executive, addressed a variety of different audiences (workers, women’s groups, church-goers) throughout the country, and spoke at meetings hosted by several organizations including the Labour Party, the Communist Party, and the Fabian Society. The League also organized public meetings to celebrate 'Independence Day' and Tagore’s birthday, and to commemorate the Amritsar Massacre, for example. In addition, it published numerous pamphlets, treatises and newspaper articles on the plight of India, countering government propaganda and misinformation. Its own organs included Indian News (Newsindia) and the Information Bulletin.

The League’s activities were closely linked to events in India. Julius Silverman, former chair of the Birmingham branch, describes it as ‘the Sister Organization of the Congress Party in India’ (p. 844). The strength of this relationship was due in part to the friendship between Menon and Jawaharlal Nehru, and the League gave receptions for Nehru on his visits to England in the 1930s. While the League languished at the beginning of the Second World War, when Britain’s political focus lay elsewhere, the Quit India resolution in 1942 and subsequent jailing of Nehru, Gandhi and other Congress leaders saw an increase in the organization’s energy, as did the Bengal famine of 1943. In 1932, Krishna Menon formed an India League delegation with Monica Whately, Ellen Wilkinson and Leonard Matters to investigate conditions in India. Their findings, which included shocking details of political repression, torture and starvation, were published on their return and the book was banned in India.

The India League’s membership was largely elite and predominantly British, although several Indians and Ceylonese resident in or visiting England, including numerous students, did attend meetings. In order to attract more support among the South Asian working classes in Britain, the League established its East End branch in the early 1940s. The organization continued to function after independence, adapting its aims to forging strong links between India and Britain, as well as to working towards the emancipation of people across the globe. Indeed, despite its primary focus on India, the League was internationalist in its outlook throughout, perceiving India’s struggle for freedom as part of a larger struggle against imperialism and capitalism.

Published works:

Brailsford, H. N., How it Looks from India

Bristol Branch, The Peril in India. A Reply to the Daily Mail

Condition of India: Being the Report of the Delegation Sent to India by the India League in 1932 (1933)

Conflict in India (1942)

Freeman, Peter, Our Duty to India

Graham, Margaret, India: Our Responsibilities

Indian National Congress, India Denounces British Imperialism; read the suppressed statement of All India Congress on Sept 14, 1939 (1939)

Kalam, Azad Abdul, India’s Choice (1940)

Menon, V. K. Krishna, Why Must India Fight? (1940)

Menon, V. K. Krishna, Britain’s Prisoner (1941)

Menon, V. K. Krishna, India, Britain and Freedom (1941)

Menon, V. K. Krishna, The Situation in India (1943)

Menon, V. K. Krishna, Unity with India against Fascism (1943)

Nehru, Jawaharlal, Peace and India (1938)

Nehru, Jawaharlal, The Parting of the Ways and the Viceroy–Gandhi Correspondence (1940)

Nehru, Jawaharlal, What India Wants (1942)

The Parable of a Conquered State

Plantation Labour in India, preface by A. A. Purcell

Rao, B. Shiva, Indian Labour and Self-Government

Sorensen, Reginald, Famine, Politics and Mr Amery (1944)

Example:

L/PJ/12/448, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras, p. 216

Other names:

Commonwealth of India League

Secondary works:

Arora, K. C., Indian Natonalist Movement in Britain, 1930-1949 (New Delhi: Inter-India Publications, 1992)

Chakravarty, Suhash, V. K. Krishna Menon and the India League, Vols 1 & 2 (New Delhi: Har-Anand, 1997)

Chakravarty, Suhash, Crusader Extraordinary: Krishna Menon and the India League, 1932–6 (New Delhi: India Research Press, 2006)

Silverman, Julius, ‘The India League’, in B. N. Pande (ed.) A Centenary History of the Indian National Congress, Vol. 3: 1935-1947 (New Delhi: All India Congress Committee/Vikas Publishing, 1985)

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002)

Content:

This Indian Political Intelligence files documents the activities of the India League in the early 1930s. It has extensive documentation of the 1932 India League delegation to investigate conditions in India, in particular. The extract is taken from a letter from Bertrand Russell, chairman of the India League, addressed to Mr Butler of the India Office. It is dated 8 November 1932.

Date began:

01 Jan 1928

Extract:

I should be very glad if you could come to a small meeting on Monday evening, the 21^st instant, at 8 pm, to meet the members of the India League Delegation on their return from India.

We are inviting a few people who are interested in India to hear the Delegates talk of their interesting experiences and to have an opportunity of discussing personally with them the present situation out there.

Mr and Mrs J. F. Horrabin have very kindly allowed us to hold this meeting in their house at 72, Gower Street, WC1.

[Annotation by India Office official]
The public meeting is to be on the 26^th, I think, and any public counterblast should be issued either at it or simultaneously or both. I agree that this private meeting would be no good for counterpropaganda, but it would be useful to have a spy there.

Precise date began unknown:

Key Individuals' Details:

Horace Alexander (exec), Bhicoo Batlivala (exec), Asha Bhattacharya (exec), K. C. Bhattacharya (exec), H. N. Brailsford (committee for action), Reginald Bridgeman (exec), Fenner Brockway (exec), P. S. Chaudhry (secretary, Dublin branch), A. J. Cook (exec), Lord Farringdon (exec), Peter Freeman (chair, 1930-2), Dr H. J. Handoo (exec), Mrs Jai Kshori Handoo (women’s committee), Gulab Hassan (secretary, Newcastle branch), George Hicks (parliamentary committee), J. F. Horrabin (vice-chair, early 1930s, committee for action), Winifred Horrabin (exec), George Lansbury (committee for action), Harold Laski (president, 1930-49, and committee for action), Fred Longden (exec), James Marley (secretary), Leonard Matters (1932 delegation to investigate conditions in India), V. K. Krishna Menon (hon. secretary, 1928-47; president, 1947-74), Syed Mohamedi (exec), Mrs Bimla Nehru (women’s committee), Brijlal Nehru (exec and chair of women’s committee), Miss M. Nicholson (exec), Anna Pollack (often acted as assistant secretary) Dhani Ram Prem (secretary, Birmingham branch), A. A. Purcell (Indian labour committee), Bertrand Russell (chair, 1932-9, committee for action), Julius Silverman (chair, Birmingham branch), Bridget Tunnard (administrative secretary, until 1971), Wilfred Wellcock (exec and women’s committee), Monica Whately (exec and 1932 delegation to investigate conditions in India), Anne C. Wilkinson (treasurer), Ellen Wilkinson (1932 delegation to investigate conditions in India), Tom Williams (parliamentary secretary and committee for action), Dorothy Woodman (committee for action), Commander Edgar Young (exec).

Relevance:

Bertrand Russell’s authorship of this letter and the Horrabins’ hosting of the meeting emphasize the involvement of British intellectual and political figures in the campaign for Indian independence – and the success of Krishna Menon and the India League in attracting British involvement. It is suggestive of the cross-cultural interaction that took place in the left wing of the political sphere, transgressing racial and cultural boundaries, and the location of anti-imperial activism at the heart of empire. The annotation by the India Office official underlines the extent of their surveillance of anti-colonial activists, whether Indian or British.

Connections:

Mulk Raj Anand, C. F. Andrews, Tarapada Basu, Annie Besant, Aneurin Bevan, P. C. Bhandari, Vera Brittain, B. B. Ray Chaudhuri, Mrs Ray Chaudhuri, Venu Chitale, Savitri Chowdhary, G. D. H. Cole, Jean Cole, Elizabeth Collard, A. J. Cook, Isabel Cripps, P. T. Dalal, S. K. Datta, R. J. Deshpande, Joseph Devli, Rajani Palme Dutt, Michael Foot, Feroze Gandhi, Indira Nehru, Pran Nath Haksar, Agatha Harrison, Laurence Housman, C. E. M. Joad, Sunder Kabadia, C. L. Katial, Dr Kumaria, Freda Laski, Professor Madhusudan, M. Majumdar, Kingsley Martin, Aubrey Menen, S. Menon-Marath, James Marley, S. P. Mitra, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajni Patel, Marion Phillips, H. L. Polak, Renuka Ray, Paul Robeson, Marie Seton, Krishnarao Shelvankar, Mary Shelvankar, Harbhajan Singh, Reval Singh, Marthe Sinha, Sasadhar Sinha, Donald Soper, Lady Sorensen, Reginald Sorensen, T. Subasinghe, J. P. Thompson, J. Vijaya-Tunga, S. A. Wickremasinghe.

Archive source:

L/PJ/12/448-56, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Krisha Menon Papers, Nehru Memorial Library and Museum, Teen Murti, New Delhi

‘India League Collection with Handbills, 1941-1960’, Serial No. 439, Nehru Memorial Library and Museum, Teen Murti, New Delhi

‘Documents Relating to the India League’, Miscellaneous Microform Collections, Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge

Organization location:

146 Strand, London; 165 Strand, London.

Location

146 Strand

London, WC2R 0PT

United Kingdom

See map: Google Maps

Involved in events details:

'Independence Day' and Republic Day (regular meetings)

Labour Party conferences

Simon Commission

Quit India Movement, 1942

Tags for Making Britain:

Members of Parliament

anti-imperialism

anti-capitalism

swaraj

Reginald Sorensen

About:

Reginald Sorensen was a politician and Unitarian clergyman. Sorensen became a member of the Liberal Christian League and was influenced by Rev. Reginald John Campbell. Sorensen joined the Finsbury branch of the Independent Labour Party in 1908. In the 1920s he stood unsuccessfully as a Labour candidate for Southampton. He was elected to Parliament for Leyton West in 1929. His brother in law, Fenner Brockway, served at the same time as him as an MP for Leyton East. Both lost their seats in the 1931 General Election. But Sorensen regained his seat in 1935.

Sorensen was a supporter of anti-colonial liberation movements. He was part of the Fabian Colonial Bureau. In the 1930s, Sorensen became a supporter of the India League. Although he had many disagreements with Krishna Menon, they had similar views about Indian self-determination. By 1937, he became the Parliamentary Secretary of the India League, a position he shared with Tom Williams. Sorensen co-organised the National Independence Day demonstration which took place on 26 January 1938 in Trafalgar Square, which attracted around 1,000 people in an expression of solidarity with the Republicans fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and the struggles in China and Abyssinia. He also co-organized the India League’s Independence Day event in 1939. Sorensen regularly chaired India League meetings or spoke at events. He also challenged the British Government’s position on India in Parliament.

In 1946, he was part of the Government deputation to India, led by Robert Richards. While a staunch supporter of Indian independence, he was not in favour of the partition of the subcontinent. In 1964, he was given a life peerage. He died in 1971.

Published works:

Aden: The Protectorate and the Yemen (London: Fabian International & Commonwealth Bureaux, 1961)

Famine, Politics - and Mr. Amery (London: India League, 1944)

For Sanity and Humanity (London: R. W. Sorensen, 1943)

God and Bread (Walthamstow: Guild Shop, 192?)

I Believe in Man (London: Lindesey Press, 1970)

India and the Atlantic Charta (London: India League, 1942)

The Liberty of the Subject (London: United Kingdom Temperence Alliance, 1964)

Men or Sheep? (Ripley: J. S. Reynolds, 192?)

My Impression of India (London: Merdian, 1946)

The New Generation (Leicester: Blackfriars Press, 192?)

The 'Red Flag' and Patriotism (Southampton: Hobbs & Son, 192?)

'These things shall be' - But What Thinks the Bookmaker? (Walthamstow: R. Sorensen, 1940)

Tolpuddle or 'Who's afeared.' A Democratic Epioside in Three Acts (London: T. C. Foley, 1929)

Date of birth:

19 Jun 1881

Connections:

Surat Alley, Aftab Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, Ben Bradley, P. C. Bhandari, H.N. Brailsford, Reginald Bridgeman, Fenner Brockway, Stafford Cripps, Rajani Palme Dutt, Michael Foot, M. K. Gandhi, Agatha Harrison, J. F. Horrabin, C. L. R. James, C. L. Katial, Jomo Kenyatta, Diwan Chaman Lal, George Lansbury, Harold Laski, Krishna Menon, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajni Patel, Harry Pollitt, Bertrand Russell, Krishnarao Shelvankar, B. Shiva Rao, Sehri Saklatvala, Sasadhar Sinha, Mul Raj Soni, Edward J. Thompson, S. A. Wickremasinghe, Ellen Wilkinson.

Secondary works:

Howe, Stephen, Anticolonialism in British Politics: the Left and the End of Empire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993)

Owen, Nicholas, The British Left and India: Metropolitan Anti-imperialism, 1885-1947 (Oxford: OUP, 2007)

Philpot, Terry, ‘Sorensen, Reginald William, Baron Sorensen (1891–1971)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2008) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/75406]

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Archive source:

L/PJ/12/448-56, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester

Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, Rhodes House, Oxford

City of birth:

Islington, London

Other names:

Reginald William Sorensen

Date of death:

08 Oct 1971

Location of death:

Leytonstone

Location:

Walthamstow, London

Tags for Making Britain:

India League

political activism

anti-imperialism

Leonard Woolf

About:

Leonard Sidney Woolf was born in Kensington, London, to Sidney Woolf QC and Marie de Jongh. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he befriended Saxon Sydney-Turner, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, and Thoby Stephen (son of Sir Leslie Stephen, brother of Virginia and Vanessa). Out of these friendships of the so-called 'Apostles' the 'Bloomsbury Group' emerged.

In 1904, Woolf joined the Colonial Civil Service in Ceylon but resigned in 1912 because of his growing disillusionment with imperialism, but also because he had fallen in love with Virginia Stephen. Leonard and Virginia married in 1912 and Virginia took Leonard's family name. After Virginia's death in 1941, Woolf continued to oversee and publish her uncollected essays and a selection of her diaries.

Woolf was a member of the Fabian Society and in 1916 wrote two Fabian reports that were to become part of the basis of the League of Nations. His anti-imperialism, socialism, and internationalism found expression in a number of books and pamphlets, and from 1919 to 1945 he served as secretary to the Labour Party's advisory committees on international and imperial questions. Woolf also became involved in editing the Nation, the Political Quarterly and the New Statesman. More significantly, he and Virginia established the Hogarth Press in 1917. In 1942, he provided the Introduction to Mulk Raj Anand's Letters to India.

Leonard Woolf suffered a stroke and died on 14 August 1969 at Monk's House, a cottage in Rodmell he and Virginia had bought in 1919.

Published works:

The Village in the Jungle (London: Edward Arnold, 1913)

The Wise Virgins: A Story of Words, Opinions, and a Few Emotions (London: Edward Arnold, 1914)

Co-Operation and the Future of Industry (London: Allen & Unwin, 1918)

Economic Imperialism (London and New York: Swarthmore, 1920)

Empire and Commerce in Africa: A Study in Economic Imperialism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1920)

Mandates and Empire (League of Nations Union, 1920)

International Co-Operative Trade (London: Fabian, 1922)

After the Deluge: A Study of Communal Psychology (London: Hogarth Press, 1931)

The Intelligent Man's Way to Prevent War (London: Gollancz, 1933)

(with Mary Adams) The Modern State (London: Allen & Unwin, 1933)

(with Virginia Woolf) Quack, Quack!: Essays on Unreason and Superstition in Poltics, Belief and Thought (London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf, 1935)

After the Deluge, Vol. 2 (London: Hogarth Press, 1939)

Barbarians at the Gate (London: Victor Gollancz, 1939)

The Hotel (London: Hogarth Press, 1939)

The War for Peace (London: Routledge, 1940)

Foreign Policy: The Labour Party's Dilemma (London: Fabian Publications, 1947)

Principia Politica: A Study of Communal Psychology (London: Hogarth Press, 1953)

Sowing: An Autobiography of the Years 1880-1904 (London: Hogarth Press, 1960)

Growing: An Autobiography of the Years 1904-1911 (London: Hogarth Press, 1961)

Diaries in Ceylon, 1908-1911. Records of a Colonial Administrator. Being the Official Diaries Maintained by Leonard Woolf While Assistant Government Agent of the Hambantota District, Ceylon, During the Period August 1908 to May 1911. Edited with a Preface by Leonard Woolf. And, Stories from the East: Three Short Stories on Ceylon by Leonard Woolf (Dehiwala, 1962)

Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the Years 1911-1918 (London: Hogarth Press, 1964)

A Calendar of Consolation: A Comforting Thought for Every Day in the Year (London: Hogarth Press, 1967)

Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919-1939 (London: Hogarth Press, 1967)

The Journey Not the Arrival Matters: An Autobiography of the Years 1939-1969 (London: Hogarth Press, 1969)

In Savage Times: Leonard Woolf on Peace and War (Garland Publishing Inc, [1925-1944] 1973)

(with Frederic Spotts) Letters of Leonard Woolf (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989)

(with Trekkie Ritchie Parsons and Judith Adamson) Love Letters (London: Chatto & Windus, 2001)

A Tale Told by Moonlight (London: Hesperus, 2006)

Date of birth:

25 Nov 1880

Connections:

Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Robert Graves, Hsiao Ch'ien, Aldous Huxley, John Maynard Keynes, Harold Laski, Desmond MacCarthy, G. E. Moore, Herbert Read, Bertrand Russell, Nikhil Sen, Ranjee Shahani, Thoby Stephen, Lytton Strachey, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Virginia Woolf.

Contributions to periodicals:

Nation

Nation and Athenaeum (literary editor, 1923-30)

New Statesman

Political Quarterly (co-founder)

Secondary works:

Bell, Quentin, Virginia Woolf: A Biography (London: Hogarth, 1972)

Boehmer, Elleke, Empire, the Nation and the Postcolonial (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)

Coates, Irene, Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf?: A Case for the Sanity of Virginia Woolf (New York: SoHo Press, 2000)

Cole, M., 'Woolf, Leonard Sidney', in Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville (eds) Dictionary of Labour Biography, Vol. 5 (London: Macmillan, 1979)

Crick, Bernard R., Robson, William Alexander and Woolf, Leonard, Protest and Discontent (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970)

De Silva, M. C. W. Prabhath, Leonard Woolf, A British Civil Servant as a Judge in the Hambantora District of Colonial Sri Lanka, 1908-1911 (Kandy, Sri Lanka: M. C. W. P. de Silva, 1996)

Funke, Sarah, Virginia & Leonard Woolf (New York: Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, 2002)

Glendinning, Victoria, Leonard Woolf (London: Simon & Schuster, 2006)

Lee, Hermione, Virginia Woolf: A Biography (London: Chatto & Windus, 1996)

Luedeking, Leila, and Edmonds, Michael, Leonard Woolf: A Bibliography (Winchester: St Paul's Bibliographies, 1992)

Meyerowitz, Selma S., Leonard Woolf (Boston: Twayne, 1982)

Ondaatje, Christopher, Woolf in Ceylon: An Imperial Journey in the Shadow of Leonard Woolf, 1904-1911 (Toronto, Ont.: HarperCollins, 2005)

Rosenbaum, S. P., Edwardian Bloomsbury (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994)

Rosenbaum, S. P., Georgian Bloomsbury: The Early Literary History of the Bloomsbury Group, 1910-1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)

Rosenbaum, S. P., Victorian Bloomsbury: The Early Literary History of the Bloomsbury Group (London: Macmillan, 1987)

Rosenbaum, S. P., 'Woolf, Leonard Sidney (1880-1960)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37019]

Rosenfeld, Natania, Outsiders Together: Virginia and Leonard Woolf (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)

Seaburg, Alan, 52 Tavistock Square: Poems (Cambridge, MA: Anne Miniver Press, 1994)

Spater, George, and Parsons, Ian, A Marriage of True Minds: An Intimate Portrait of Leonard and Virginia Woolf (London: Hogarth Press, 1977)

Willis, J. H., Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press, 1917-41 (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1992)

Wilson, Duncan, and Eisenberg, J., Leonard Woolf: A Political Biography (London: Hogarth Press, 1978)

Wilson, Jean Moorcroft, Leonard Woolf: Pivot or Outsider of Bloomsbury (London: Cecil Woolf, 1994)

Wilson, Peter, The International Theory of Leonard Woolf (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)

Woolf, Virginia, The Letters of Virginia Woolf (London: Hogarth, 1980)

Woolf, Virginia, Bell, Anne Olivier and McNeillie, Andrew, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols (London: Hogarth, 1977-1984)

Woolmer, J. Howard, and Gaither, Mary E., Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946, new and revised edn (Winchester: St Paul's Bibliographies, 1986)

Archive source:

Correspondence and literary papers, Berg Collection of the New York Public Library

Correspondence, family papers and literary Mss, University of Sussex Special Collections

University of Texas, Austin

Letters to John Lehmann, Add. MS 56234, British Library, St Pancras

Letters to Saxon Sydney-Turner, Huntington Library, San Marino, California

Letters to Julian Bell, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to John Maynard Keynes and Lady Keynes, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to G. H. W. Rylands, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Charleston Papers, King's College, Cambridge

Letters to William Plomer, University of Durham Library

Letters to Norah Smallwood, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds