politician

Julius Silverman

About: 

Julius Silverman was a Labour politician and MP. He had a long-standing association with Indian organizations in Britain. He was chairman for the Birmingham branch of Krishna Menon's India League and also attended meetings of the Committee of Indian Congressmen. As a Birmingham councillor, Silverman took up the causes of the South Asian community in his ward and lobbied on their behalf. He was good friends with Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Nehru. Julius Silverman became President of the India League in 1947 and its Chairman in 1974.

Date of birth: 
08 Dec 1905
Secondary works: 

Dalyell, Tam, 'Obituary: Julius Silverman', The Independent (24 September 1996)

Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/448-456, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

City of birth: 
Leeds
Country of birth: 
England
Date of death: 
21 Sep 1996
Location of death: 
Birmingham, England

Sankaran Nair

About: 

Sankaran Nair was a lawyer who became a Judge in the Madras High Court in 1908. He played an active role in the Indian National Congress and served as their president in 1897. He founded and edited The Madras Review and The Madras Law Journal. In 1915, he became a member of the India Council.

Sankaran Nair visited Britain in 1920 as part of the Indian deputation to the Southborough Committee on Indian franchise. He had travelled with Herabai Tata and Mithan Lam to put forward the case for female suffreage in India. He served as councillor to the Secretary of State for India in London 1920-1. During his time in Britain he gave a number of addresses and was involved in a campaign for a residential club for Indian female students in London.

Sankaran Nair continued to pursue an active political career when he returned to India. In 1922 he wrote Gandhi and Anarchy which criticized Gandhi's noncooperation movement but also criticized Michael O'Dwyer and British suppression. He was chair of the All-India Committee which met with the Simon Commission in 1928-9.

Published works: 

Gandhi and Anarchy (Indore: Holkar State Printing Press, 1922)

Autobiography (Madras: M. Nair, 1966)

Date of birth: 
11 Jul 1857
Connections: 

G. K. Chettur (nephew), Mithan J. Lam, Herabai Tata.

Britain and India Association

Reviews: 

Britain and India Journal (mentions Nair's activities in Britain in 1920)

City of birth: 
Kerala
Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Chettur Sankaran Nair

Date of death: 
24 Apr 1934
Location of death: 
Madras, India
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1920
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1920-1

Tags for Making Britain: 

Shapurji Saklatvala

About: 

The nephew of J. N. Tata, Shapurji Saklatvala travelled to England in 1905 to recuperate from malaria and to manage the Tata company office in Manchester. He married Sarah Marsh in 1907 (a waitress he had met at the hydro in Matlock where he had been treated). They moved to London in 1907 and Saklatvala joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1909. In 1921, Saklatvala was adopted as the Labour candidate for Battersea North, despite joining the Communist Party in the same year. In November 1922, he won the seat for Labour and was defeated in December 1923. He regained the seat in October 1924, when he stood as a Communist representative and held the seat until 1929. Saklatvala was the 3rd Asian to become an MP in Britain (all incidentally of Parsee background).

Saklatvala raised Indian issues in Parliament. He was a member of the Indian Home Rule League (founded in 1916). He was also a founder member of the Workers' Welfare League in 1917. This League was initially concerned with the working conditions of Indian seamen in London, but soon widened its objectives to improve the position of all types of Indian workers. He was an influential figure to Indian students in London in the 1920s and 1930s, but was banned from returning to India because of his Communist affiliations. He died in his home in London in January 1936 and was buried in the Parsee burial ground in Brockwood, Surrey.

Date of birth: 
28 Mar 1874
Connections: 

Mulk Raj Anand, Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree (previous Asian MP), Clemens Palme Dutt (CPGB), Rajani Palme Dutt (CPGB), Jomo Kenyatta, Harold Laski, Krishna Menon, Dadabhai Naoroji (previous Asian MP), Walter Neubald, George Padmore, Sehri Saklatvala (daughter), S. A. Wickremasinghe.

Member of Communist Party, Independent Labour Party, India Home Rule League, Social Democratic Foundation, Workers' Welfare League

Relevance: 

Hinnells, John R., Zoroastrians in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) 

Hinnells, John R., The Zoroastrian Diaspora: Religion and Migration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)

Squires, Mike, ‘Saklatvala, Shapurji (1874–1936)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35909] 

Squires, Mike, Saklatvala: A Political Biography (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990)

Saklatvala, Sehri, The Fifth Commandment: A Biography of Shapurji Saklatvala (Salford: Miranda Press, 1991)

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 2002)

Wadsworth, Marc, Comrade Sak: Shapurji Saklatvala, A Political Biography (London: Peepal Tree, 1998)

Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/406, Scotland Yard Report on Central Association of Indian Students, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras.

Communist Party Archive, People's History Museum, Manchester

Saklatvala Papers, Mss Eur D1173, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras.

City of birth: 
Bombay
Country of birth: 
India
Current name city of birth: 
Mumbai
Current name country of birth: 
India

Locations

Matlock,
Derbyshire , DE4 3NZ
United Kingdom
53° 7' 23.2356" N, 1° 33' 37.6452" W
2 St Albans Villas,
Highgate Road,
London , NW5 1QY
United Kingdom
51° 33' 6.3252" N, 0° 8' 28.0428" W
Date of death: 
16 Jan 1936
Location of death: 
London, England
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1905-36

Fazl-I-Husain

About: 

Fazl-i-Husain travelled to Britain in 1898 to further his education. He was admitted to Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1899 and graduated with a BA in 1901. He had intended to enter the Indian Civil Service (ICS) but was unsuccessful in the exams. He studied Oriental languages and law at Cambridge and was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1901. Husain was elected President of the Cambridge Majlis in January 1901 and involved in writing a telegram of condolence to Edward VII upon the death of Queen Victoria.

Husain returned to the Punjab in 1901 and set up a law practice in Sialkot. He then practised at the Punjab High Court in Lahore until 1920. He was also actively involved with the Punjab branch of the Muslim League and became a Minister in the Punjab Government, 1921-30. He then began to break away from Jinnah and the Muslim League to build up the Unionist Party in Punjab. He was a member of the Viceroy's Council, 1929-35, and died in 1936.

Date of birth: 
14 Jun 1877
Secondary works: 

Ahmad, Waheed (ed.), Letters of Mian Fazl-i-Husain (Lahore: Research Society of Pakistan, 1976)

Husain, M. Azim, Fazl-i-Husain: A Political Biography (Bombay: Longmans Green, 1946)

Moore, R. J., The Crisis of Indian Unity 1917-1940 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974)

Page, D. J. A., 'Prelude to Partition: All-India Moslem Politics, 1920-32', unpublished DPhil thesis (University of Oxford, 1974)

Archive source: 

Mss Eur E352, private papers, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

City of birth: 
Peshawar, Punjab
Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Mian Fazl-i-Husain

Fazli Husain

Location

Christ's College Cambridge, CB2 3BU
United Kingdom
52° 10' 21.3528" N, 0° 6' 40.3992" E
Date of death: 
09 Jul 1936
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
19 Sep 1898
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1898-1901

Tags for Making Britain: 

Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree

About: 

M. M. Bhownaggree, a Parsee from Bombay, was elected as Conservative MP for Bethnal Green in 1895 (defeating George Howell). He was the second Indian to be elected to Parliament, and the first Tory. Bhownaggree retained his seat in the next General Election of 1900, but lost his seat in 1906. Seen by many as a Conservative tool to counteract the influence of Dadabhai Naoroji and the Indian Parliamentary Party, Bhownaggree did endeavour to bring Indian issues to the fore in the House of Commons, in particular the treatment of Indians in South Africa. Despite his concerns about Indians in South Africa, Bhownaggree supported the Boer War and was seen as a supporter of British Imperialism.

Bhownaggree arrived in Britain in 1882, with an allowance from the Maharaja of Bhavanagar to study law. He was called to the Bar in 1885 and was one of the Commissioners of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition at South Kensington in 1886. Bhownaggree donated money towards the Imperial Institute in South Kensington and a window to St Lukes, Redcliffe Square, in memory of his sister. He founded a training home for nurses, a public gymnasium in London and donated money to many other local associations. In 1897, Bhownaggree was promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE).

He died in London in 1933, aged 82.

Date of birth: 
15 Aug 1851
Reviews: 

The Indian Political Estimate of Mr. Bhavnagri, M.P. / The Bhavnagri Boom Exposed (Bombay: n.p., 1897)

The Eastern Argus (during elections), The Morning Leader, Daily Graphic, Punch

Obituary in The Times

Secondary works: 

Hinnells, John R., Zoroastrians in Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)

Hinnells, John R. and Ralph, Omar, Bhownaggree Member of Parliament 1895-1906 (London: Hansib, 1995)

McLeod, John, 'Mourning, Philanthropy, and M. M. Bhownaggree's road to Parliament' in John R. Hinnells and Alan Williams (eds) Parsis in India and the Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2007)

Monk, C. J. , ‘“Member for India?” The Parliamentary Lives of Dadabhai Naoroji (MP: 1892-1895) and Mancherjee Bhownaggree (MP: 1895-1906)’, M.Phil Thesis (Manchester University, 1985)

Mukherjee, Sumita, ‘‘Narrow-majority’ and ‘Bow-and-agree’: Public Attitudes Towards the Elections of the First Asian MPs in Britain, Dadabhai Naoroji and Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree, 1885-1906.’ Journal of the Oxford University History Society 2 (Michaelmas 2004)

Ridley, Jane, ‘Bhownaggree, Sir Mancherjee Merwanjee (1851–1933)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31875]

Schneer, Jonathan, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (London: Yale University Press, 1999) 

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

Archive source: 

Correspondence with Sir Birdwood, Mss Eur F216, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Involved in events: 

Colonial and Indian Exhibition, 1886

General Elections, 1895, 1900, 1905

City of birth: 
Bombay
Country of birth: 
India
Current name city of birth: 
Mumbai
Other names: 

otherwise spelt Bhownagree

Location

London, E2 9NP
United Kingdom
51° 31' 52.9428" N, 0° 3' 23.3388" W
Date of death: 
14 Nov 1933
Location of death: 
London, England
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1882
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1882-1933

Ellen Wilkinson

About: 

Ellen Wilkinson was a Labour politician and campaigner. She was an active member of the India League. In 1932, she was part of the League's delegation to India with Monica Whately, Krishna Menon and Leonard Matters. She was also a supporter of the Left Book Club. She was an outspoken opponent of the Spanish Civil War and campaigned against fascism.

Published works: 

Peeps at Politicians (London: P. Allan, 1930)

(with Monica Whately, Leonard W. Matters and V. K. Krishna Menon) Condition of India: Being the Report of the Delegation Sent to India by the India League in 1932 (London: Essential News, 1934)

Why Fascism (London: Selwyn and Blount, 1934)

Why War? A Handbook for Those Who Will Take Part in the Second World War (London: N.C.L.C. Publishing Society, 1934)

We Saw in Spain (Labour Party, 1937)

The Town that was Murdered: The Lfe-Story of Jarrow (London: Gollancz, 1939) [Left Book Club edition]

Date of birth: 
08 Oct 1891
Secondary works: 

Harrison, Brian, ‘Wilkinson, Ellen Cicely (1891–1947)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36902]

Vernon, Betty D., Ellen Wilkinson, 1887-1947 (London: Croom Helm, 1982)

City of birth: 
Manchester
Country of birth: 
England
Date of death: 
06 Feb 1947
Location of death: 
London
Location: 

London

Stafford Cripps

About: 

Stafford Cripps was born in 1889 in London to Charles Alfred Cripps and his wife Theresa. His father was a Conservative MP and later a Labour cabinet minister.

After turning down a scholarship to New College, Oxford, in 1907 he studied for an MSc degree at University College, London. In 1911, he married Isobel Cripps (née Swithinbank), whom he had met a year earlier when helping out with his father's campaign. When war broke out in 1914, Cripps, still recovering from a breakdown, did not join the forces. Instead, he became a lorry driver for the Red Cross. In 1929, Cripps joined the Labour Party and became a minister in Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government the year after. His campaign to become an MP was supported by Sukhsagar Datta. In 1933 he became chairman of the Socialist League, which he dissolved in 1937. Cripps was also heavily involved with the Left Book Club.

At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Cripps went on a tour of India, China, Russia and the United States. Cripps' first visit to India was intended to explore the possibility of self-government; he was warmly received by Jawaharlal Nehru. After India he went to China where he befriended Chiang Kai-shek, then he went to Russia where he met Foreign Minister Molotov. From June 1940 to January 1942 he served as the British Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Cripps succeeded in bringing Russia and Britain together as allies during the war, and consequently, in February 1942, Churchill brought Cripps into the government as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons. Only a month later, on 22 March, Cripps would fly to Delhi on the so-called Cripps Mission, which was intended to secure Indian self-government after the war in return for support in the British war effort. The Cripps Mission failed and the Indian National Congress and the British Government became further estranged. The failure of the mission was the catalyst for Gandhi  to launch the Quit India movement in August 1942. After his return to Britain, Cripps' status within the Government had diminished and in the autumn of that year he resigned from the War Cabinet and took up the post of Minister of Aircraft Production.

After Clement Attlee's Labour victory in 1945, Cripps remained interested in the question of Indian independence, and from March to June 1946 Cripps travelled to India for the third time, along with Secretary of State, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, and Lord of the Admiralty, A. V. Alexander. The Cabinet Mission's offer of a three-tier structure was accepted by Jinnah and the Muslim League but Gandhi and the Congress turned it down. Cripps realized that the future government of India lay in the hands of the Indian leaders. By the end of 1946, at the behest of Cripps, Attlee appointed Lord Mountbatten the last Viceroy of India and set a date for British withdrawal. This paved the way to Independence and Partition in 1947.

In 1947, Cripps was appointed Minister for Economic Affairs but took over the post of Chancellor of Exchequer six weeks later. He fought hard to restore the British economy in the post-war years. At this point, Cripps was also seriously ill and was reconvalescing at the Bircher Benner clinic in Zürich. Cripps resigned as Chancellor and as MP on 20 October 1950 on grounds of ill health. He died at the Bircher Benner Clinic on 21 April 1952.

Published works: 

The Choice for Britain: Capitalism in Crisis, vol. 4 (London: Socialist League, 1934)

Why This Socialism? (London: Victor Gollancz, 1934)

'National' Fascism in Britain (London: Socialist League, 1935)

(with Michael Foot) The Struggle for Peace (London: Victor Gollancz, 1936)

(with James Maxton and Harry Pollitt), The Unity Campaign (London: National Unity Campaign Committee, 1937)

Empire (Speech Delivered at the Conference on Peace and Empire Organised by the India League and the London Federation of Peace Councils (London: India League, 1938)

Democracy Up-to-Date: Some Practical Suggestions for the Reorganization of the Politcal and Parliamentary System (London: Allen & Unwin, 1939)

The Petition: The Speech (London, 1939)

Shall the Spell be Broken? Rectorial Address the the University of Aberdeen Delivered on 6 February 1943 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1943)

Britain and Austria (London: Anglo-Austrian Democratic Society, 1945)

Towards Christian Democracy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1945)

Democracy Alive: A Selection from Recent Speeches ([S. I.]: Sidgwich and Jackson, 1946)

The Church and the World Economic Crisis (Westminster: Industrial Christian Fellowship, 1948)

The Survival of Christianity (London: World's Evangelical Alliance, 1948)

God in Our Work Religious Addresses ([S. I.]: Thomas Nelson and sons, 1949)

The Spiritual Crisis: A Sermon Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral (London: A. R. Mowbray & Co, 1950)

Stafford Cripps in Moscow, 1940-1942: Diaries and Papers, ed. by Gabriel Gorodetsky (Edgware: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007)

Are You a Worker? Where the Middle Class Stands ([S. I.]: Labour Party, n.d.)

Can Socialism Come by Constitutional Methods? (The Socialist League, n.d.)

Parliamentary Institutions and the Transition to Socialism (n.d.)

The Ultimate Aims of the Labour Party (Labour Party, n.d.)

Date of birth: 
24 Apr 1889
Connections: 

 Albert Alexander, Clement Attlee, Claude Auchinleck, Abul Kalam Azad, Barbara Castle, Winston Churchill, Sukhsagar Datta, Michael FootMohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Agatha Harrison, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Louis Johnson, Chiang Kai-shek, Harold Laski, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Lord Linlithgow, Krishna Menon, Naomi Mitchison, Lord Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru, George Padmore, Vallabhbhai Patel, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, Paul Robeson, Lord Wavell, Lord Zetland.

Contributions to periodicals: 
Secondary works: 

Addison, Christopher, Problems of a Socialist Government (London: Gollancz, 1933) 

Baume, Eric, India! We Call on the People of Britain!! (London: India League, 1942)

Bryant, Christopher, Stafford Cripps: The First Modern Chancellor (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997) 

Burgess, Simon, Stafford Cripps: A Political Life (London: Gollancz, 1999)

Chatterji, Prashanto K., The Cripps Mission, 22 March-11 April 1942: An In-Depth Study (Kolkata: Minerva Associates, 2004)

Clarke, Peter, The Cripps Version: The Life of Sir Stafford Cripps (London: Allen Lane, 2002)

Clarke, Peter, and Toye, Richard, 'Cripps, Sir (Richard) Stafford (1889-1952)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32630]

Cooke, Colin Arthur, The Life of Richard Stafford Cripps (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1957)

Coupland, Reginald, The Cripps Mission (London: Oxford University Press, 1942)

Economic Survey for 1947 (1947)

Estorick, Eric, Stafford Cripps: A Biography (London: William Heinemann, 1949)

Gorodetsky, Gabriel, Stafford Cripps' Mission to Moscow, 1940-42 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)

Hall, Robert Lowe, The Robert Hall Diaries, 1947-1953, ed. by Alec Cairncross (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989)

Harrison, Agatha, and Bailey, George William, India, 1939-1942: A Summary of Events up to and Including the Cripps Mission (London: National Peace Council, 1942)

India League Executive Committee, India and the British Proposals (London: India League, 1942)

Labour Party Annual Conference Report (1935)

Mishra, B. K., The Cripps Mission: A Reappraisal (New Delhi: Concept Pub. Co., 1982)

Nehru, Jawaharlal, Jawaharlal Nehru on the Cripps Mission: An Authoritative Statement on the Breakdown of the Negotiations at New Delhi (London: India League, 1942)

Patel, Harbans, Cripps Mission: The Whole Truth (New Delhi: Indus Pub. Co., 1990)

Patil, V. T., Jawaharlal Nehru and the Cripps Mission (Delhi: BR Pub. Corp., 1984)

Singh, Bhim Sen, The Cripps Mission: A Handiwork of British Imperialism (New Delhi: Usha, 1979)

Strauss, Patricia, Cripps: Advocate and Rebel (London: Victor Gollancz, 1943)

Subrahmanyam, M., Why Cripps Failed, 2nd edn (New Delhi: Hindustan Times Press, 1943)

Tyler, Froom, Cripps: A Portrait and a Prospect (London: G. G. Harrap & Co., 1942)

Weigold, Auriol, Churchill, Roosevelt, and India: Propaganda during World War II (London: Routledge, 2008)

Archive source: 

Private papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Private papers, Nuffield College, Oxford

CAB 127/57-154, Correspondence and papers, National Archives, Kew

Beatrice Webb Diary, Passfield MSS, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics

Corespondence with Clement Attlee,  Bodleian Library, Oxford

Correspondence with Lord Monckton,  Bodleian Library, Oxford

Correspondence with Arthur Creech Jones, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, Rhodes House, Oxford

Correspondence with Bristol South East Labour Party and Its Secretary H. E. Rogers, Bristol Record Office

Correspondence with A. V. Alexander, Churchill College, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge

Correspondence with Dame Caroline Haslett, Institution of Electrical Engineers, London

Correspondence with Sir B. H. Liddell Hart, Liddell Hart Centre, King's College, London

Correspondence with Huw T. Edwards, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

Correspondence with Thomas Jones, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

Correspondence with Lord Cherwell, Nuffield College, Oxford

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

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

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

Propaganda film footage (Ministry of Information), British Film Institute, National Film and Television Archive, London

Actuality footage, Film and Video Archive, Imperial War Museum

Documentary footage, Film and Video Archive, Imperial War Museum

News footage, Film and Video Archive, Imperial War Museum London

Current affairs recording, Sound Archive, British Library, St Pancras

15271, 'What Has Become of Us?', Channel 4, November 1994, Sound Archive, Imperial War Museum, London

Oral history interview, Sound Archive, Imperial War Museum, London

City of birth: 
London
Country of birth: 
England
Other names: 

Sir Richard Stafford Cripps

Date of death: 
21 Apr 1952
Location of death: 
Bircher Benner Clinic, Zurich, Switzerland

Fenner Brockway

About: 

Archibald Fenner Brockway was born in Calcutta, India, to missionary parents. At the age of 4 he was sent to Britain to live with his maternal grandparents in Rangemore. Aged 8, he started his education at the School for the Sons of Missionaries, Blackheath. With the Boer War, Brockway became interested in politics. At the age of 16, he left school and started work as a journalist, writing for a number of newspapers and interviewing the leading figures of the Left, such as H .G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. While working on the Daily News in 1907 he was sent to interview Keir Hardie, who became a big influence on him.

Brockway joined the Independent Labour Party in 1907. During this period he also attended meetings of the Fabian Society. He first met Jawaharlal Nehru in London in 1911, while Nehru was studying law. Nehru came to Oxford to hear Brockway speak on Indian independence. In 1912 Brockway took over the editorship of the Independent Labour Party’s newspaper Labour Leader.  He was a committed pacifist and during the First World War he joined the No-Conscription Fellowship. His strong opposition to British involvement in the First World War led to him being imprisoned several times in 1914-19. In 1922 Brockway became Organizing Secretary of the Independent Labour Party. From 1926 to 1929 he took over as editor of New Leader, the ILP’s renamed journal.

Brockway was a committed anti-imperialist. In 1919 he became editor of India and was the last Joint Secretary of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress, sharing the post with Syed Hussein. He moved the 1925 resolution at the Labour Party conference which committed the party to the independence of India. Gandhi invited Brockway to attend the Indian National Congress in Madras in 1927. In 1928 he was the first chairman of the League Against Imperialism. He joined the India League in 1929 and served on the Executive Commitee in the early 1930s. Fenner Brockway supported Krishna Menon in his argument that the League should campaign for India’s independence rather than Dominion status. He often spoke at League events and also supported other Indian organizations in Britain, especially those associated with Surat Alley. In 1930 he was suspended from Parliament for protesting against the imprisonment of Gandhi and Nehru and thousands of other Congressmen. He also wore a Gandhi cap in the House of Commons when protesting against the arrest of Congressmen for wearing it.

Brockway was part of a wide-ranging network of anti-colonial activists and organizations in London. He served as Chairman of the No More War Movement. During the 1930s, Brockway moved away from pacifism, supporting the International Brigades in their fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War as well as Britain’s involvement in the Second World War. Brockway served several times as an MP. He was made a Life Peer in 1964. He died on 28 April 1988.

Published works: 

98 Not Out (London: Quartet, 1986)

African Journeys (London: Victor Gollancz, 1955)

African Socialism (London: Bodley Head, 1963)

The Bloody Traffic (London: Gollancz, 1933)

Can Britain Disarm? A Reasoned Case in Fourteen Points (London: No More War Movement, 1930)

The Colonial Revolution (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1973)

The Coming Revolution (London: Independent Labour Party, 1932)

Death Pays a Dividend (London: Victor Gollancz, 1944)

India and its Government (London: Labour Publishing Company, 1921)

The Indian Crisis (London: Victor Gollancz, 1930)

Inside the Left: Thirty Years of Platform, Press, Prison and Parliament (London: Allen & Unwin, 1942)

A Week in India and Three Months in an Indian Hospital (London: The New Leader, 1928)

Worker’s Front (London: Secker & Warburg, 1938)

Example: 

Copy Extract Report by New Scotland Yard, dated 12 November 1930, L/PJ/12/356, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Date of birth: 
01 Nov 1888
Contributions to periodicals: 

Christian Commonwealth

Daily News

The Quiver

India

Labour Elector

Labour Leader (editor)

Examiner

New Leader (editor, 1926-9)

Extract: 

A Fenner Brockway M. P. then arrived. He said that Dominion Status certainly meant freedom materially but 'psychologically speaking', it was not exactly the same as independence. He said that some years ago Jawahar Lal Nehru [sic.], who was his guest, remarked that 'India would wake up only when she got independence'. He then spoke of the sprit of non-violence, and the moral it was teaching the whole world.

Secondary works: 

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

Howell, David, ‘Brockway, (Archibald) Fenner, Baron Brockway (1888–1988)’, rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39849]

Owen, Nicholas, The British Left and India: Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism, 1885-1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

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

Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/356, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/PJ/12/448-456, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Correspondence with the Independent Labour Party, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics

Correspondence relating to colonial questions, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, Rhodes House, Oxford

Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester

City of birth: 
Calcutta
Country of birth: 
India
Current name city of birth: 
Kolkata
Current name country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Archibald Fenner Brockway

Date of death: 
01 Apr 1988
Location of death: 
Watford General Hospital
Location: 

London

Mohammed Ali Jinnah

About: 

Mohammed Ali Jinnah was the founding father of Pakistan. He was the eldest of seven children born to Jinnabhai Poonja, a merchant, and his wife Mithibhai, and attended the Sind Madrassa then the Christian Mission High School, Karachi, where he failed to excel. He first travelled to Britain when just seventeen years old to take up an apprenticeship with the British managing agency Douglas Graham and Company, marrying his first wife Emibhai shortly before he set sail. Emibhai died just a few months later. Jinnah worked in accounts at the firm’s head office in the City of London, and lived in various lodgings including at 35 Russell Road, Kensington, the home of Mrs F. E. Page-Drake and her daughter. Once in London, he shortened his surname from Jinnahbhai and took to wearing tailored suits and silk ties. Just two or three months after his arrival in England, Jinnah left his apprenticeship to train as a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn. Fascinated by politics, he frequently viewed parliamentary debates from the visitor’s gallery at the House of Commons, and was present there to witness Dadabhai Naoroji’s maiden speech in 1893. He studied at the Reading Room of the British Museum, listened to speeches at Hyde Park Corner, visited friends at Oxford, and developed a keen interest in the theatre, even considering a stage career. He was called to the Bar in 1895 and returned to Bombay, India, the following year.

In Bombay, Jinnah joined the Indian National Congress and began to practice law, attaining a position in the chambers of the acting advocate-general, John Macpherson. He first attended the Indian National Congress in 1904, and in 1906 served as secretary to the Congress President, Naoroji, in the Calcutta sessions. In 1909 he was elected to the Muslim seat on the Bombay Legislative Council, and he joined the All-India Muslim League in 1913, becoming its President in 1916 and playing a key role in the Lucknow Pact which brought the Congress and League together on issues of self-government to make a united stand to the British. Jinnah made trips to London in 1913 and 1914 – the latter as chair of the Congress deputation to lobby parliament over their proposed Council of India bill. He also helped to found the All-India Home Rule League in 1916. In 1918, he married his second wife, the Parsee Rattanbai Petit, with whom he had a daughter, Dina, born in 1919.

The next few years saw a decline in Jinnah’s political influence and success. In 1919 he resigned from the legislative council in protest against the Rowlatt Acts, and in 1920 he broke with Congress and resigned from the Home Rule League because he disagreed with the increasingly popular Gandhi’s policy of non-cooperation with the British and aim of complete swaraj or self-rule. He remained active with the Muslim League throughout the 1920s, however, and in 1927 negotiated with Hindu and Muslim leaders on constitutional reform in the wake of the Simon Report. In 1930, Jinnah returned to London to participate in the first, abortive Round Table Conference. In his short speech, he represented Indian Muslims as a distinct ‘party’ with their own demands and needs, and warned of the urgent need for a settlement that satisfied all of India, including its minorities. At the close of the conference, he decided to remain in England, calling for his sister Fatima and daughter Dina to join him. Despairing of the settlement of Hindu-Muslim conflict, he immersed himself in law, securing chambers at London’s Inner Temple. Jinnah lived in Hampstead during this period. He tried to enter parliament, first as a Labour Party candidate, joining the Fabian Society in an attempt to gain credibility, and then as a Conservative candidate – but he failed on both counts. He also failed to achieve his ambition of practising in the Privy Council Bar. He was invited by Wedgewood Benn to sit on the Federal Structure Committee of the second Round Table Conference, but played a very minor role there, with Gandhi, as the voice of Congress, taking centre stage. During his years in London, Jinnah received persuasive requests from prominent leaders for his return to India to assume leadership of the newly formed Muslim League, including a visit to his Hampstead home by Liaquat Ali Khan and his wife. In 1934, he succumbed to these demands, and returned to Bombay.

Back in India, Jinnah struggled to strengthen the League’s position. In the 1940 League sessions, the Pakistan resolution was adopted by the party. In 1941, he founded the newspaper Dawn which increased support for the League, and in the 1945-6 elections the League was successful in securing the vast majority of Muslim electorate seats. Jinnah’s concern now was to ensure the best possible outcome for Indian Muslims after independence. He assented to the British Cabinet Mission’s proposals of June 1946 for groupings of Muslim- and Hindu-majority provinces under a weak Indian union government, but later rejected it when Congress refused the idea of parity with the League, and advocated instead the formation of the separate state of Pakistan. On 3 June 1947, Jinnah accepted the Mountbatten plan to transfer power to two separate states. On 14 August 1947, he was appointed as governor-general of Pakistan and set to work establishing a government and restoring order after the horrific communal violence that had accompanied the partition of India. Already suffering from tuberculosis, Jinnah succumbed to the strain of this enormous task and died at home in Karachi just a year the creation of Pakistan. He is remembered by Pakistanis as Quaid-i-Azam, or Great Leader.

Published works: 

Congress Leaders’ Correspondence with Quaid-i-Azam (Lahore: Aziz Publishers, nd)

(with M. A. H. Ispahani and Z. H. Zaidi) M. A. Jinnah-Ispahani Correspondence, 1936-1948 (Karachi: Forward Publications Trust, 1976)

The Collected Works of Quai-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, compiled by Syed Sarifuddin Pirzada (Karachi: East and West Publishing Company, 1984-6)

Date of birth: 
25 Dec 1876
Secondary works: 

Ahmed, Akbar, Jinnah, Pakistan, and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin (London: Routlege, 1997)

Ahmad, Riaz, Jinnah and Jauhar: Points of Contact and Divergence (Islamabad: Quaid-i-Azam University, 1979) 

Ahmad, Ziauddin, Mohammad Ali Jinnah: Founder of Pakistan (Karachi: Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, 1976)

Jalal, Ayesha, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, The Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)

Jinnah, F., 'A Sister's Recollections', in Hamid Jalal (ed.) Pakistan Past & Present: A Comprehensive Study Published in Commemoration of the Centenary of the Birth of the Founder of Pakistan (London: Stacey International, 1977)

Khan, Aga, The Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough and Time (London: Cassell & Co. Ltd, 1952)

Khurshid, K. H., and Hasan, Khalid, Memories of Jinnah (Karachi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)

Montagu, Edwin Samuel, and Montagu, Venetia, An Indian Diary (London: Heinemann, 1930)

Mujahid, Sharif Al, Founder of Pakistan, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948) (Islamabad: National Committee for Birth Centenary Celebrations of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammed Ali Jinnah, 1976)

Mujahid, Sharif Al, Quaid-I-Azam Jinnah: Studies in Interpretation (Karachi: Quaid-I-Azam Academy, 1981)

Pirzada, Syed Sharifuddin, Foundations of Pakistan: All India Muslim League Documents, 1906-1947 (Karachi: National Pub. House, 1969)

Robinson, Francis, 'Jinnah, Mohamed Ali (1876–1948)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34191]

Roy, A., 'The High Politics of India's Partition: The Revisionist Perspective', Modern Asian Studies 24 (1990), pp. 385-415

Wolpert, Stanley A., Jinnah of Pakistan (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)

Zaidi, Z. H., Quaid-I-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah Papers: First Series (Islamabad: Quaid-i-Azam Papers Project, 1993)

Archive source: 

Quaid-i-Azam Papers, National Archives of Pakistan, Islamabad, Pakistan

Archives of the Freedom Movement, University of Karachi, Pakistan

Syed Shamsul Hasan Collection, National Bank of Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan

Quaid-i-Azam Academy, Karachi, Pakistan

India: The War Series, L/PJ/8/524, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Mountbatten ‘Top Secret’ Personal Reports as Viceroy, L/PO/433, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Private Secretary to the Viceroy on the Transfer of Power, R/3/1, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Rahmat Ali pamphlets, L/PJ/8/689, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Brabourne Collection, Mss Eur F 97, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Chelmsford Papers, Mss Eur E 264, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Christie Collection, Mss Eur D 718, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Cunningham Collection, Mss Eur D 670, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Fleetwood Wilson Papers, Mss Eur F 111 & 112, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Hailey Collection, Mss Eur E 220, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Halifax Collection (Irwin Papers), Mss Eur C 152, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Hallett Collection, Mss Eur E 251, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Hamilton Papers, Mss Eur D 510, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Linlithgow Collection, Mss Eur F 125, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Montagu Papers, Mss Eur D 523, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Mudie Diary, Mss Eur 28-34, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Reading (Lady) Collection, Mss Eur E 316, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Templewood (Hoare Papers) Collection, Mss Eur E 240, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Zetland (Lawrence Papers) Collection, Mss Eur D 609, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library St Pancras

Cripps Collection, CAB 127/57-154, National Archives, Kew

Ramsay MacDonald Papers, PRO 30/69, National Archives, Kew

Alexander Papers, University of Cambridge

Baldwin Papers, University of Cambridge

Hardinge Papers, University of Cambridge

City of birth: 
Karachi
Country of birth: 
India
Current name country of birth: 
Pakistan
Other names: 

M. A. Jinnah

Mahomedali Jinnabhai

Locations

Hampstead
London, NW3 1AX
United Kingdom
51° 33' 14.76" N, 0° 10' 27.84" W
35 Russell Road Kensingon
London, W14 8JB
United Kingdom
51° 29' 55.6548" N, 0° 12' 36.9144" W
Date of death: 
11 Sep 1948
Location of death: 
Karachi, Pakistan
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Feb 1893
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1893-6, 1913, 1914, 1930-4

Jawaharlal Nehru

About: 

Jawaharlal Nehru was president of the Indian National Congress (INC) 1929-30, 1936-7 and 1946; independent India’s first Prime Minister, and the author of some of its most definitive, form giving national texts (An Autobiography (1936); The Discovery of India (1946)). Nehru’s father Motilal sent him to England for his further education. Here he spent seven largely undistinguished, if privileged years, as described in the Autobiography: 1905-7 at Harrow, the public school; 1907-10 at Trinity College, Cambridge (Natural sciences tripos, 2nd class), and then ‘hovering about’ London studying for his Bar examinations (p. 25). He was called to the Bar in 1912 and returned to India where he eventually embarked on a successful political career through Congress.

Nehru traces the reverse path to M. K. Gandhi, who came into contact with Theosophy in Britain.  Nehru was a young Theosophist, due to the influence of his teacher F.T. Brooks (and was inducted by Annie Besant), but in England abandoned this in favour of a Pater-esque aestheticism, and then the binding involvement of nationalist politics. At Harrow he met the son of the Gaekwad of Baroda and Paramjit Singh. Nehru read the sexologists of the time, including Havelock Ellis and Kraft-Ebbing. At Harrow he met Edwin Montagu, and heard the guest speakers, B.C. Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai and Gokhale during his student days.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Nehru’s time in Britain is the extent to which his experiences as a student, an Indian student in particular, empowered him even if silently as a political thinker, and how his clubbing together with other Indian students fostered and sharpened his sense of India (although he was not particularly active in the Cambridge Majlis). Nehru returned to Britain a number of times after his student days, whether for political negotiations with the Government or to escort his daughter, Indira, for her education in the 1930s.

Published works: 

An Autobiography (London: John Lane, 1936)

Discovery of India (London: Meridian Books, 1946)

A Bunch of Old Letters (1958)

Date of birth: 
14 Nov 1889
Connections: 

Annie Besant, Gaekwad of Baroda, Stafford Cripps, Clemens Palme Dutt, Rajani Palme Dutt, M. K. GandhiGokhaleSyed Mahmud (student contemporary), Edwin Montagu, Sarojini Naidu, Indira Nehru, B. C. Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, J. M. Sengupta (student contemporary), T. A. Sherwani (student contemporary), Paramjit Singh, S. M. Sulaiman (student contemporary), E. J. Thompson, S. A. Wickremasinghe, Marquess of Zetland.

Secondary works: 

Akbar, M. J., Nehru. The Making of India (New York: Viking, 1988)

Brown, Judith M., Nehru: A Political Life (London: Yale University Press, 2003)

Gandhi, Sonia (ed.), Freedom's Daughter: Letters between Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru 1922-1939 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989)

Gandhi, Sonia (ed.), Two Along, Two Together. Letters between Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru 1940-1969 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1992)

Gopal, S., Jawaharlal Nehru (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973)

Gopal, S (ed.), Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 3 vols (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1975-1984)

Majeed, Javed, Autobiography, Travel and Postnational Identity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)

Nanda, B. R., The Nehrus. Motilal and Jawaharlal (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962)

Parthasarathi, G. (ed.), A Bunch of Old Letters. Written Mostly to Jawaharlal Nehru and some written by him (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1958)

Wolpert, Stanley, Nehru. A Tryst with Destiny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)

Archive source: 

Photographs, Harrow Archive, Harrow School

Personal papers and correspondence, Nehru Memorial Library and Museum, Delhi

Correspondence with E. J. Thompson, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Correspondence with Sir Stafford Cripps, The National Archives, Kew

Government records, National Archives of India, New Delhi

City of birth: 
Allahabad
Country of birth: 
India

Locations

Trinity College Cambridge, CB2 1TQ
United Kingdom
52° 10' 21.3528" N, 0° 6' 40.3992" E
Harrow School HA1 3HP
United Kingdom
51° 35' 12.6204" N, 0° 20' 16.1376" W
Date of death: 
27 May 1964
Location of death: 
Delhi, India
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1905
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1905-12 (and as a visitor at times thereafter)

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