Leah Manning's Legacy: Cambridge, Women’s Rights, and Spanish Refugees

An outstanding personality born in 1886, Leah Manning came to Cambridge in 1906 to train as a teacher at Homerton College. She caught the attention of Principal Mary Allan who persuaded her to teach at the ‘Cambridge Ragged School’ (founded 1854) in New Street, a building now housing Anglia Ruskin’s Music Therapy Department. She is now remembered there by a Blue Plaque, for her "pioneering struggle" as a "lifelong champion" of women's and children's causes. Homerton College is also recorded as funding renovation of the Ragged School.

Miss Allan and other Homertonian women joined the suffragette movement. Leah herself was politically active as a member of the Fabian Society in Cambridge and aligned with trade unions and the Social Democratic Federation to support the emergent Labour Party. Leah herself in 1919 became Cambridge Chair of the National Federation of Women Workers, campaigning against low pay and conditions of female ‘bedders’ in colleges. She went on to be one of the first women Labour MPs for Islington East, and after World War 2, she won Winston Churchill’s former seat as MP for Epping.

Meanwhile, as a campaigner against the Spanish Civil War, in 1937 she used her political skill and experience to persuade the British government to provide a ship for evacuation of 3,888 children from Bilbao following the bombardment of Guernica. She then oversaw the placement of these evacuees in various parts of the UK. A plaque can be seen on a house in Station Road, Cambridge, where Jesus College accommodated 29 Basque refugee children.

About the Speaker

Peter Cunningham studied at Cambridge 1967-’70 focusing on history and history of art, followed by a year in Norwich at UEA and research at Leeds University. Increasingly interested in education through art, he engaged in teacher education at Westminster College, Oxford, taught at primary schools in Oxford and Leicester, before returning to teacher education in Cambridge at Homerton College.

A recent collaborative book with Catherine Burke and Lottie Hoare is:

Education through the Arts for Well-Being and Community:

The Vision and Legacy of Sir Alec Clegg

with contributions by Clegg’s nephew Sir David Attenborough,

and the late Sir Tim Brighouse, inspirational educationist, to whom I owe much.

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