Labnet: Celebration of the life of Ruth Frow on 5 April 2008

[labnet at lists.labourhistory.net]

From: Bernadette & Michael [mailto:mossley at phonecoop.coop] 



A celebration of the  life and work of Ruth Frow will take place on
Saturday 5 April beginning promptly at  2pm. The venue will be Peel
Hall, University of Salford which is situated immediately opposite the
library on the university campus. It is easily accessible by public
transport. More details will be published on the library website very
soon. www.wcml.org.uk <http://www.wcml.org.uk/> 

 

Obituary from The Independent written by David Howell

 

Ruth Frow was the co-creator of the Working Class Movement Library and a
political activist for over 60 years. The library, based in Salford, is
an ecumenical collection covering the diversity of the British labour
movement since the late 18th century, a statement of the richness and
creativity of the left. 

She was born Ruth Engel in London in 1922, the daughter of a Jewish
father, a concert pianist turned salesman of ribbons, and a Catholic
mother who had converted to Judaism. Her upbringing first in St John's
Wood and then in Mill Hill was thoroughly middle class. Her brother
later became Tory Mayor of Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire and a
Methodist local preacher. She acknowledged that "we get on very well
provided we don't discuss politics, religion or sex". 

Ruth's schooling ended with the outbreak of war in 1939. She inflated
her age to become a nurse, was detected and instead joined the Women's
Royal Air Force. Working in the operations room at Fighter Command she
was a participant in the Battle of Britain and later worked on radar at
Sandwich in Kent. War brought political commitment. The progressive
sentiments of the "People's War" and the successes of the Red Army were
reinforced by her reading of the Daily Worker.She read Marxist texts,
above all Emile Burns's What is Marxism (1939) - "a flash of light
particularly on the religious question". 

She and her first husband Denis Haines canvassed for the successful
Labour candidate for Dover in the 1945 general election and joined the
Communist Party, which had established a base among the Kent miners.
They moved back to London where Ruth trained as a teacher under the
post-war emergency scheme and by 1949 was working in Mile End. She
allied with Party comrades within the National Union of Teachers and was
fervently committed to peace campaigns in a deteriorating international
climate. The commitment of Communists such as Ruth Haines could be used
by critics to erode such campaigns' credibility. 

By the early Fifies her marriage had effectively ended. At a Party
school in the summer of 1953 she met Eddie Frow. He was 16 years her
elder and had joined the Communist Party in 1924. A member of the
Amalgamated Engineering Union, he was at the heart of the Manchester
trade union left. Eddie was an autodidact who could epitomise the
Communist proletarian ideal. His marriage too was in difficulties. 

Their relationship quickly deepened but they had reckoned without some
officials' concern for the Party's good name. Ruth was directed not to
move to Manchester. Instead she lived and taught in Liverpool for a
year, with Eddie visiting at weekends, before she eventually arrived in
Manchester at the beginning of 1955. 

Their partnership was based on complementary strengths and needs. Their
shared commitment to the Communist Party survived Cold War rigours and
Krushchev's disclosures of Stalin's crimes. Ruth became critical of the
Soviet Union but remained resolutely loyal to the Party. She was also
heavily involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She reacted
vigorously against the sexism of much male trade unionism, not least
Eddie's beloved AEU, but she rejected feminist arguments for separate
political initiatives. 

They had each developed a book collection. "These books are
complementary to mine" had been one of Eddie's earliest chat-up lines.
When they moved into a semi-detached house in King's Road, Old Trafford
in 1956, the Working Class Movement Library was born. Their collection
expanded through the house. A visitor noted that "the only room where
there is nothing to read is the loo". 

Every summer they toured secondhand booksellers, beginning in a 1937
Morris van and graduating to a caravan. Books and pamphlets were
supplemented by cartoons, trade union emblems and commemorative pottery.
No 111, King's Road - a thoroughly suburban location - became a venue
for researchers into the varieties of the British left. Ruth and Eddie
became a well-known partnership - genial and enthusiastic hosts,
publishers, presenters at conferences, typically in tandem, and
organisers of walks around Manchester's radical sites. The library's
move to Jubilee House on the Crescent in Salford came in 1987, with the
backing of Salford City Council. 

The vitality of the library contrasted with the fortunes of the
political organisation to which Ruth Frow had given her life. In 1987
she and Eddie were expelled from the disintegrating Communist Party.
Eddie died in 1997, a few weeks after Labour returned to government.
Ruth commented at his funeral that at least he hadn't had time to become
disillusioned. 

Yet the library remains as an internationally acclaimed achievement, a
demonstration of the power of the democratic intellect and of the
commitment of its founders to collective virtues in an individualistic
culture. 

 

 

David Howell 

 

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