William Earsman
This article uses bare URLs, which may be threatened by link rot. (May 2021) |
William Paisley Earsman | |
---|---|
Born | 16 March 1884 Edinburgh, Scotland |
Died | 13 January 1965 Edinburgh, Scotland | (aged 80)
Nationality | Australian, English |
William Paisley Earsman (1884–1965) was a metalworker and one of the founding members of the Communist Party of Australia[1] and its first general secretary.[2]
Refused re-entry to Australia after attending the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in Moscow in May 1922, Earsman remained in the United Kingdom where he was placed under surveillance by MI5.[3][4]
He was also a “self-educated trades worker who by his own admission had studied very few of the Marxist classics,” and a strong advocate for Independent working class education, arguing that “if we want education, let us have it and manage it for ourselves.”[5]
He became a local councillor in Edinburgh and later ran as the Labour candidate for the Edinburgh South division at the 1945 and 1950 General Elections. He was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1950 for his work with the Edinburgh Festival.[6]
References[]
- ^ MacIntryre, S. 1998. The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality. Sydney: Allen & Unwin
- ^ Turner, Ann. Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University – via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
- ^ "William Paisley Earsman. Records of the Security Service: KV 2 - COMMUNISTS AND SUSPECTED COMMUNISTS, INCLUDING RUSSIAN AND COMMUNIST SYMPATHISERS". The National Archives. UK. http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11602886
- ^ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/file-list-kv-march-2011.pdf
- ^ "The Lost World of Australian Communism".
- ^ "University of Edinburgh Archive and Manuscript Collections - Special Collections - Papers and Correspondence of W.P. Earsman". archives.collections.ed.ac.uk.
External links[]
Wikiquote has quotations related to: William Earsman |
- Councillors in Edinburgh
- Labour Party (UK) councillors
- Labour Party (UK) parliamentary candidates
- 1884 births
- 1965 deaths
- Communist Party of Australia members