Henry Noel Brailsford was born in Mirfield, a Yorkshire colliery town, on 25th December 1873. Henry's father, Edward John Brailsford (1841–1921), was a Wesleyan Methodist preacher who mainly worked in Edinburgh and Glasgow. .....
[He] won a scholarship to study at the University of Glasgow. As a student he came under the influence of one of his tutors, Gilbert Murray. [F. M. Leventhal] ...author of The Last Dissenter: H. N. Brailsford and his World (1985) has pointed out: "... The university had not merely opened horizons to him: it had liberated him from the constraints of his upbringing and brought him into contact with others for whom religion had lost its meaning. While he shared little in undergraduate camaraderie, the stimulation of his classes and Murray's protective influence eased his isolation."
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Brailsford ...[fell in] love with [the beautiful], Jane Esdon Malloch. His friends warned him against her. Alexander MacCallum Scott believed she was a neurotic who would prevent Brailsford from ever accomplishing anything in literature. Another friend said "she had no heart and would never love anyone". In December 1896, just as she was about to leave for a year at Somerville College, he asked her to marry him. ...[Bertrand Russell claimed that Jane married Brailsford "on the understanding that there should be no sexual intercourse because of her love for Gilbert Murray". .. Jane told him that she would not wear a wedding ring as it was a sign of bondage. ]
In April 1897 he joined the Philhellenic Legion, a volunteer force fighting for the Greeks in their struggle with Turkey. His war experiences gave him the material for his only novel, The Broom of the War God (1898). ....
The novel brought Brailsford to the attention of C.P Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, [who]... recruited him to investigate the turmoil in Crete. ....The following year he became the Manchester Guardian correspondent in Paris.....
[Later] Brailsford ....became a leader-writer for The Morning Leader. [He was a]n opponent of the Boer War, in January 1901, ... In 1902 he started working for The London Echo, a left-wing newspaper ...
Considered to be an expert on the Balkans, Brailsford was selected to head ...he British relief mission to Macedonia in 1903. On his return he wrote Macedonia (1906), a cultural and historical survey of the area. Brailsford also was active in the Friends of Russian Freedom, an organisation that raised funds to help those groups in Russia fighting for democracy.
In 1905 C.P Scott employed Brailsford to provide leading articles for the Manchester Guardian. ...His biographer, F. M. Leventhal, pointed out: "The three-paragraph format, consisting of twelve to fifteen hundred words, was a hallowed tradition, and its completion in two hours required quick thinking, logical exposition, and the mastery of the subject... for £50 a month he also supplied articles, reviews and short leaders."
Brailsford had been gradually moving to the left and in 1907 he joined the Labour Party. His wife, Jane Brailsford, was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). He shared her views and in 1909 resigned from The Daily News with his friend, Henry Nevinson, when the paper supported the government policy of force-feeding women prisoners. The two men now helped to establish the Men's League for Women's Suffrage.
Brailsford's marriage was extremely unhappy. One source claimed that Jane taunted him with being so unattractive that she was surprised he dared to go out in society. F. M. Leventhal has argued: "Her contempt for her husband derived partly from jealously for his intellectual gifts and literary facility... Jane Brailsford attempted to discover her own creative outlets, first as a novelist and later as an actress, but to no avail. Whether she was impeded because she was a woman or simply because, despite earlier promise, she lacked talent is unclear, but her efforts to build a reputation for herself other than as an adjunct to her husband and as an occasional participant in radical campaigns proved abortive."
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Henry Nevinson was one of the many men who fell in love with Jane Brailsford. He later recalled that when he first saw her she was wearing a "blue, silky thinnish dress, smocked at neck and waist, pale, thin... I never saw anything so flower-like, so plaintively beautiful and yet so full of spirit and power." He made regular visits to her home where "she was most sweet, with dove's eyes, but full of dangers" but found she sometimes expressed "a mocking spirit".
Jane sent Nevinson a note about her "struggle to resist my own desire" but clearly informed him that she was in charge of the situation: "I am not an iceberg. I am a wild animal but with a brain - and because of that I see how degrading it was for both of us... a mere body I will not be to anyone. You might surely find in me something more than a physical excitement. Have once before been regarded like that by a man and I took it as a proof of his inferiority."
Jane Brailsford joined a group of suffragettes, including Constance Lytton, who resolved to undertake acts of violence in order to protest against forcible feeding. On 9th November 1909, she was arrested in Newcastle after attacking a barricade with an axe. She was sent to prison for 30 days. After taking part in another demonstration on 21st November 1911, she was sentenced to seven days in Holloway Prison.
Brailsford disagreed with the militant tactics of the WSPU but did believe women should have the vote. .... Evelyn Sharp later argued: "It is impossible to rate too highly the sacrifices that they (Henry Nevinson and Laurence Housman) and H. N. Brailsford, F. W. Pethick Lawrence, Harold Laski, Israel Zangwill, Gerald Gould, George Lansbury, and many others made to keep our movement free from the suggestion of a sex war."
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.... Brailsford concentrated on writing books. This included Adventures in Prose (1911), Shelley, Godwin and his Circle (1913), War of Steel and Gold (1914), Origins of the Great War (1914) and Belgium and the Scrap of Paper (1915). Brailsford's book A League of Nations (1917) called for the setting up of an international organisation responsible for trade, overseas investment and the distribution of raw materials and [was] a deep influence on the thinking of the US president, Woodrow Wilson.
On 4th May 1913 the Brailsfords agreed to separate. ....[but t]he couple moved back together in 1914. They disagreed about the First World War as he was a member of Union of Democratic Control whereas she was a patriotic supporter of the war effort. Nevinson met her in April 1915. He recorded in his diary: "Mrs. Brailsford met me at the Green: has grown very stout and rather deliberately rude and unpleasant in manner. Is probably unhappy in every respect, differing from her husband on all points - peace and war etc. She thinks vengeance for supposed atrocities must be exacted from Germany and supports the crushing policy. He is for easy terms so as to avoid future revenge.".....
After failing to be elected as the Labour candidate for Montrose Burghs in the 1918 General Election, Brailsford toured Central Europe and his graphic accounts of the suffering being endured by the people in the defeated countries appeared in his books Across the Blockade (1919) and After the Peace (1920). He also warned that unless the Versailles Treaty was renegotiated, this deeply flawed peace settlement would led to an increase of German militarism and a possible war.
"In 1921 the couple separated permanently, although she refused to agree to a divorce. By the late 1920s Jane Brailsford, incapacitated by alcoholism, was living alone in Kew, London."
Brailsford was interested in the Russian Revolution and after visiting the country published two books on the subject, The Russian Workers' Republic (1921) and How the Soviets Work (1927). Although impressed by the economic achievements of the communist regime, he was highly critical of the lack of individual freedom and the suppression of dissent.
In 1922 Clifford Allen, arranged for Brailsford to be appointed as editor of The New Leader, the newspaper of the Independent Labour Party. Brailsford employed several talented writers including George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells and Bertrand Russell. Allen worked closely with Brailsford to produce a new type of political newspaper where the standard of typography and design was as important as its editorial contents. Each issue contained original woodcuts that illustrated articles about politics and culture. Considered by many as one of the most successful radical newspapers ever published, it unfortunately upset too many powerful people in the labour movement. Ramsay MacDonald and the other leaders of the Labour Party objected to Brailsford's attacks on their moderate, non-socialist policies. However, the left distrusted Brailsford's middle-class background and in 1926 he was ousted as editor. Replaced by his friend, Fenner Brockway, Brailsford continued to contribute articles for the newspaper until he left the Independent Labour Party.
In 1928 Brailsford became romantically involved with Clare Leighton,....They had met for the first time when she supplied drawings for The New Leader. Brailsford wanted to marry Clare but Jane Brailsford refused to give him a divorce.
In 1931 G.D.H. Cole created the Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda (SSIP). This was later renamed the Socialist League. Other members included Brailsford, ....and R. H. Tawney ....
....Brailsford continued to write for The Reynolds News and the New Statesman. He also wrote several books including Rebel India (1931) where he called for an end to colonial rule and Property or Peace? (1934) where he explored the connections between war and capitalism.
Brailsford had been one of the major critics of the Versailles Treaty and a supporter of disarmament, but the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War convinced him that an anti-fascist alliance, including the Soviet Union, was vitally important. Although in his sixties, he considered joining the International Brigades. According to ... Leventhal, "only with difficulty could friends dissuade him from enlisting".
Brailsford chaired the Labour Spain Committee, a pressure group advocating an active pro-loyalist policy. He also played a role in persuading men to join the British Battalion, that was formed in January 1937. ....
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After the defeat of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War Brailsford became convinced that only military resistance to Adolf Hitler would stop the growth of fascism. His denunciation of the Munich Agreement signed by Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier was among the strongest indictments to appear in the British press. As F. M. Leventhal has pointed out Brailsford "also spoke out forcefully against the Soviet purge trials, earning the enmity of the Communist Party."
Jane Brailsford died of cirrhosis of the liver on 9th April 1937 at 385 High Road, Chiswick. He was now in a position to marry Clare Leighton, his long-term lover. However, as F. M. Leventhal pointed out: "[Jane's]... death stirred up all his feelings of guilt towards her, self-recriminations for the tragedy of her life... it seems to have precipitated a kind of emotional breakdown.... For the next eighteen months he set about destroying the relationship he and Clare had built over the previous decade, not intentionally, yet compulsively, as though driven by a kind of obsession he could not control."
Brailsford continued to be active in politics and he gave his support to the Left Book Club started by Victor Gollancz, Harold Laski and John Strachey. In August 1938 the club published his book, Why Capitalism Means War. During the Second World War Brailsford wrote for the New Statesman and broadcast for the BBC Overseas Service. In 1942 he met Evamaria Perlmann, a German refugee in her late twenties. After their third meeting he sent her a note saying that he had fallen in love with her. She moved into his flat and nursed him through several months in the spring of 1943 when he was seriously ill.
They married in July 1944. ...Leventhal, has argued: "Despite forty years difference in age, she ministered to his needs and, by rejuvenating him, brought comfort and happiness to his last years. Outspoken and uninhibited, she was a small, vivacious woman, a playful sprite with a fondness for music and slightly exotic clothes. Although his friends found her irrepressible and over-solicitious, he basked in her warmth and cherished her lively company." His friend, Kingsley Martin, said "she made him youthful again".
Brailsford continued to write books during the war, the most important being Subject India (1943), published by the Left Book Club and Our Settlement with Germany (1944). After his retirement from journalism in 1946, Henry Noel Brailsford concentrated on writing an history of the Leveller movement. Unfortunately the book was unfinished when he died of a stroke on 23rd March 1958.
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