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H. N. Brailsford
‐
Progressive left-wing journalist and a supporter of Indian independence
Other names
Henry Noel Brailsford
Place of birth
Place of death
London
About
Henry Noel Brailsford was a left-wing intellectual and political journalist, famous as a vociferous critic of British imperialism. Born in Yorkshire, he was brought up and educated in Scotland. After graduating from Glasgow University, he joined the Greek Foreign Legion in 1897 to assist the Greeks in their fight against the Ottoman Empire; he subsequently worked as a special correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in Crete and Macedonia.
In 1899 he moved to London and worked as a leader-writer for a series of liberal newspapers, such as the Morning Leader, the Echo, the Tribune, the Daily News, Reynolds's News and New Statesman and Nation. In 1907 he joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and edited the ILP weekly, the New Leader (1922–6). He came into contact with revolutionary Russians, including Lenin and Trotsky, and was a supporter of Soviet Russia in its early days.
In 1930 Brailsford visited India and became a supporter of Indian independence. After his first tour of India he published his book Rebel India (1931). In 1943, Subject India was published as part of the Left Book Club monthly selection. He visited India again in 1945. He was an executive member and active supporter of Krishna Menon’s India League. He first met Gandhi during the Round Table Conference in London, and then during his second Indian trip. He co-wrote his biography, Mahatma Gandhi (1949). He visited Jawaharlal Nehru in an Allahabad prison during his first visit to India, and on his second trip was a house guest of Nehru and his daughter Indira.
Jagadish Bose, Subhas Bose, Jane Esdon Brailsford, Stafford Cripps, Rajani Palme Dutt, Leonard Elmhirst, Michael Foot, E. M. Forster, Indira Gandhi, M. K. Gandhi, Alfred George Gardiner, G. T. Garratt, Victor Gollancz, J. B. S. Haldane, J. A. Hobson, Clara Ellaline Hope Leighton, Christopher Hill, Julian Huxley, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, J. M. Keynes, Allen Lane, Harold Laski, Kingsley Martin, Harold John Massingham, V. K. Krishna Menon, Naomi Mitchison, Gilbert Murray, Sarojini Naidu, Jawaharlal Nehru, H. W. Nevinson, H. S. L. Polak, S. K. Ratcliffe, William Rothenstein, C. P. Scott, George Bernard Shaw, John Strachey, Rabindranath Tagore, Edward Thompson, H. G. Wells, Fredrick William, Leonard Woolf, Jack Yeats.
The Broom of the War-God: A Novel (London: William Heinemann, 1898)
Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future (London: Methuen & Co., 1906)
Adventures in Prose: A Book of Essays (London: Herbert & Daniel, 1911)
The Fruits of Our Russian Alliance (London: The Anglo-Russian Committee, 1912)
Shelley, Godwin, and Their Circle, Home University Library (London: Williams & Norgate; New York: H. Holt & Co., 1913)
The War of Steel and Gold: A Study of the Armed Peace (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1914)
A League of Nations (London: Headley Bros, 1917)
Across the Blockade: A Record of Travels in Enemy Europe (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1919)
After the Peace (London: Leonard Parsons, 1920)
The Russian Workers’ Republic (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1921)
Socialism for To-day (London: ILP Publication Dept, 1925)
Olives of Endless Age: Being a Study of this Distracted World and Its Need of Unity (London: Harper & Bros, 1928)
How the Soviets Work (New York: Vanguard Press, 1928)
Rebel India (London: Leonard Stein, 1931)
Property or Peace? (London: Victor Gollancz, 1934)
Voltaire, Home University Library (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1935)
India in Chains (London: Socialist League, 1935)
Why Capitalism Means War (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938)
Democracy for India, Tract series no. 248 (London: Fabian Society, 1939)
From England to America: A Message (New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1940)
America Our Ally (London: Victor Gollancz, 1940)
Subject India (London: Victor Gollancz, 1943)
Our Settlement with Germany (Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin Books, 1944)
(with H. S. L. Polak and Lord Pethick-Lawrence) Mahatma Gandhi, foreword by Sarojini Naidu (London: Odhams Press, 1949)
The Levellers and the English Revolution (London: Cresset Press, 1961)
Leventhal, F. M., The Last Dissenter: H. N. Brailsford and His World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985)
Martin, Kingsley, Editor: A Second Volume of Autobiography, 1931–45 (London: Hutchinson, 1968)
BBC Sound Archive (23 August 1956 about Gandhi)
Letters to Gilbert Murray, Bodleian Library, Special Collections and Western Manuscripts, Oxford University, Oxford
Correspondence with Society of Authors and League of Dramatists, British Library, St Pancras
William Rothenstein Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University
Letters to the Manchester Guardian (1897–1951), Guardian archives, John Rylands Library, Manchester University, Manchester
Correspondence with Sir BH Liddell Hart (1939–49), Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London
Correspondence and papers, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester
Correspondence with the ILP (Independent Labour Party, London University), London School of Economics Library, Archives Division, London
Letters to Millicent Fawcett (1911–12), Manchester Archives and Local Studies, Manchester
Jawaharlal Nehru Papers, Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi
You must have dreaded this blow, I suppose for many a month, yet always hoping that Nature would work a miracle. Now it has fallen, I fear that all your long period of anxiety may have sapped your strength to confront it. Your friends can say nothing to lessen your loss. Indeed, we who had met her, though it was in my case only for a moment, can only confirm your distress, for we knew what a fine and unusual woman your wife was. But may I say, if it is of any help to you, how deeply and sincerely we join with you in sympathy?
Don’t undervalue yourself in this hour of misery. India has great need of you – especially, personally, of you. For I think I know, more or less, the other possible leaders. No one has your courage, your mental power and above all, your vision of a humane classless society. Try to draw strength from the belief that history has named you to lead.
May I thank you for your courtesy in sending me your history? I shall read it with keen interest. I am touched that you remembered me.
Extract from H. N. Brailsford’s letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, dated 8 March 1936, in Jawaharlal Nehru, A Bunch of Old Letters (London: Asia Publishing House, 1958), p. 173
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
