Stapleford History Society 14th January 2025
A talk by Mike Levy
The speaker, a teacher, journalist and author of Get the children out – unsung heroes of the kindertransport, introduced us to the life and work of Dame Leah Manning. Though many of us had not previously known about this brave and caring woman, we learnt that in Young Street, Cambridge, a blue plaque commemorating her work with and for children was unveiled in 2020, that in Harlow there is the Leah Manning Centre in memory of her work for founding New Towns, and in Bilbao there is the Plaza Leah Manning in memory of her work for refugee children during the Spanish Civil War.
Leah Manning (nee Perrett) was born in Droitwich in 1886. Her parents were members of the Salvation Army and her Grandmother Sarah was a Victorian reformer who set up hostels for homeless girls, while her Grandfather was a Methodist Liberal. She grew up reading widely and was very interested in the pursuit of education for young people. (The Tories in the Commons and Bishops in the Lords had opposed Foster’s Education Act in 1872.) She passed the Entrance Examination for Homerton College and started as a student teacher in 1905 at The New Street (aka the Ragged) School. She soon realised that the children did not have the energy to be naughty and argued – unsuccessfully – for the provision of free school milk for all school children. She did eventually have a sort of victory over the council when she introduced England’s first after school club.
In 1913 Leah married William Manning, an astronomer, but in 1914 war broke out. Leah, a pacifist, already had a Red Cross certificate so she volunteered as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) until the Local Education Authority asked if she would return to teaching. In 1921 she became Head of the Open Air School. In 1923, influenced by Marie Stopes, she was instrumental in the opening of the first Family Planning Clinic in Cambridge.
During the 1930s Leah Manning visited Germany to see for herself the conditions among the poor and also went to Spain to look at education and poverty there. She set up an escape route for children and even requisitioned a ship, the SS Habana, which General Franco tried to bomb. The twenty-nine who made it to Cambridge were initially housed in the Vicarage at Pampisford then in Station Road, the house now being the Steven Perse nursery department.
Hugh Dalton was a friend from her student days and, encouraged by him and others, she became Secretary then President of the National Union of Teachers (NUT). The Union sponsored her efforts to become an MP and eventually she became the MP for Epping then Islington. While MP for Epping she argued for the establishment of Harlow New Town when she served on the Commons Committee considering the 1946 New Towns Bill.
Leah Manning was clearly a most wonderful woman, a lifelong champion of women’s and children’s causes and one of the first women to enter parliament.
Report by Jane Steadman