Kath Duncan

Katharine Sinclair Duncan (née MacColl; 4 July 1888 – 15 August 1954) was a Scottish communist activist and political candidate.

Biography She was born in Tarbert, Argyllshire to Archibald MacColl, a merchant, and Agnes Gibson MacColl (née Stephen). Katharine's father died when she was five, and her family moved to Kirkden, Argyllshire, near where her mother's parents lived.

Katharine became a schoolteacher in Kirkcaldy and joined the National Union of Teachers (NUT). In 1923 she married fellow teacher Alexander "Sandy" Duncan, and the couple relocated to Hackney, London. They were active in the Hackney Labour Dramatic Group, which was part of the radical Workers' Theatre Movement that flourished after the October Revolution. The Duncans belonged to the Independent Labour Party until the UK general strike of 1926, when they joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).

Duncan rose to prominence in the CPGB as a powerful public speaker. In 1929, she was elected to the party's central committee, although she stepped down the following year after moving to Deptford. Several months later, she was arrested and charged with being "a disturber of the Peace of our Lord the King, and an inciter of others to commit crimes and misdemeanours". She would not sign a pledge vowing to keep the peace for six months, and consequently spent a month in Holloway Prison.

Following Duncan's release, the London County Council removed her from their list of approved teachers, but the NUT organised a petition in her support, and the council reversed their decision. During this period in the mid-1930s, she was living on Ommaney Road, New Cross.

Kath Duncan died of tuberculosis in Stracathro Hospital on 15 August 1954. She was 66.