Rose Smith

Rosina Smith (10 May 1891 – 23 July 1985) was a British communist activist, educator and union organizer.

Early life Born Rosina Ellis in Putney in London, Smith moved with her family first to Clay Cross and then Chesterfield in Derbyshire, where she won a scholarship to attend secondary school. She then became a pupil teacher and, in 1909, qualified as an infant school teacher.

Smith joined the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in about 1910 and, the following year, attended a course on political science run by the Workers Educational Association (WEA). She was offered a place at Lady Margaret Hall to train as a WEA lecturer, but rejected it, as she was concerned that the WEA would restrict her from expressing her Marxist views. However, she did attend WEA summer schools at Balliol College in Oxford. In 1916, she married Alfred Smith, and was thereby compelled to leave her teaching job. Instead, during World War I, she worked in a munitions factory, where she became the leading trade unionist and, later, a full-time union official. In 1922, the entire branch joined the new Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), although as she was married and had young twin children, the CPGB decided to place her on a special probationary membership. Smith and her husband had drifted apart, and the two separated in 1930; she moved with the children to Burnley in Lancashire, hoping to organise women involved in local textile work to join the Minority Movement. She was selected to stand for the party in the Burnley constituency at the 1931 general election, but was arrested after supporting pickets during a strike and sentenced to three months in prison.

Later career in England On her release, Smith relocated to nearby Bolton, where she stood in the 1932 council election. In that year, she led the Women's Hunger March, and was elected to the CPGB's Central Committee, serving until 1938.