Sydney Percival Bunting

Sidney Percival Bunting (29 June 1873 – 25 May 1936) was a British-born South African politician. He was a founding member of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA).

Early life

Sidney Bunting was born in Oakley Square on 29 June 1873 in London, UK. His father was Sir Percy William Bunting, the long-time editor of the British quarterly magazine 'The Contemporary Review', a liberal social reform magazine. His mother, Mary Hyett Bunting, née Lidgett – elder sister of Elizabeth Sedman Lidgett – was a social worker and campaigner for social reform in the poor parts of London, who invited people from many countries to her home. He had a brother and two sisters.

Two mission stations in what would later be South Africa were named after his great-grandfather, Jabez Bunting, a Methodist minister.

Bunting attended St Paul's School, a public school in London, and went on to study Classics at Magdalen College, the University of Oxford. There he won the Chancellor's Prize in 1897.

Political career

Bunting was an early exponent of the South African Labour Party (SALP), which was constituted following strikes that took place from 1907 onwards, and was shaped by members of the middle class of European origin. In the Transvaal provincial elections of March 1914, the Labour Party secured a majority of one seat, and Bunting was elected to represent Bezuidenhout Valley by a substantial majority.

Bunting had supported the Russian October Revolution,

As chairman, he tried to persuade black opposition figures into revolution. The party had recruited numerous black members and Bunting defended many of them in court, often without financial payment.

Works

S.P. Bunting: Res Nautica apud Antiquos: Oratio Latina, Chancellor's Latin Essay. B.H. Blackwell, Oxford 1897

Literature

Allison Drew: Between Empire and Revolution: A Life of Sidney Bunting (PDF 3.55MB). Routledge, London, New York 2007. Edward Rudolph Roux: S.P. Bunting. A political biography (PDF 627KB). Cape Town 1944.