The Founder's of the WCML

 

Through working with the library, I wanted to give some context to the library itself.

Ruth and Eddie Frow – The Founders of the WCML

The library first started in 1950 as the personal collection of Ruth and Eddie Frow it became a Charitable Trust in 1971 and moved in 1987.

Eddie was born in 1906 as the son of a tenant farmer, he left school at 14 and became an apprentice in a drawing office of an engineering firm. He later went on to become a toolmaker. In 1942 he joined the Communist Party and remained a member until his death in 1997 just short of his 91^st birthday.

In 1926 he joined the General Strike although his position was not called for, he felt a personal sense of solidarity and went on to lose his job for it, he was 23 when the stock market fell and wasn’t employed again until he was 27.

Walter Greenwood who I have mentioned before in my Authorship project briefly mentions Eddie in his book ‘Love on the Dole’ he bases one of the protesters on Eddie and describes him as ‘A finely featured young man.’

Eddie met Ruth in 1953 at a Communist Party day school and they married in 1961. Ruth had left school in 1939 and worked 4 and a half years in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force after the war she became a member for the National Council of the British Peace Committee and then became a teacher. Ruth then represented Manchester Teachers Association.

Together Ruth and Eddie wrote hundreds of articles and essays on the labour movement they said that ‘Eddie did the reading’ and Ruth ‘did the writing’. Due to their extensive amounts of books the City of Salford Council moved their library to Jubilee house on Salford Crescent, Ruth passed away in 2008. 

When I first found out about the library and Eddie and Ruth it really inspired me and pushed me to continue pursuing what I am as they made such a difference and continued all their lives reading and writing to further not only, the physical importance of labour movements but also the intellectual side, they are nothing short of true inspirations. 

source