Halesworth had only the slightest influence on George Lansbury. He was born on Feb. 21 1859 in a toll keepers cottage on the Bramfield Road (at the Mells crossing) to George Lansbury and Mary Ann Ferris. His father was the timekeeper of a gang of navvies building the East Suffolk Railway. The railway workers moved camp as the line progressed. The toll keeper Robert Clarke took pity on Mrs Lansbury's condition and provided his cottage for her confinement.

George was baptised in Halesworth church on March 13 and his parents registered their abode as 'The Thoroughfare'. Their lodgings are marked by a plaque above an organic grocer. Shortly after his birth his family moved onto his father's next contract at Sydenham, near Penge. After many years of this nomadic life, the family settled in East London when George was nine.

Lansbury emigrated to Australia in 1884 but returned a year later. He believed the authorities were spreading false propaganda to encourage emigration. This was being done by Victorian reformers to clear London's East End of slums and was actively supported later by another Halesworth born MP Andrew Johnston Jr.

Lansbury joined a campaign against emigration and got his first taste of politics. In 1892 he was elected to the Board of Guardians of Poplar Workhouse. Originally a member of the Social Democratic Foundation, he founded the Labour Party with Kier Hardie in 1906 and in 1910 he was elected MP for Bow & Bromley. In the Commons he was a leading supporter of women's suffrage but in 1912 he resigned in protest at the treatment of suffragette prisoners. The following year he became his majesty's prisoner number 237169 for making speeches in favour of suffragettes and went on hunger strike, being released under the 'Cat and Mouse Act' in August 1913.

Lansbury was a lifelong pacifist and opposed Britain's involvement in the First World War. This made him unpopular and in the 1918 General Election Lansbury was defeated. He was elected to the local council and in 1921 he became Mayor of Poplar. The council increased spending on poor relief. This brought the council into conflict with the government and Lansbury and a majority of the local council was imprisoned. In the 1922 General Election Lansbury was elected to the commons again. Lansbury was elected Chairman of The Labour Party in 1928. When Italy invaded Ethiopia he refused to support military force being used against Mussolini's army and Lansbury resigned. He spent the last few years of his life trying to prevent the Second World War. He believed it was possible to reach an agreement with Hitler but his efforts failed and he died a disillusioned man on May 7, 1940. He had only returned once to Halesworth as an adult in 1922. Apart from the plaque, a street in the housing estate opposite the Rainbow Supermarket is named after him. Another local boy who went into politics is the far-right British National Party chairman Nick Griffin. He says that when his father Edgar was a councillor for Halesworth, he had opposed the naming of a street after George Lansbury (which had been proposed by a Labour councillor) but the council passed the motion because they had no idea who Lansbury was.

It may be some time before Halesworth honours a more qualified scion in the same way as Lansbury. The disgraced cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken spent most of his childhood living at Magnolia House beside Halesworth station. Jonathan was the son of the Suffolk MP Sir William Traven Aitken. His maternal grandfather was Lord Rugby who was Governor-General of the Sudan 1926-1933. He lived near his grandchildren at Quay House and much of the garden was later given to the town by Lady Rugby to create a park.

Other prominent people can trace their roots to Halesworth. George Lansbury is also the grandfather of the actress Angela Lansbury. A few doors down from the Lansbury plaque is a painted sign for Frost & Co, an ironmongers shop that belonged to a William Frost. His son, born in Halesworth, became a Methodist minister who settled nearby in Beccles and that ministers son is the television personality Sir David Frost.

A booklet describing the 'Halesworth Town Trail' is available at many places in the town and online at www.halesworth.ws/trail/index.htm

A book 'The People of a Suffolk Town' ISBN 0952324512 describes in detail many other personalities connected with Halewsorth between 1100-1900 AD.

Text copyright Nat Bocking 2004