Conferencing the International

Attendees

List of profiled attendees at the Round Table Conference. For a full list of delegates to each session, see the British Library's Round Table Conference records page.


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Muriel Lester

Full nameMuriel Lester
Born09 Dec 1883, Leytonstone, Essex, United Kingdom
Died11 Feb 1968, Loughton, Essex, United Kingdom
About

The daughter of a wealthy shipping engineer, Muriel Lester was educated at a progressive day school, Wanstead College in London, then at St Leonard's School in St Andrews. With her sister Doris she established several social programmes in London’s impoverished East End, culminating with the 1915 opening of a community centre in Bow, which they called ‘Kingsley Hall’. She was a founding (1914) member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and served as an alderman in George Lansbury’s radical Poplar Borough Council from 1922-25. Lester oversaw the opening of a new Kingsley Hall in custom-built premises in Bromley-by-Bow in 1928, and a second Kingsley Hall in Dagenham in 1929.

Lester accommodated Gandhi during the second conference session, providing accommodation for him in the East End and organising some of his publicity and social engagement.

Pre-Conference

  • In 1926, Lester spent a month at Gandhi’s ashram at Sabarmati in India to study how he and his followers lived. She then invited him to travel to London and stay with her at Kingsley Hall

Second Session

  • Lester hosted Gandhi at Kingsley Hall in Bromley-by-Bow for his visit to the second session of the Round Table Conference (12/9/31 to 5/12/31). Her contributions to his visit included:
    • Introducing Gandhi to the working class population of the East End with whom she had regular contact via her outreach work at Kingsley Hall
    • Providing accommodation for him in the small ‘cells’ where the Kingsley Hall ‘household’ and volunteers slept, and a space in which he could meet journalists and activists
    • Publicising Gandhi’s visit, and organising a radio broadcast to the USA from Kingsley Hall
    • Accompanying him to the conference venue, associated meetings and social events (for instance, her account of a meeting with Nancy Astor at 4 St. James' Square on 11/11/31 and a follow up meeting at the Dorchester Hotel).

Post-Conference

  • Lester's global profile was much raised through her hosting of Gandhi. She went on to have an international roll with the IFR and to collaborate with a wide ranging of leading pacifists.
  • 1934-59: Gave up leadership of Kingsley Hall (which passed to her sister Doris) to become Ambassador-At-Large and later Travelling Secretary for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation
  • 1964: awarded the freedom of the Borough of Poplar
Sources

Sources used

Selected publications

Videos

Secondary literature

  • Jim Wallis, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/70870
  • The Times, “Miss Muriel Lester: Social Work in East End”, Issue 57174 (13 Feb 1968), p. 10
  • Guardian, “Miss Muriel Lester” (13 Feb 1968), p. 5
  • Seth Koven, The match girl and the heiress (Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2014)
  • Jill Wallis, Mother of world peace: the life of Muriel Lester (Enfield Lock: Hisarlik; 1993)
  • Russell Whiting, “Gandhianism in London: Bringing the past to bear on the present in discussion of the social work and spirituality of Muriel and Doris Lester” International Social Work, 56:3 (2013), pp. 403–415: https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872812474012

Online resources

ImagesPhotograph of Muriel Lester

Photograph of Muriel Lester. Coutesy of Kingsley Halls Community Centres Heritage Committee / Bishopsgate Institute

Conferencing the International

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