J.F. Horrabin

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J.F. “Frank” Horrabin (1884–1962) was an English socialist, radical writer and cartoonist, sometime Communist, Labour Party Member of Parliament for Peterborough, and associate of David Low and George Orwell, who attempted to construct a socialist geography.

Born in Peterborough and educated at Stamford School, Horrabin was an active socialist in the Labour Party, Fabian Society, and other leftwing groups and very involved in working class education through the 'Plebs League' and National Council of Labour Colleges. He was also a journalist, cartoonist, and gifted cartographer. His 1923 text 'An Outline of Economic Geography', which sold in large numbers and was translated into nine other languages, attempted to provide workers with an account of economic (and political and historical) geography that used bourgeois “pure geography”, but put it within a socialist and historical–materialist framework. Unlike Germany and some other countries, England did not have a strong Marxist theoretical tradition, and Horrabin's approach does not develop theory (though it did attract the admiration of the German Marxist Karl Wittfogel). Rather, it set out to be engaged in practical political education. Horrabin's work was developed within a particular context, but his geographical writings (and pioneering political cartography) exemplify one way of linking geography with political practice. Many of his concerns find echoes in current radical geography, and his work deserves belated recognition and a place in the history of geography.

He was elected MP for Peterborough in 1929 under the premiership of the first Labour Prime Minister, James Ramsay MacDonald, but lost his seat two years later at the General Election of 1931 occasioned by the split in the party consequent on MacDonald forming a National Government. He was succeeded by David Cecil, 6th Marquess of Exeter, then Lord Burghley, another resident of Stamford.

In 1937, only a few months after its institution, an occasional political discussion programme appeared in the television schedules of the BBC. This was 'News Map' which was usually presented by the former MP, who had taken up print journalism. 'News Map' did not leave the studio and it was mainly interested in foreign affairs stories. World events provided quite a few such stories for it to discuss.

His published works include The Workers History of the Great Strike (1927), written together with Ellen Wilkinson MP and Raymond Postgate.