Nina Temple
Nina Claire Temple (born 21 April 1956[1]) was the last Secretary[2] of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and was formerly a think-tank director in the United Kingdom.
Early life
Born into a communist family (her father Landon Temple ran Progressive Tours and was a Communist Party of Great Britain member)[2] she joined the Young Communist League when she was 13, later protesting in London against the Vietnam War.[3] She has a degree in materials science from Imperial College, London.[3][4] She is the sister of film director Julien Temple.
Communist Party of Great Britain
During the late 1970s she was general secretary of the Young Communist League and became a prominent member of the Eurocommunist grouping within the party. She became a member of the CPGB executive in 1979, and then a member of the Political Committee in January 1982.[5]
She was the Press and Publicity Officer of the CPGB from January 1983 until 1989,[6] when she became the last (General) Secretary of the party in January 1990, aged 33.[3] She pledged to make the party "feminist and green, as well as democratically socialist."[7] In this role Temple became one of the leading proponents of the dissolution of the CPGB in November 1991 and the founding of its legal successor, the Democratic Left.[8][9]
Think tanks
The Democratic Left continued through the 1990s, becoming the New Politics Network in 1999. Temple was its first director[8] and worked for five years for the Make Votes Count Coalition.[10]
In June 2005 she started work as head of Development and Communications at the Social Market Foundation, a role she held until 2008.[4]
Personal life
Temple has two children with a schoolteacher, a daughter born in 1987 and a son born in 1989.[3]
Temple became ill with Parkinson's disease in 2000.[4] She trained in counselling at the Gestalt Centre in Old Street, and in September 2003 founded Sing For Joy, a choir of people with chronic degenerative diseases.[4][11][12]
References
- ↑ "Ms Nina Temple's Biography". Debretts. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Temple dropped 'General' from her job description, see Francis Beckett Enemy Within: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party, London: John Murray, 1995, p213
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Rule, Sheila (2 February 1990). "New Name and New Age (Is There a New Party?)". New York Times. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Newman, Sara (10 July 2008). "Parkinson’s sufferers are in full voice!". Camden New Journal.
- ↑ Bull, Martin J.; Paul Heywood (1994). West European Communist parties after the revolutions of 1989. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-12268-3.
- ↑ Clark, William (29 December 1989). "Scottish Communist Party 'in good heart'". Glasgow Herald. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ↑ "Communist Choice". Glasgow Herald. 15 January 1990. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Cohen, Nick (23 October 2000). "Up for grabs: £3.5m of Stalin's gold". New Statesman. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ↑ "British communists propose name change". Herald-Journal. 23 November 1991. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ↑ Tempest, Matthew (6 January 2003). "Voting change would be fitting legacy, say campaigners". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ↑ "Music a ‘mega-vitamin’ for the brain". CNN. 3 June 2009. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ↑ Stretton, Penny (13 July 2007). "Singers discover the healing power of song". Ham & High. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
External links
| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Tom Bell |
General Secretary of the Young Communist League 1979 - 1983 |
Succeeded by Douglas Chalmers |
| Preceded by Gordon McLennan |
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain January 1990 - November 1991 |
Succeeded by post abolished |
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