ADA

 

 

I thought this week I ought to do something about Councillors in Greenwich as we’ve just had the Council elections. So perhaps looking at someone in the past in that role is very relevant. It’s often quite difficult to find out much about individual councillors - they tend not to get reported in the local papers nor mentioned in council minutes. Ada Kennedy was a very popular Greenwich councillor 1932-68 and I thought she might be interesting – researching her has taught me how little we can know about somebody who was a leading counsellor for around 30 years

I also ought to explain what I mean by “Councillor in Greenwich”. I said some months ago that I would do one of these articles on the political structure of Greenwich before the Second World War and the changes in the 1960s - and I’m sorry that I’ve  never got round to that. Ada was elected in 1931 to the  Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich which was much, much smaller that it is now and certainly not including Woolwich or Eltham. The Town Hall was what is now West Greenwich House in Greenwich High Road.  The political control changed regularly and it was not until 1934 that it stabilised with a Labour majority. 

 Ada Kennedy was a Greenwich Councillor for thirty years  and known for her empathy and her huge over all majorities at elections.  She was born Ada Dorothy Alice Bassett in Lambeth, the daughter of Walter and Alice Basset Her father, Walter, is listed as a decorator who, like my grandfather, did ‘graining’.  That was a highly skilled process to make painted wood look like ‘wood’ – fashionable and hideous.

She described herself at the age of 16 as an ‘active suffragette’ who failed to throw a brick through the window of 10 Downing Street - ‘ I tossed the brick into the Thames’. She went ‘on hunger marches’ -  probably local demonstrations  against poverty. But at that stage she was still living with her parents.

At the age of 23 she married John Kennedy They actually got married in central London at a church in Charlotte Street, just off  Tottenham Court Road. She gave her address as 1 Goodge Street and  John gave his as Tottenham Street, nearby.  Were they just a young couple coming up to the excitements of London before settling down suitably in the suburbs?

John was actually an engineer from Manchester. With three children – Joan, John and Mavis – in the 1920s they lived in Marlton Street, now an unimpressive turning off Woolwich Road, opposite Greenwich Labour Party’s office. I assume they may have moved to Greenwich because of John’s job as an engineer but strangely his place of work is listed as the Stationary Office Print Works in Harrow.  Harrow is a very difficult place to get to from Greenwich - there are no reasonable public transport routes and it’s a bit too far to use a bicycle on a daily basis.  It makes no sense, however the Stationary Office Print Works would provide a very good job in a government establishment with secure employment, with a pension and much else.

She joined the Labour Party in 1920. We know nothing about her political activity, if any, in the ten years between joining the party and becoming a Councillor. There are many newspaper reports n Greenwich during that 10 years of an Ada Kennedy who sung at charity events. These were usually a dinner or similar function to raise money for some good cause or another where amateur musicians were brought in to provide entertainment. Was this the future Councillor or someone completely different?  It would be a good way to learn about and make contacts in, the all important voluntary sector.

Ada first stood for Greenwich Council ‘s West Ward in 1931 but failed to be elected.   The council was  then under no overall control, with Municipal Reform and Labour splitting seats equally.  In 1934 she was successful and won in North West Ward and thus began a career in local politics  which was the last over the next 30 years. She always represented a Greenwich riverside ward, mainly  Marsh Ward, now known as Peninsula, where there were streets great of small housing built for workers in nearby industry. We know very little about her time in the Council and have to rely on a few scattered newspaper reports and if we are lucky some reminiscences. In 1940 she served as mayor and thins we have a few newspaper stories about what she was doing.

In November 1940 we learn that she is chairing a conference on giving opportunities to young people. You wouldn’t have known from the report that there was a major war going on! I have read so many reports of such conferences over the years – wartime or not!  Young people are always a cause of worry.  Within a few weeks of that conference she was at a big service in the Naval College Chapel packed out with defence workers and celebrating  bravery and efficiency.  It’s all about the courage of ordinary people and she spoke about when  bells would ring for peace.

Next she’s getting a portrait of a past mayor framed and hung in the Town Hall. I know there was a gallery of these portraits when Greenwich Town Hall was closed down. They were put in the basement of Woolwich Town Hall and I tried to track them down to see if I could get a picture for this article.  No one remembered them but an envelope full of portrait photographs is with Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust. So perhaps that’s where they went - and thank you to the Trust for being so helpful about this.

Every Christmas every Mayor in every local authority has to go to endless Christmas dinners. I have spoken to some ex-mayors who have said that they’ve had to eat 30 or so in the week before Christmas. 1940 was the same, despite the war! First Ada visited the Miller Hospital, at the end of Greenwich High Road, where Christmas dinner ‘was a Turkey and a plum pudding, which was all made in the hospital and said to be made to pre-war standards, except there weren’t any currents’.   They were entertained by a nurses’ concert party.

Later in the day Ada went to the Dreadnought  Hospital – now Greenwich University Library - where there were seamen patients from all over the world.  She said it looked ‘more like the League of Nations’.  They also had  Plum Pudding and the patients all got ‘woollen comforts’ for Christmas presents -  and carols sung by the Sea Rangers and later by the Brownies and later still by St Alfege’s choir.

Finally Ada  went to St Alfege’s Hospital – where the Greenwich Centre is now - for more turkey and plum pudding.  Guests were the Brockley Heavy Rescue Team; Carol’s were sung by Greenwich Central Team  and the nurses produced a pantomime called ‘Babes in the Wood’.

In complete contrast to Christmas Ada chaired a major conference in the Borough Hall with Arthur Greenwood - then a member of Churchill’s War Cabinet but in charge of post war reconstruction.  He is the politician who appointed Beveridge to report on future social services and, after the war, was a major architect of the National Health Service. The conference was to discuss the implementation of the Beveridge report and was clearly an important event, supported by many local politicians, in showing how a new society could emerge after the war was over.

Ada’s next event was to celebrate and raise consciousness about the work of the Royal Air Force . This was in the Granada Cinema which was where the Plaza is now .... and so it went on throughout her year as Mayor of Greenwich. Of course she was not alone in this and we can imagine how every local authority throughout the country the Mayor would have had a similar role. I am very impressed by the events organised to support the forces by local people but also the sort of serious discussions about the future of the country once we were at peace again. We hear so much about various heroic military and other events during the Second World War but very little - in fact nothing - about this work going on constantly with the civilian population building morale and fixing thoughts on a better future for everyone;

There is no space here to discuss more about Ada’s career, except to say that she supported many progressive issues. She  was active in the Co-op Womens Guild, which, among much else,  promoted the involvement of women in public life. She was a governor of the Roan School and on the board of five other schools. After the Second World War the family moved to Annandale Road - the small houses in Marlton Street were demolished and I wonder if Ada may have been bombed out

Ada’s great strength as a councillor was her close relationship with the people in the area which she  represented. She knew everyone and everyone knew her. It was said people looked on her as a friend and someone always there for them and not just in times of crisis in their lives – and that she would know them well enough to help without needing to be asked. This was reflected in her enormous popular vote – over 80% of the poll in most elections.

In 1957, and by then in her sixties, she was honoured with the Freedom of the Borough. The ceremony  was attended by ‘five of her grandsons’ and many of her family must still be living locally. She stood finally in the 1964 election by which time municipal Greenwich was no more, its councillors a minority to those representing Woolwich.  She eventually died in 1974 and I have been unable to find an obituary.