Ronald Kidd

Ronald Hubert Kidd (born July 11, 1889 in Blackheath , London , † May 13, 1942 ) was a British civil rights activist.

Life and activity

Kidd was a son of the surgeon Leonard Joseph Kidd (1858–1926) and his wife Alice Maud nee. Peek (1862-1945). He studied at University College in London and then became a freelance journalist. At a young age he advocated women's suffrage . He also lectured for the Workers' Educational Association, an organization devoted to volunteer education in the working class.

After participating in World War I , Kidd worked as a government employee and actor before turning back to journalism.

In 1934, out of outrage over the use of agents by the police, Kidd founded provocateurs , which served the purpose of heating up the mood of the participants in the then widespread hunger demonstrations and driving them to escalate in the form of violent riots, in order to provide a pretext for violently dispersing the demonstrations create the Council for Civil Liberties , later renamed the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL). The CCL was a civil rights organization that was dedicated to the goal of strengthening the position and rights of the population and the individual individual vis-à-vis the state: So the NCL set itself a critical watch over that the state organs compliance individual freedoms, such as freedom of expression and freedom of the press, through the state organs. In addition, the organization campaigned for the considerate treatment of the large numbers of emigrants from the European continent who came to Great Britain in the 1930s and, especially during the war years, warned that German and Italian citizens interned in Great Britain as enemy aliens should be treated humanely.

Due to his exposed position in public life in Great Britain, at the end of the 1930s, Kidd was targeted by the police forces of National Socialist Germany, who classified him as an important target: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who were the Nazi surveillance apparatus considered particularly dangerous or important, which is why in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht they should be located and arrested by the occupying forces following special SS units with special priority.

In 1940 the CCL, which because of its orientation was considered one of the leading anti-fascist organizations in Great Britain, had reached a size of 3,000 individual members and 700 affiliated organizations. As prominent members of his organization, in which he himself held the rank of secretary, Kidd was able to win personalities such as the Labor politicians Clement Attlee and Aneurin Bevan as well as intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell , HG Wells and Aldous Huxley , who acted as vice-presidents.

Fonts

• British Liberty in Danger. An introduction to the Study of Civil Rights. Lawrence and Wishart Ltd, 1940.

literature

• Mark Pottle: "Kidd, Ronald Hubert", in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography .