Having lived in Hastings and St Leonards for 15 years and learned a little about the life and writing of Robert Tressell, I was interested to read the article by Angela Wintle (The Argus, August 27).
Tressell was a great man and a genuine socialist. When he arrived in Hastings, he could easily have looked after his own interests and set up a business but when he saw the deplorable conditions of the working man, he decided if he was really to understand their lives, he had to live the life they were living.
The result was The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, a book which certainly influenced and cemented the foundations of the Welfare State and the Labour Party.
As Tony Benn has rightly pointed out, the conditions Tressell observed in Hastings still continue in Africa every day and the questions he raised are still relevant.
The future of the Robert Tressell family papers remains a problem but may I suggest Hastings Borough Council might honour one of its noblest sons by setting up a Robert Tressell Institute, where these papers could be housed for posterity. It might even become a place of pilgrimage for socialists.
One way of financing this would be for the Mayor of Hastings to establish a Robert Tressell Memorial Fund and invite contributions from far and wide.
-Rev John Webster, Hove
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