Benjamin Francis Bradley

Early life Benjamin Francis Bradley, later known as "Ben Bradley", was born in Walthamstow, London, in January 1898. His father was a "time-keeper" at a motorworks and a night-watchman at a warehouse. During his time in India he worked in the Rawalpindi area where he worked supervising a large workshop. Soon afterwards, Bradley became an Executive Committee member of both the All India Trade Union Congress, the Workers and Peasants Party, and the Vice-President of a newly formed mill-workers' union (Girni Kamgar Union) which reached a membership of 50,000 by the end of 1928. This trial, which began at the end of January 1930, became known as the Meerut Conspiracy Case. but was released in November 1933 and returned to the UK 2 months later. The police would commit multiple violent attacks against peaceful Indian demonstrators in England who campaigned for the Meerut prisoners. These campaigns were highly successful in publicising the plight of Indian republicans and raising public opposition to the sentencing Bradley and his fellow prisoners. ==Return to Britain==

Upon his return to Britain, Bradley was greeted at Victoria station by Shapurji Saklatvala, a leading British communist and the first ethnically Indian person to serve as an MP of the Labour Party. Bradley then teamed up with Reginald Bridgeman in London to help run the British section of the League Against Imperialism. In 1944, Bradley's wife Joy gave birth to a daughter named Josephine. Shortly into their marriage, Joy became terminally ill and died. After the war, Bradley became the circulation manager for the CPGB's newspaper the Daily Worker in 1946, and then became the National Organiser of the Britain-China Friendship Association. ==Death and legacy==

Benjamin Francis Bradley died on 1 January 1957. His funeral was attended by over 300 people, including official representatives from the governments of China and India. Bradley's papers are considered by historians to be an indispensable source for the study of the Meerut Conspiracy Trial, including an extensive prison correspondence, documents from the trial, and records of the international campaigns of solidarity with the defendants. They also contain his notes for a projected autobiography and materials relating to his later political activities. Archival sources concerning Bradley's life can be found at both the People's History Museum in Manchester, and the British Library in London. ==Works==

• The Background in India (1934) • ''Anti-Imperialist People's Front in India'' (1936) • On the Eve of the Indian National Congress (1938) • India: What we must do (1942) • ''India's famine: The facts'' (1943) ==See also==