Harry Cowley
Encyclopedia
Biography
Born in 1890, and working as a chimney sweepChimney sweep
A chimney sweep is a worker who clears ash and soot from chimneys. The chimney uses the pressure difference caused by a hot column of gas to create a draught and draw air over the hot coals or wood enabling continued combustion. Chimneys may be straight or contain many changes of direction. During...
, he became involved in grass-roots
Grassroots democracy
Grassroots democracy is a tendency towards designing political processes where as much decision-making authority as practical is shifted to the organization's lowest geographic level of organization: principle of subsidiarity....
social activism from the 1920s until his death in the 1970s. He helped organise the unemployed, moved homeless families into squatted
Squatting
Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use....
buildings after both world wars and was a key figure in confronting fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
in 1930s Brighton. He also campaigned for cheap food, mobilised pensioners, was involved in running social events and social centres
Social center
Social centers are community spaces. They are buildings which are used for a range of disparate activities, which can be linked only by virtue of being not-for-profit. They might be organizing centers for local activities or they might provide support networks for minority groups such as prisoners...
and organising practical aid for the poor and disadvantaged of the town. His actions were based in local neighbourhoods and outside political parties. When Harry died in 1971, 500 people packed Church of St Peter, Brighton, London Road, Brighton for his funeral.
Remembrance
The Cowley ClubCowley Club
The Cowley Club is a libertarian social centre in Brighton, England, United Kingdom opened in 2003. It provides resources and meeting spaces for groups and individuals active in areas such as workplace and unemployed struggles, international solidarity, animal liberation, ecological defence,...
in Brighton was named after him as a sign of its aim of furthering this tradition of grass-roots organising and class solidarity. The Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Company
Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Company
Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Company operates almost all bus services in the city of Brighton and Hove in southern England. The company was established in 1884 as Brighton, Hove and Preston United Omnibus Company and has been part of the Go-Ahead Group since 1993.The company currently operates a...
has named a bus after Harry Cowley.