Nina Claire Temple (born 21 April 1956)[1] is a British politician who was the last Secretary[2] of the Communist Party of Great Britain and was formerly a think-tank director in the United Kingdom.
Early life
Temple was born in Westminster, London, the daughter of Barbara J. (Rainnie) and Landon Roy Temple. Born into a communist family (her father ran Progressive Tours and was a Communist Party of Great Britain member),[2] she joined the Young Communist League when she was 13, later protesting in London against the Vietnam War.[3] She has a degree in materials science from Imperial College, London.[3][4] She is the sister of film director Julien Temple and the aunt of actress Juno Temple.[5]
Communist Party of Great Britain
During the late 1970s she was general secretary of the Young Communist League and became a prominent member of the Eurocommunist faction within the party. She became a member of the CPGB executive in 1979, and then a member of the Political Committee in January 1982.[6]
She was the Press and Publicity Officer of the CPGB from January 1983 until 1989,[7] when she became the last general secretary of the party in January 1990, aged 33.[3] She pledged to make the party "feminist and green, as well as democratically socialist."[8] In this role Temple became one of the leading proponents of the dissolution of the CPGB in November 1991, and the founding of its legal successor, the Democratic Left,[9][10] proclaiming that "The internationalism of the 1990s will be as much informed by Greenpeace and Oxfam, as communism once was by Marx and Engels".[11]
Think tanks
The Democratic Left continued through the 1990s, becoming the New Politics Network in 1999. Temple was its first director[9] and worked for five years for the Make Votes Count Coalition.[12]
In June 2005 she started work as head of development and communications at the Social Market Foundation, a role she held until 2008.[4]
Personal life
Temple has two children with a schoolteacher, a daughter born in 1987 and a son born in 1988.[3]
Temple became ill with Parkinson's disease in 2000.[4] She trained in counselling at the Gestalt Centre in Old Street, and in September 2003 founded Sing For Joy, a choir of people with chronic degenerative diseases.[4][13][14]
References
- ^ "Ms Nina Temple's Biography". Debretts. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ^ a b Temple dropped 'General' from her job description, see Francis Beckett Enemy Within: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party, London: John Murray, 1995, p213
- ^ a b c d Rule, Sheila (2 February 1990). "New Name and New Age (Is There a New Party?)". New York Times. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ^ a b c d Newman, Sara (10 July 2008). "Parkinson's sufferers are in full voice!". Camden New Journal.
- ^ Rafanelli, Stephanie (7 June 2014). "Juno Temple, interview: 'I'm not the high-school catch'". The Telegraph.
- ^ Bull, Martin J.; Paul Heywood (1994). West European Communist parties after the revolutions of 1989. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-12268-3.
- ^ Clark, William (29 December 1989). "Scottish Communist Party 'in good heart'". Glasgow Herald. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ^ "Communist Choice". Glasgow Herald. 15 January 1990. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ^ a b Cohen, Nick (23 October 2000). "Up for grabs: £3.5m of Stalin's gold". New Statesman. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ^ "British communists propose name change". Herald-Journal. 23 November 1991. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ^ "The eclipse and re-emergence of the Young Communist League". YCL. Retrieved 2023-07-30.
- ^ Tempest, Matthew (6 January 2003). "Voting change would be fitting legacy, say campaigners". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ^ "Music a 'mega-vitamin' for the brain". CNN. 3 June 2009. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
- ^ Stretton, Penny (13 July 2007). "Singers discover the healing power of song". Ham & High. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
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