Thomas Hackett (1869-1950)

Description:Thomas Hackett: Politician, Co-operator & Advocate for Adult Education

This photograph is from an official album of Birmingham City Councillors. Thomas (Tom) Hackett was elected in 1913 as Labour councillor for Rotton Park. In later years, he represented Northfield and was the first socialist councillor for that ward.^{<small>1</small>} Hackett does not appear to have created a formal archive and left no memoir, yet his activities can be traced across collections in Birmingham Central Library and at the University of Birmingham.

Hackett was a significant figure in south-west Birmingham for many years. For instance, being a trustee of the Stirchley [Methodist] New Connexion, a patron of Stirchley Carnival and a trustee of Fircroft College of Adult Education.^{<small>2</small>} In all, Tom served over twenty organisations, yet he avoided becoming a ‘commttee person’ and sought direct impact through his actions. These were guided by community involvement, mutual support and self-improvement through education.

These principles underpinned the co-operative movement, to which Tom Hackett devoted over fifty years of his life. From 1894 he was a member of the board of the <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1926">Ten Acres and Stirchley Co-operative Society</a> [TASCoS] and was President of the Society for over twenty years, until 1946.^{<small>3</small>}

Hackett’s appointment as a Justice of the Peace in 1929 was in accordance with the co-operative objective of securing representation on national and local bodies and the magisterial bench.^{<small>4</small>}

Hackett also promoted adult education in a variety of ways. Most directly, the 1911 census records him providing lodgings to a student attending Fircroft College.^{<small>5</small>} More formally, he was Chairman of the TASCoS Education Committee between 1907 and 1923.^{<small>6</small>} This promoted the principles of co-operation, offered practical instruction in subjects such as book-keeping, and provided ‘training in democratic citizenship’.^{<small>7</small>} Hackett facilitated strong links between Birmingham Trades Council and Fircroft College.^{<small>8</small>} The King’s Norton branch of the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), of which Hackett was a committee member, ran classes at Fircroft. He also lectured for the WEA at Stirchley, on ‘Modern Problems’ and the ‘Evolution of Society’ and was a representative on the Joint Committee of the University of Birmingham and the WEA,^{<small>9</small>} which oversaw adult education provision for sponsored workers.^{<small>10</small>} These factors positioned Thomas Hackett at the centre of national developments in adult education, in which south-west Birmingham played a significant part.


<font color="#666633"><small>¹ ‘Birmingham’s Return to Sanity. Abject Failure of Intensive Tory Attack. Striking Labour Victories’, The Town Crier (4 November 1932)
¹ Stirchley New Connexion Leaders’ Minutes, 1894–1901 [BA&H: MC 74/3]; Church of the Ascension [BA&H: EP 107/17/7]; W.H. Leighton, Fircroft 1909–1959 (1959), p.31
³ G.J. Barnsby, Socialism in Birmingham and the Black Country (1998), p.454
⁴ Birmingham District Co-operative Representation Council Minutes, 22 January 1918 [Library of Birmingham ISG: B329.94249]
⁵ Census of England and Wales, 1911 Enumerator’s Schedule 285, http://www.national archives.gov.uk (viewed 31/12/2009)
⁶ Barnsby, p.454
⁷ H.M.Vickrage, Seventy-five Years of Co-operative Endeavour (1950), p.24
⁸ M.E. Pumphrey, Recollections of Fircroft, an Experiment in Adult Education (1952), p.29
⁹ Barnsby, p.347
¹⁰ Annual Report, 1921–1922 [UBSC: NC5/8/1 Item 79]