Papers of the London Group on African Affairs

Minute books of the London Group on African Affairs (1930-1939). Papers relating to: inter-racial matters in Africa; Africans in England; the African Students' Committee; the Gold Coast Aborigines Rights Protection Society; the Consultative Committee on African Affairs; and the Abyssinian Refugees Relief Fund (including correspondence of Charles Roden Buxton, 1931-1939).

Some files relate to the work of Livie-Noble and are unconnected with the Group. These include: papers connected with Pathfinders (a branch of the Scouting movement for Africans with which Livie-Noble was associated in Pretoria), and correspondence about the Ballinger Appeal (an appeal to raise money to enable the Scottish trade unionist W.G. Ballinger to go to South Africa as Adviser to the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union).

In August 1930 a meeting in London was arranged at the request of J.D. Rheinallt Jones, Adviser to the South African Institute of Race Relations. As a result of this meeting the London Group on African Affairs came into being. The Chairman was John P. Fletcher and the Honorary Secretary was Frederick S. Livie-Noble (formerly Honorary Secretary of the Pretoria Joint Council).

The Group was formed to assist the inter-racial work of the several Joint Councils of Europeans and Africans which had been established in various parts of Africa. Another aspect of the Group's work was to provide help for Africans working or studying in England, and to maintain contacts with people and organisations able to assist them. After the outbreak of World War II the Group as such came to an end, however its work was continued and expanded by the Fabian Colonial Bureau which was formed in 1940.

Bodleian reader's ticket required.

Collection level description created by Marion Lowman, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.

The library holds a card index of all manuscript collections in its reading room and a handlist is also available for this collection.

Listed as no. 199 in Manuscript Collections (Africana and non-Africana) in Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Supplementary accessions to the end of 1977 and Cumulative Index, compiled by Wendy S. Byrne (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1978).

No reproduction or publication of personal papers without permission. Contact the library in the first instance.

Deposited with the Oxford Colonial Records Project by Livie-Noble's widow.