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High objects of State (letters patent from Queen Victoria, each w/ Great Seal):
Author of
Balfour Declaration
- 1898 diplomatic credentials, for talks with Germany |
Chancellor of the Exchequer letters patent of Gladstone, 1873
The (Swedish General) Viktor Balck
Olympic Games- Founding
Archive
Swedish
gold
and bronze medals honoring Viktor Balck |
Viktor Balck 1912 Stockholm Olympics book Tower and Sword collar of Viktor Balck
Statesmen |Koerber - 1920s friend, then
foe of Hitler
| The Viktor von Koerber WWI Aviation Archive|
Presentation keys, gold medal to major U.K. statesman
Award Documents to important 19th century European diplomats
The
JFK
and staffers convention badges etc. Archive: I.D. Badges to JFK and Secretary Ev
Lincoln
Mass. Labor Federation badge (major speech) 1960 Democratic Nomination campaign: aide Bob Troutman
Heroines | First ever (
gold
NYC) Women's Club Medal of Honor
Award Diplomas to great Jewess opera singer
The Poignant Mayer family
Jewish Heroism
for (in WWI) and Flight from (pre-WWII) Germany Archive
The Lowy/ Salaman British
Jewess Suffragette
/ WWI- Genetics Archive: Gertrude. Lowy, Nina Salaman
Presentation trowel etc. to president of "philanthropic" society for troubled girls
Presentation album
(
commemorating Pritt's role in the legal defense of members of the West German (Communist) Peace Committees, tried (and convicted, 1959-1960) for belonging to a subversive organization.
The West German constitution allowed the Government to ban organizations which it determined to be fronts for Communist or Nazi ideology.
Other than Franco's Spain, West Germany was the only country that so hindered the work of the Communist Peace Committees, according to
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedenskomitee_der_Bundesrepublik_Deutschland
.
Awards of Outstanding International Importance to Statesmen and Heroines
(from New York Times, 24 May 1972)
D.N. Pritt, British Lawyer, Dies; Defended Ho Chi Minh, Kenyatta
LONDON, May 23 - D. N. Pritt, whose espousal of left wing causes and defense in court of those he believed to be oppressed kept him in the fore-front of politics for half a century, died today at his home in Hampshire. His age was 84.
Among those Mr. Pritt represented were two men who are now Presidents of their respective countries -Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, during the Mau Mau uprising in the nineteen-fifties, and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. In 1930 he defended in the Privy Council Ho Chi Minh, later to become President of North Vietnam.
Another of Mr. Pritt's clients was Gerhart Eisler, a German Communist who jumped bail in the United States and was held. in Britain. With Mr. Pritt’s aid, Eisler was able to withstand extradition.
Denis N. Pritt was a successful lawyer, much in demand at high fees for complicated cases involving big business. But he would go into court free of charge to defend anybody he felt was being persecuted by officialdom. He gave generously of his time to the National Council for Civil Liberties and similar bodies.
Although a stanch Marxist, he never became a member of the Communist party. His uncritical admiration of the Soviet Union and Stalin brought his expulsion from the Labor party, which he joined at after World War I. He was a Labor Member of Parliament from 1935 to 1940, when he was expelled for defending Stalin’s invasion of Finland. After that, until 1950, he sat in the House of Commons as an independent..
Mr. Pritt retired from the bar in 1960. Five years later he became professor of law at the University of Ghana, a post he held for about a year.
In 1954, Pritt was awarded a Stalin Prize.
From http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Pritt, D. N. (Denis Nowell), 1887-
Online Books by D. N. Pritt
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Other works wholly by Pritt
(those included in lot are
in
gold
)
Bentham Committee for Poor Litigants, testimonial album bound in vellum, with gilt-embossed title to Pritt, who was Chairman from 1929 until 1937, when he resigned the position. Diploma folder is 9 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches.
Cased, 68 mm. diameter, bronze medallion w/ profile of Ho Chi Minh, and Vietmanese inscription which translates as "Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam".
220 x 250 mm. album
"The English
Queen's Councillor D.N. PRITT
greets his German friends
as they sit for the indictment"
"In
memory
of the
Peace Trial
in
Dusseldorf
from 10 November 1959
to 8 April 1960
(signatures)"
The Dusseldorf prosecution, 1959/60, against members of the West German peace committees, defended by, among others, Friedrich Karl Kaul, and the British Queen's councillor Denis Noel Pritt....
Convicted were Pastor John Oberhof, Pastor Erwin Eckert, the former Alderman Edith Hoereth-Menge, the Diploma interpreter Walter Diehl, director of the publishing Wohlrath Gerhardt, the merchant Gustav Thiefes, and insurance clerk Erich Kompalla.
Translation from German, from
http://www.papyrossa.de/sites_buchtitel/balzer_justizunrecht.htm
Telephone 773-539-5751
FAX 773-304-0131
Postal address
P.O. Box 300791, Chicago, IL 60630, USA
Electronic mail buynobel@sbcglobal.net
Prices available upon request.
The D.N. Pritt, Q.C., Fighter vs. Fascism Archive
Presentation folder
49 pages of photos)
Site map:
Album signed by 14 officers and 40 others. The Bentham Committee for Poor Litigants existed from 1929 to 1950.
J.A. Schramek
& Associates
Archives in London and the M25 area
From http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/vcdf/detail?coll_id=5916&inst_id=1&nv1=search&nv2=
Denis Pritt
was educated at Winchester, London University, Germany, Switzerland and Spain. He obtained an LLB from London University and was called to the Bar, Middle Temple, in 1909; he retired from practice in 1960.
He was a Labour MP for Hammersmith North from 1935-1950, despite being expelled from the Labour Party in 1940. He was also Professor of Law at the University of Ghana, 1965-1966, chairman of the Howard League for Penal Reform, and chairman of the Bentham Committee for Poor Litigants. In addition, his interest in peace led him to become president of the British Peace Committee, and a member of the World Peace Council. He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1954.
Papers of Denis Nowell Pritt, comprising Political and Legal Papers, 1938-1971; Books, Addresses and Speeches, 1930s-1972; Photographs, 1960s; letter from Pritt and his wife to Rudolph M Lapp and his wife, 1946-1983, with three photographs, c1944-c1947.
....
System of arrangement:
This collection is divided into six sections: Section 1. Political and Legal Papers, 1938-1961; Section 2. Political and Legal Papers, 1966-1971; Section 3. Books, Addresses and Speeches; Section 4. Photographs; Section 5. Letters from Pritt and his wife. There are some addenda.
Stills from VIDEO of British Pathe 1952 newsreel "MAU MAU VICTIMS FUNERAL" ends with Pritt with his defendant Jomo Kenyatta :
"SV. Two accused. SV. Mr. Pritt, Q.C. shaking hands with accused. SCU. Mr. Pritt talking to Jomo Kenyatta. CU. Jomo Kenyatta, SV. Jomo with a European."
Watch at http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=30710
Jomo Kenyatta (1894-1978) served as the first Prime Minister (1963-1964) and President (1964-1978) of Kenya. He is considered the founding father of the Kenyan nation. Convicted in a rigged trial in 1953 for conspiring to lead a violent rebellion against colonialism, he was imprisoned (with hard labor) until 1959..
A Rightist critique of Pritt (by Nick Cohen)
from http://nickcohen.net/2009/03/02/eric-hobsbawm-and-the-hitler-stalin-pact/
...the creepy figure of D. N. Pritt, KC, MP – a Wykehamist barrister who was on the wrong side of every great question of the mid-twentieth century. Despite everything, it is impossible to like him. Pritt was a type that is too common today: the two-faced civil liberties lawyer. In his time, he was Chairman of the Howard League for Penal Reform and the Bentham Committee for Poor Litigants: no one seemed more dedicated to holding the British state to the highest moral standards. But while fighting for justice at home, he excused and encouraged the worst injustice abroad. In 1937 he defended Stalin’s show trials and concluded after one mockery of justice which might have pleased Saddam Hussein that the ‘case was genuine and the trial fair’....
Our comment: Leaving aside this barrage of claims (of varying merit), to assert that Pritt "was on the wrong side of every great question of the mid-twentieth century" is quite a bit much, particularly seeing how he seems to have become rather solidly vindicated on an issue on which he first "stuck his neck out", that of rebellion (esp. by Kenyatta) against conoialism in Africa.
The 1930's radicalized Pritt, as they did a good many thinking people, some of whom later paid for their naivite in the McCarthy era.
See also our comment about Pritt's stand on the Reichstag Fire.
In 1931-32, Pritt sucessfully defended Ho from a French request for extradition (from British Hong Kong), which, had it succeeded, would have led to Ho's execution for engaging in anti-colonial agitation in Indochina:
If you had to identify one western player who was responsible for saving Ho Chi Minh's miserable life it would have to be the British barrister Dennis Nowell Pritt in 1932. The British Special Branch had arrested Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong in 1931. He was to be deported to French Indochina where the French would have certainly (and correctly) guillotined him.
The communist Pritt conspired with a fellow traveller, the attorney General Stafford Cripps to release Ho Chi Minh. HCM's deportation was supposed to be appealed to the Privy Council. It never got there because of a grubby back room deal between Pritt and Stafford Cripps.
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Telephone 773-539-5751
FAX 773-304-0131
Postal address
P.O. Box 300791, Chicago, IL 60630, USA
Electronic mail
General Information: buynobel@sbcglobal.net
Miscellaneous Awards to Pritt:
Bentham Committee for Poor Litigants, testimonial album, two pages of caligraphic text, three pages of signatures; bound in vellum with gilt-embossed cover to Pritt, who was Chairman from 1929 until 1937, when he resigned the position.
Presentation folder "Erinnerung an den Friedensprozess in Düsseldorf vom 10. November 1959 bis 8. April 1960" ("In memory of the Peace Trial in Dusseldorf..."). Signed by 7 men who were tried for breaking W. Germany's anti-Communist law (and who appear in an attached photo) whose unsuccessful defense was co-led by Pritt. Accompanied by a scholarly book about this particular trial, pub. 2005.
Presentation folder (w/ green cover) containing photo of 16 men & 3 women, + handwritten inscription translating roughly as "In memory of the visit of the brigade "D.N. Pritt", Leipzig, 30 May 1969".
Bronze medallion, 68 mm. diameter, w/ profile of Ho Chi Minh, & inscription "Viet Nam Dan Chu Cong Hoa" [Constitution of the Dem. Republic of Viet Nam] "Ho Chi Minh", in case of issue.
