Chanie Rosenberg


Chanie Rosenberg was a South African-born artist, former teacher and socialist. She was the sister of Michael Kidron, the partner of Tony Cliff, and a founder member of the Socialist Workers Party in Britain.

Life

Chanie Rosenberg was born to a Jewish Zionist family originally from Lithuania in South Africa, a relative was the poet Isaac Rosenberg. She studied Hebrew at Cape Town University. In 1944, she moved to Palestine to live on a kibbutz where she became an anti-Zionist and a revolutionary socialist and met Yigael Gluckstein. After the war, she moved to Britain where she was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party from 1944 to 1949; afterwards joining the group which eventually became the Socialist Workers Party. She was active in many anti-racist and anti-fascist mobilisations. She worked as a teacher who was active in the National Union of Teachers in Hackney. She was also an artist whose sculpture has been exhibited in the Royal Academy of Arts.

Selected writings

  • Education and Society: A rank-and-file pamphlet
  • Class Size and the Relationship Between Official and Unofficial Action in the NUT
  • Women and Perestroika
  • Education under capitalism and socialism
  • 1919: Britain on the Brink of Revolution
  • Education: Why our children deserve better than New Labour
  • ''Fighting Fit: A Memoir''