English political family in Oxford, United Kingdom
The Carritt family is an English political family based in Oxford, known for its involvement in anti-fascist activism, Marxist politics, and academic achievements within Oxford University. For much of the 20th century, the involvement of the family revolved around the Communist Party of Great Britain, as various members have traditionally been members of the British communist movement and have served as notable anti-fascist and anti-colonial activists, spies, philosophers, professors, politicians, newspaper editors, and revolutionaries.
The Carritt family's home in Boars Hill became known as a hub for left-wing intellectual debate, attracting a wide number of people including communist trade union leader Abraham Lazarus, multiple Labour Party politicians including Dick Crossman, the novelist Iris Murdoch, and numerous poets including WH Auden and Stephen Spender. The Carritt family were also friends with another family of left-wing activists which lived close to them called the Thompsons, whose members included the historian E. P. Thompson and his brother Frank Thompson. The children of both families attended Dragon School together.
During the early 1930s, the family welcomed and financially supported Jewish refugees arriving in Oxford following the rise of Nazi Germany. Some Carritts also agreed to enter into marriage of conveniences to stop Jewish refugees from being forcefully deported back to Nazi Germany. One of these refugees who married into the Carritt family was the communist revolutionary Liesel Carritt, whose father was the former editor of Weimar Germany's main liberal newspaper the Frankfurter Zeitung.
Three members of the family, Noel Carritt, Anthony Carritt, and Liesel Carritt, all joined the International Brigades and fought battles against fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War. After Anthony was reported as missing, Noel spent days searching for him before being forced to conclude that he had been killed by fascist forces.
Colin Carritt led the successful campaign to create and erect the Oxford Spanish Civil War memorial in 2017, the first-ever memorial to the Spanish Civil War ever erected in Oxford.
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