Angela V. John is ratified as new Llafur President
05/02/2022Llafur is delighted to announce that Angela V. John was ratified as our new President at the AGM on 27 November 2021, succeeding the late Hywel Francis, who died in February 2021.
Angela joined the Llafur committee in 1977 and has served as its Chair and Vice President in subsequent decades.
Previously Professor of History at the University of Greenwich, Angela is currently an Honorary Professor at Swansea University. Angela’s first book By The Sweat of Their Brow (1980) was a pioneering study of women’s employment at British coalmines. She has since published extensively on women’s and gender history and has written a number of biographies, including of Lady Charlotte Guest (co-authored with Revel Guest), Elizabeth Robins, Henry W Nevinson, Evelyn Sharp, and Lady Rhondda.
Angela said of her appointment “I’m deeply honoured to have been chosen as your new President though saddened by the circumstances that created such a vacancy. It will be a tough act following in the footsteps of two outstanding presidents. I greatly admired my friends Hywel Francis and Ieuan Gwynedd Jones, having first met them at Swansea University more than fifty years ago. As a Llafur member from its early days, the first woman on its committee then later its Chair and a Vice-President, I’m especially proud to have come through the Llafur ranks and to be the first female President of this remarkable and resilient society.”
Photograph courtesy of Jane Kimberley