By the late 1890s, King’s Lynn in rural West Norfolk had hundreds of workers seeking to improve their conditions through a commitment to socialist ideals. The town was a thriving port and transport hub, and their number included railway and building workers, but also teachers and small businessmen.

In Burns Snodgrass, a ‘science student’, they also boasted the future manufacturer and populariser of the slide rule.

The minutes of a succession of Labour and socialist societies that existed in the town between 1897 and 1916 were found among the papers of Frederick White, a newsagent and future mayor of King’s Lynn (1930-31), deposited in Norfolk Record Office. They have now been published by Norfolk Record Society alongside the minutes of the executive committee of the Great Yarmouth Women’s Suffrage Society from 1909 to 1915.

Edited by former Norfolk education officer Frank Meeres, the socialist society minutes are claimed to be ‘the only known example of such minutes in print’.

Socialism in King’s Lynn and Suffragism in Great Yarmouth, is available from the Norfolk Records Society online shop, price £35 plus £4.99 p&p (free collection in Norwich). Shop.