A BLUE plaque was unveiled in Battersea on Saturday honouring Clive, Noreen and their daughter Rosa Branson, who was in attendance.

Speakers from the Communist Party, Marx Memorial Library (MML) and International Brigades Memorial Trust paid tribute to the revolutionary couple.

Noreen Branson was a communist whose roles included delivering messages to clandestine communist parties in fascist Europe as a courier, and later became a distinguished historian; her husband Clive was an artist who fought fascism in the Spanish civil war, where he was held as a prisoner for eight months, and later died fighting the Japanese in Burma. Daughter Rosa is an artist associated with the Worlington Movement.

MML director Meirian Jump said Clive and Noreen had been instrumental in the library’s foundation.

“When the Marx Commemoration Committee met in 1933, reports were already emerging from Nazi Germany of books being burned.

“It was decided that there must be a library and workers’ school dedicated to preserving and making socialist literature available.” 

Clive and Noreen started the fund that secured the library a permanent home by buying what is now Marx House, on London’s Clerkenwell Green.