George Barnes was a founder member of the Independent Labour Party in 1893, became a Labour MP in 1906 and was the shortest-serving Leader of the Labour Party in 1910-1911.

The Rev Herbert V Mills was the minister of Kendal’s Unitarian Church on Market Square for 29 years. He converted the Oddfellows Hall on Highgate into a People’s Palace with a reading room and lectures rooms, and organised courses on boxing, cooking, first aid and philosophy. He wrote Poverty and the State in 1896 where he looked at alternatives to the iniquitous workhouses. He is best known for establishing the Starnthwaite Colony, near Crosthwaite, where he attempted to put some of his alternatives into practice in the form of a rural colony. A charismatic socialist, he became the first Labour member of Westmorland County Council in 1892.

(David Clark: The Labour Movement in Westmorland, 2012).