Jeanne Hoban | |
---|---|
Born |
Gillingham, Kent |
3 August 1924
Died | 18 April 1997 Sri Lanka |
(aged 72)
Other names | Jeanne Moonsignhe |
Occupation | Trade unionist |
Jeanne Hoban (3 August 1924 Gillingham, Kent – 18 April 1997 Sri Lanka), known after her marriage as Jeanne Moonesinghe, was a British Trotskyist who became active in trade unionism and politics in Sri Lanka. She was one of the handful of European Radicals in Sri Lanka.
She was born in Gillingham, Kent. Her father, Major William Leo Hoban was a British featherweight boxer and former soldier of Irish roots, her mother, May Irene Free, was a small businesswoman of partly Jewish extraction. Her early life was spent in a variety of Army camps. In 1936, her father was appointed an instructor at Eton College, and they settled in Slough. She attended Slough High School for Girls, where she became Head Girl in 1942.
During the Second World War, she was once machine-gunned by a Nazi Luftwaffe aircraft. Although selected for London University, she had to do her two-year National Service as a government inspector in the Bristol aircraft factory at Staines. There she joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1943. She was a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union and came from a fairly radical background – the Merseyside branch of what would later become the Militant tendency used to meet in her aunt's house in Birkenhead. To the end of her life, she maintained that the members of the CPGB were the most dedicated and conscientious political workers she ever knew.