ABSTRACT
In 1923 Freda graduated from King's College, London, with firstclass honours in history. She undertook research under Norman H. Baynes (1878-1961), submitted a thesis on 'The social and economic status of the Collegia from Constantine to Theodosius II' and graduated in 1925 as an MA with distinction. She pursued her research at the London School of Economics under Charles M. Lloyd (1878-1946), Foreign Editor of the New Statesman. There she worked for two full years on Eastern competition with the Lancashire cotton industry. She was confidently expected to become as distinguished a woman economic historian as Eileen Power (1889-1940). The general strike of 1926 proved to be 'the turning point of my early political development', leading her into the Communist camp.2 As the vice-president of the University Labour Federation she visited Russia, 'the Land of Promise' aune-Sept. 1927). 'To me it seemed that Russia had unlocked the gates of Paradise to mankind.'3 On her return she became a member of the Communist Party (1927-30). In 1928 she travelled through Siberia to China and Japan. In Tokyo she undertook for nine months pioneer fieldwork into economic history, studying the bases of competition by Japan and India with Lancashire. That period she always remembered with an aching nostalgia as the happiest year of her life. She sought to avoid being 'overwhelmed by Japanese courtesy and hospitality'4 and praised 'the incredible industry, devotion to their children and natural cleanliness of the poorer Japanese.'5
