Municipal Affairs
During the First World War, Key served in the Royal Garrison Artillery as a Corporal. After the war, he became Headmaster of schools in Hoxton and Poplar. While working in Poplar in 1919, Key (who had joined the Labour Party in 1906) was elected to Poplar Borough Council from Bromley North West ward, part of a Labour majority on the council.
Poplar was a very left-wing Labour council. Key was not among the most left-wing (he professed himself as a loyal subject of the King), but he was fully supportive of the campaign to improve the lives of the poor of the borough: in 1925 he was to write that most of the population "live on the verge of destitution". He saw the effects that poverty had on the children at his school. Poplar's high spending to help the poor led to ever-rising rates, which became an extra burden on local householders.
Read more about this topic: Charles Key
Famous quotes containing the words municipal and/or affairs:
“No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace, is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas.”
—Alfred E. Smith (1873–1944)
“These things do not happen by chance. There is much less luck in public affairs than some suppose.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)