Kate Davies

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Note: For the former Labour Party special adviser see: Kate Davies (Special Adviser)

Kate Marshall as 'General Secretary' of the RCP in The next step, November 1984, p. 23

Left to Right: Ferdinand Mount, Head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit 1982 - 1984; Kate Davies, CSJ Housing and Dependency Working Group and Philippa Stroud, CSJ Executive Director. Pic: Centre for Social Justice 02 December 2008

Cover of Kate Marshall Moral Panics and Victorian values, Junius Publications, 1985. Amongst its conclusions: 'The victorian values of rugged individualism correspond to the outlook of the ruling class' (p. 53)

Kate Davies (DoB 29 March 1956) has been Chief Executive of Notting Hill Housing Group since 2004.

She is reportedly a former leading member of the Revolutionary Communist Tendency and Revolutionary Communist Party in the 1970s and 1980s. According to sources quoted by leftist blogger Charlie Pottins, her real name was Katherine Barlow and while in the party adopted the 'party name' Kate Marshall. Later, on marriage, she became Kate Davies:

An ex-RCP comrade who did not get rid of his working class affinities to rise with the leaders remembers that Kate Davies did use to go by the name Kate Marshall, "though her actual name was Barlow, and she married a chap called John Davies, who was in the RCP. ...She became the General Secretary when the group decided to have such a position, but she drifted away from the RCP sometime in the mid-1980s, as far as I know out of politics altogether, as did her other half".

Although she maintains social relationships with current associates of the LM network Davies appears not to have been active in the LM network and seems to have ceased her involvement with the RCP at some point in the late 1980s.

From the early 1990s she pursued a career in housing and in the last few years has moved increasingly close to the Conservative movement. In 2008 she contributed blog entries to ConservativeHome and she has chaired the 'Housing and Dependency Working Group' for the conservative think tank the Centre for Social Justice. She launched the report sitting alongside former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, evangelical Christian (and Tory Special Adviser) Philippa Stroud and the former head of Margaret Thatcher's Policy Unit in 1982-4, Ferdinand Mount. She has also praised the housing policies of London Mayor Boris Johnson noting especially the emphasis on home ownership.

Education

• PhD in sociology, University of Kent, 1981.

Kate Davies biographical box from Building magazine 2004.

Career

1970s-1980s

Katherine Barlow was appointed Director and Secretary, of Junius Publications in November 1977, giving her occupation as 'Housewife' and an address in New Cross, London. On 4 May 1982 Anne Dickson was appointed as Secretary and Director (giving her occupation as 'Housewife') to replace Katherine Barlow who resigned on the same date. Between 1977 and 1987 'Marshall' was a leading member of the RCP contributing three times to its short series of pamphlets and also to its theoretical journal Confrontation. In 1987 she stood as an electoral candidate for the RCP in the Greenwich (by-election 26th February 1987) securing 91 votes and coming last in a field of eight behind the Greens, the National Front and the British National Party.

1990s - present

Director of development, Carr-Gomm Housing Association, 1990-3; corporate projects consultant, Stonham Housing Association, 1993-4; head of housing, London Borough of Bexley, 1994-6; director of housing, Brighton & Hove Council, 1996-9; chief executive, Servite Houses, 1999-2004; chief executive, Notting Hill Housing Group, since 2004.

Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP, CSJ Chairman; Philippa Stroud, CSJ Executive Director; and the Housing and Dependency Working Group Chairman Kate Davies discuss the report with the media.

Affiliations

ConservativeHome blogger 2008 | Chair of Housing Working Group for the Centre for Social Justice

Company Directorships

Director of Viridian Property Investments Limited appointed 20/11/2003 and resigned 18/06/2004 | Notting Hill Market Rent Limited Appointed 9 February 2007 | Great Eastern Quay Limited appointed 1 April 2008 | Coreland Limited, appointed 4 April 2008 | Ajanta Homes Limited, appointed 16 June 2009 | Arawak Development Limited, appointed 16 June 2009 | Cheynne Limited, appointed 16 June 2009 | Touareg Trust, appointed 16 June 2009 | Canonbury Developments Limited, appointed 22 October 2009 | Presentation Market Rent Limited, appointed 24 Marsh 2010 | Notting Hill Developments Limited, appointed 22 September 2010 | Notting Hill Commercial Properties Limited, appointed 22 September 2010 | Olmec, appointed 16 June 2009, resigned 1 June 2010 | Notting Hill Brentford Limited, appointed 22 October 2009, dissolved 24 March 2010 | Davies Johnson Limited, appointed 27 February 2006

Publications

• Mike Freeman and Kate Marshall, Who needs the Labour Party? Sept 1978 Revolutionary Communist Pamphlets No.3.
• Tony Allen, Gareth Evans, Mike Freeman and Kate Marshall 'The Recession: Capitalist Offensive and the Working Class', in 'The Recession: Capitalist Offensive and the Working class - a Marxist analysis of the crisis and reformism in the labour movement', Revolutionary Communist Papers No. 3: 1978, London: Junius Publications. p. 4-?

Cover of Kate Marshall, Real freedom, 1982. This concluded that: 'every blow struck today to keep a nursery open, to hold union meetings during hours of work, for pro rata wage rates for part timers or against legal discrimination of women will bring real freedom that much closer. Join us in the fight for a new world!' (p. 124)

• Kate Marshall, Real freedom: Women's liberation and socialism, London: Junius Publications, 1982, 139 pages. ISBN 0-9508404-0-8
• Kate Marshall, Moral Panics and Victorian Values, 1985, 2nd ed., 1986, Junius Publications.
• Kate Marshall, 'Picking up the fragments, Review of Elizabeth Wilson (with Angela Weir), Hidden Agendas: Theory, Politics and Experience in the Women's Movement, Tavistock, 1986, Confrontation, No. 2, Summer 1987, London: Junius Publications, ISSN 0269-9966, p. 115-122.

Contact

Website DaviesJohnson