Leonard W. Matters was a Labour MP and freelance journalist. He accompanied Krishna Menon, Monica Whately and Ellen Wilkinson on the India League's Mission to India in 1932. Their findings were published in 1933 under the title Conditions of India. He was also a contributor to India Bulletin.

Harold Joseph Laski was a political theorist and university professor at the London School of Economics. He is remembered as an important political thinker, intellectual and activist, in particular during the 1930s. Through meeting Winifred (Frida) Kerry, Laski became fascinated with eugenics and he published his first article on the topic, ‘The scope of eugenics’, in the Westminster Review (July 1910). Laski began reading history at New College Oxford, before transferring to study eugenics in London under Karl Pearson. On 1 August 1911, he and Frida eloped to Scotland to get married. Laski soon returned to Oxford and took up the study of history again after losing interest in eugenics.

Through Frida, he became a supporter of the Suffragette movement and also developed close links with the labour movement. He graduated from Oxford in 1914 and took up temporary employment at the Daily Herald, for which he wrote editorials. His attempt to join the army during the First World War was rejected on medical grounds. He accepted a junior lectureship at McGill University where he remained until 1916, before moving to Harvard, where in 1917 he became editor of the Harvard Law Review. While in the USA, Laski developed his pluralist theory to refute the notion of the moral superiority of the state. He argued that the state needed to win its citizens' support by acting in a reasonable way. Laski was a keen supporter of decentralization and encouraging political participation at grass-roots level through work-based organizations. His works on pluralist theory established his reputation as a political theorist. He left the US in 1920 and took up a lectureship at the London School of Economics. Back in England he became closely associated and involved with the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, whose executive committee he joined in 1921. In 1926 Laski was promoted to the Graham Wallas Chair of Political Science at the London School of Economics.

In 1926 he met Krishna Menon who studied with him at LSE. Through his friendship with Menon Laski became closely involved with the India League. Laski was a staunch supporter of India’s move towards independence and argued for India’s right to self-determination. After his return from the US, he and Bertrand Russell spoke at election rallies for Shapurji Saklatvala. Laski’s commitment to India is derived from the case O’Dwyer v. Nair, a libel case O’Dwyer brought against Sankaran Nair, where he sat on the jury.

Laski’s influence on Menon was huge. Indeed heprobably learnt his socialism from his professor. Their relationship went beyond the teacher-student connection, as Laski and his wife took an interest in the welfare of Menon who was prone to depression. Laski met Gandhi and Nehru through Menon and the India League. In turn, Menon could always count on Laski’s support, and he would often give speeches in front of students, or speak at rallies or lobbied the Labour Party. In spring 1930, Laski was asked by Sankey to help with the planning for the Round Table Conference which would deal with the principles of a federal constitution. During the 1931 second Round Table Conference, Laski was closely involved in negotiations, especially on constitutional questions relating to political control of a possible federal Indian army; he also worked on a criminal code and its implementation. Sankey also asked Laski to negotiate with Gandhi and the Agha Khan on the future constitutional status of religion. Yet these efforts failed. Gandhi admired Laski’s commitment to Indian freedom and he often recommended students to study with him. Together with Victor Gollancz and John Strachey he launched the Left Book Club, with which many South Asian writers and activists, such as Mulk Raj Anand, Indira Nehru (Gandhi), and Jawaharlal Nehru also became involved. Laski was elected to the constituency section of the Labour Party national executive committee in 1937, on which he served for 12 consecutive years. He died in 1950.

Reginald Sorensen was a politician and Unitarian clergyman. Sorensen became a member of the Liberal Christian League and was influenced by Rev. Reginald John Campbell. Sorensen joined the Finsbury branch of the Independent Labour Party in 1908. In the 1920s he stood unsuccessfully as a Labour candidate for Southampton. He was elected to Parliament for Leyton West in 1929. His brother in law, Fenner Brockway, served at the same time as him as an MP for Leyton East. Both lost their seats in the 1931 General Election. But Sorensen regained his seat in 1935.

Sorensen was a supporter of anti-colonial liberation movements. He was part of the Fabian Colonial Bureau. In the 1930s, Sorensen became a supporter of the India League. Although he had many disagreements with Krishna Menon, they had similar views about Indian self-determination. By 1937, he became the Parliamentary Secretary of the India League, a position he shared with Tom Williams. Sorensen co-organised the National Independence Day demonstration which took place on 26 January 1938 in Trafalgar Square, which attracted around 1,000 people in an expression of solidarity with the Republicans fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and the struggles in China and Abyssinia. He also co-organized the India League’s Independence Day event in 1939. Sorensen regularly chaired India League meetings or spoke at events. He also challenged the British Government’s position on India in Parliament.

In 1946, he was part of the Government deputation to India, led by Robert Richards. While a staunch supporter of Indian independence, he was not in favour of the partition of the subcontinent. In 1964, he was given a life peerage. He died in 1971.
 

Henry Noel Brailsford was a left-wing intellectual and political journalist, famous as a vociferous critic of British imperialism. Born in Yorkshire, he was brought up and educated in Scotland. After graduating from Glasgow University, he joined the Greek Foreign Legion in 1897 to assist the Greeks in their fight against the Ottoman Empire; he subsequently worked as a special correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in Crete and Macedonia.

In 1899, he moved to London, and worked as a leader-writer for a series of liberal newspapers, such as the Morning Leader, the Echo, the Tribune, the Daily News, Reynolds's News, New Statesman and Nation. In 1907 he joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and edited the ILP weekly, the New Leader (1922-6). He came in contact with revolutionary Russians, including Lenin and Trotsky, and was a supporter of Soviet Russia in its early days.

In 1930, Brailsford visited India, and became a supporter of Indian independence.  After his first tour of India he published his book Rebel India (1931). In 1943, Subject India was published as part of the Left Book Club monthly selection. He visited India again in 1945. He was an executive member and active supporter of Krishna Menon’s India League. He first met Gandhi during the Round Table Conference in London, and then during his second Indian trip. He co-wrote his biography Mahatma Gandhi (1949). He visited Jawaharlal Nehru in an Allahabad prison during his first visit to India, and on his second trip, was a house guest of Nehru and his daughter Indira. 

Bertrand Russell was a philosopher, journalist and political campaigner. From 1890 to 1893, Russell studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1914 he took up a visiting lectureship at Harvard University, where he befriended T. S. Eliot. Russell’s opposition to Britain’s participation in the First World War played a key role in his politicization. Russell supported the No-Conscription Fellowship, which led to his sacking from his lectureship at Cambridge.

In 1932, he became Chairman of the India League, presiding over meetings and regularly chairing India League events. He was heading the organization at the time of the India League’s delegation to India in the Autumn of 1932. He wrote the introduction to the delegation’s report published under the title The Condition of India. By 1938 Russell had moved away from political activism and back to philosophy and academic life, accepting a temporary lectureship in Chicago in 1938 and moving to the University of California in 1939. He remained in the United States for most of the Second World War. He returned to Britain in 1944 to take up a five-year fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1950. In 1958 he became one of the founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He died in 1970.

Laurence Housman, brother of the poet A. E. Housman, was a playwright, writer and illustrator. Houseman was a committed pacifist and socialist. He was an early supporter of Indian independence and a member of Krishna Menon's India League.

Asha Bhattacharya ran education classes with Mrs J. Handoo and Indian students for the India League's East End Branch. These took place at Ayub Ali's cafe, the Shah Jolal Restaurant.

Mrs J. Handoo, wife of Dr H. K. Handoo, was an active member of the India League. Together with Asha Bhattacharya she ran education classes under the auspices of the India League's East End branch at the Shah Jolal Restaurant. She was a member of the India League's Central Committee and its women's committee. She was instrumental in fundraising for the India League, and organized a scheme of annual subscription from affluent Indians living in Britain.

P.N. Haksar arrived in Britain to study at the London School of Economics. He was called to the Bar from Lincoln's Inn in the early 1940s. In London, he was an active member of Krishna Menon's India League along with other students, which greatly shaped his socialist political outlook. He  befriended Feroze Gandhi and Jawahrlal Nehru's daughter Indira who would later appoint him her principal secretary, a post he held from 1967-73. He was also India's chief negotiator for the talks between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1972-3.