Denzil Dean Harber

Who was Denzil Dean Harber?

Denzil Dean Harber was an early British Trotskyist leader and later in his life a prominent British ornithologist.

Denzil Dean Harber was born at 25 Fairmile Avenue, Streatham on 25 January 1909. His father was a ship's carpenter turned architect, his mother the daughter of a successful south London butcher.

During the First World War the family moved to Sussex where they lived in a succession of houses at Climping, Lewes, and Eastbourne and finally at the Black Mill, Ore near Hastings.

From a very early age he developed an interest in many aspects of natural history including reptiles, butterflies and moths, fossils and birds.

Suffering from chronic asthma from infancy his formal education was spasmodic. He was however taught how to learn, and how to plan courses of study himself by an inspiring private tutor. Developing what became a lifelong interest in languages he taught himself French and German.

It is not clear how he became interested in politics, but by the end of 1926 he was reading various anti-imperialist pamphlets published by the Labour Research Department. By March 1927 he had read the first volume of Capital.