Ron Heisler

Ronald B. Heisler (born c. 1941) is a book collector, trade unionist, socialist, and self-described "delinquent historian" who has given his name to the Ron Heisler Collection at Senate House Library, University of London.

Ronald B. Heisler was born in Norfolk around 1941, the son of Austrian migrants to the United Kingdom from Vienna in 1938. His father he described as a "politico" who was involved in the Social Democrats in the 1920s and was the manager of a clothes shop. His mother was raised as a Catholic in the Sudetenland, the daughter of the manager of a graphite mine who had been the first socialist in his village around 1890 or 1900. He describes himself as having the classic background of a book collector, having suffered a serious illness at the age of 3 or 4 when he was in a coma and "given up for dead". He recovered but was left very weak and subsequently absorbed himself in reading. The family moved to London from Norfolk on the back of a potato truck arriving at 337 Victoria Park Road, Hackney, at 8.00 pm on Christmas Eve, 1947.

Heisler describes himself as "becoming politicised" during the Suez Crisis of 1956 and became involved in the Young Socialists in Hackney Central in London where he was influenced by Robin Jamieson. He began to seriously collect political literature when he was 18.

In 2004, Heisler began to donate his collection to Senate House library. It consists of around 5,000 books, 3,000 journals and newspapers, and 20,000 pamphlets relating to radical and left-wing politics.

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