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A. J. Cook (trade Unionist)
Arthur James Cook (22 November 1883 – 2 November 1931), was a British trade union leader who was General Secretary of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain from 1924 until 1931, a period that included the 1926 General Strike. Biography Early years A.J. Cook was born to Thomas and Selina Cook in Wookey, Somerset. He spent the early part of his life in the West Country. Cook later described his childhood as a troubled one, which included both a poor relationship with his family as well as a struggle in school. Political career As a result, at the age of 18 Cook moved to Porth in South Wales, and later to Merthyr Tydfil, to find work in the coal mines; he was also a lay preacher in the local Baptist chapel. In this mining town Cook first became involved in politics, committing active service to the Independent Labour Party (ILP). He came to prominence in the Cambrian Coal Dispute in 1910 and went on to active involvement in the Miners' Unofficial Reform Committee whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communist Party Of South Wales And The West Of England
The Communist Party of South Wales and the West of England was a political party in Britain, formed in September 1920. The group was formed by a minority within the South Wales Socialist Society, that did not support merging into the Communist Party of Great Britain. The group was sympathetic to the Communist Party (British Section of the Third International) of Sylvia Pankhurst, and adopted the programme of its previous group, the Workers Socialist Federation. The group held a conference in Cardiff in November 1920, during which it declared that communist unity could be achieved only on the basis of "local autonomy In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one' ... in a given local area". A.J. Cook was a leading member of the group. References Communist parties in Wales De ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tony Cliff
Tony Cliff (born Yigael Glückstein, he, יגאל גליקשטיין; 20 May 1917 – 9 April 2000) was a Trotskyist activist. Born to a Jewish family in Palestine, he moved to Britain in 1947 and by the end of the 1950s had assumed the pen name of Tony Cliff. A founding member of the Socialist Review Group, which became the International Socialists and then the Socialist Workers Party, in 1977 Cliff was effectively the leader of all three. Biography Tony Cliff was born Yigael Glückstein in Zikhron Ya'akov in the Ottoman Empire's Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem (in what is now Israel), in 1917, the same year Britain seized control of the territory from the Ottoman Empire during World War I. He was one of four children born to Akiva and Esther Glückstein, Jewish immigrants from Poland, who had come to Palestine as part of the Second Aliyah. His father was an engineer and contractor. He had two brothers and a sister; his brother Chaim later became a notable journalist, theatre c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Nine Days (1927)
The Nine Days of Av are a time of commemoration and spiritual observance in Judaism during the first nine days of the Jewish month of Av (corresponding to July/August). The Nine Days begin on Rosh Chodesh Av ("First of Av") and culminates on the public fast day of Tisha B'Av ("Ninth of Av"). The Nine Days are part of a larger period of time known as The Three Weeks, which begin with the public fast day of the Seventeenth of Tammuz — commemorated in Judaism for the time when the forces of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia broke through the defensive walls surrounding Jerusalem, generally accepted as happening in 586 BCE — and end with the public fast day of Tisha B'Av — when, according to the Mishna, the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple in 597 BCE and when the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. During the entire Three Weeks, certain activities are abstained by Jews observing Jewish law in order to commemorate, remember and inspire mourning over de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Horner (politician)
Arthur Lewis Horner (5 April 1894 – 4 September 1968) was a Welsh trade union leader and communist politician. During his periods of office as President of the South Wales Miners Federation (SWMF) from 1936, and as General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1946, he became one of the most prominent and influential communists in British public life.Fishman 2010 Vol 1 p. 19 Early career Arthur Horner was born in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, the eldest surviving son of a family of seventeen children only six of whom lived past infancy. Horner's father was a chargehand porter in the railway goods station. His maternal grandfather and two maternal uncles were miners. His earliest employment was as a grocer's assistant and delivery boy in the coalfield communities around Merthyr. After a short spell in Merthyr railway goods station he was drawn into coalmining employment in 1915 due to his growing interest in the political radicalism of trade union activists ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Minority Movement
The National Minority Movement was a British organisation, established in 1924 by the Communist Party of Great Britain, which attempted to organise a radical presence within the existing trade unions. The organization was headed by longtime unionist Tom Mann and future General Secretary of the CPGB Harry Pollitt. Establishment The National Minority Movement was established at a convention held on 23–24 August 1924, attended by 271 delegates, claiming to represent 200,000 workers. By the time of the NMM's formation in 1924, the Comintern had abandoned strategies based on the prospect of an imminent world revolution, in favour of slow, gradual working within established institutions, including "pure and simple" reformist trade unions. The aim of the NMM was to convert the revolutionary minority of the working class into a majority. The NMM would organise workers who were dissatisfied with the existing unions but unwilling to join the Communist Party as well as those who were a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communist Party Of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB founded the ''Daily Worker'' (renamed the ''Morning Star'' in 1966). In 1936, members of the party were present at the Battle of Cable Street, helping organise resistance against the British Union of Fascists. In the Spanish Civil War the CPGB worked with the USSR to create the British Battalion of the International Brigades, which party activist Bill Alexander commanded. In World War II, the CPGB mirrored the Soviet position, opposing or supporting the war in line with the involvement of the USSR. By the end of World War II, CPGB membership had nearly tripled and the party reached the height of its popularity. Many key CPGB members became leaders of Britain's trade union movement, including most notably Jessie Eden, Abraham Lazaru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fred Bramley
Fred Bramley (27 September 1874 – 10 October 1925) was the second General Secretary of the British Trade Union Congress (TUC). Born in Pool near Otley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bramley completed an apprenticeship as a cabinet-maker, then became active in the Alliance Cabinet Makers' Association and a member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). During the 1890s, he was involved with the Clarion van movement, and also with the Bradford Trades Council.Barbara Nield and John Saville, ''Dictionary of Labour Biography'', vol. IX, pp. 16-20 Bramley moved to London around the turn of the century, and through his membership of the ILP, was adopted as the candidate of the "Aberdeen Labour Representation Committee" in the 1907 Aberdeen South by-election.F. W. S. Craig, ''British Parliamentary Election Results, 1885-1918'', p. xvi In 1912 he became the national organiser of his union, which following a merger was known as the National Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Associati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trades Union Congress
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is a national trade union centre, a federation of trade unions in England and Wales, representing the majority of trade unions. There are 48 affiliated unions, with a total of about 5.5 million members. Frances O'Grady became General Secretary in 2013 and presented her resignation in 2022, with Paul Nowak becoming the next General Secretary in January 2023. Organisation The TUC's decision-making body is the Annual Congress, which takes place in September. Between congresses decisions are made by the General Council, which meets every two months. An Executive Committee is elected by the Council from its members. Affiliated unions can send delegates to Congress, with the number of delegates they can send proportionate to their size. Each year Congress elects a President of the Trades Union Congress, who carries out the office for the remainder of the year and then presides over the following year's conference. The TUC is not affiliated with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Jones (trade Unionist)
Joseph Jones (1891 – 1 April 1948) was a British trade unionist. Born in St Helens, Jones studied at a technical college before becoming a coal miner.Robin Page Arnot, ''The Miners in Crisis and War'', p.129 He moved to work at Thurcroft, and was elected branch secretary of the Yorkshire Miners' Association (YMA) in 1914. He was an active methodist, and strongly promoted the cause of temperance, later becoming Chairman of the Workers' Temperance League. He was elected as a Labour Party member of West Riding County Council in 1919, serving until 1933. In 1923, Jones was elected as Treasurer of the YMA and, the following year, he became its General Secretary. He was elected to Barnsley Town Council in 1926, serving as Mayor of Barnsley in 1931. In 1924, Jones contested the General Secretaryship of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) as the candidate of the union's right-wing, but he was narrowly defeated by the communist A. J. Cook. From 1926 until 1931, Jon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Hodges (trade Unionist)
Frank Hodges (30 April 1887 – 3 June 1947) was an English trade union leader, who became General Secretary of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. A Member of Parliament (MP) for one year, he was Civil Lord of the Admiralty in the first Labour Government. Early life Hodges was born in Woolaston in Gloucestershire in 1887, but moved to Wales at a young age. At the age of 14 he was working at the Powell Tillery Pit in Abertillery, and due to his desire to read, he came to the attention of one of the mining officials, who sponsored him to attend night school. At the age of sixteen, inspired by the preacher Evan Roberts, he became a Methodist and was soon preaching in the evenings. Like many trade unionists before him, he found his religious beliefs tied into the plight of the coal-miners, and joined the Trade Union movement. At the same time his political views led him to become a member of the Independent Labour Party. At the age of eighteen, Hodges heard Philip Snowden addre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Wales Miners' Federation
The South Wales Miners' Federation (SWMF), nicknamed "The Fed", was a trade union for coal miners in South Wales. It survives as the South Wales Area of the National Union of Mineworkers. Forerunners The Amalgamated Association of Miners (AAM) was influential in South Wales during the early 1870s, but it collapsed in 1875. Of the AAM's various districts, only the Cambrian Miners' Association survived the collapse, but it steadily grew in membership, and other local unions were founded. The local unions disagreed over whether to negotiate wages as part of a "sliding scale", where pay rose and fell in line with coal export prices. This began to change in 1892, when the unions formed a joint committee. Its initial members were William Abraham, David Beynon, Thomas Davies, Daronwy Isaac, J. Jones, David Morgan, Alfred Onions and Morgan Weeks from the sliding scale districts, and David Ajax, John Davies, J. Edwards, Joseph Phillips and M. Williams from the non-sliding scale ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
