Joe Thomas (1912–1990) was a

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

activist in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

during the middle of the twentieth century. Joe was born to Welsh parents in

Cricklewood Cricklewood is a town in North London, England, in the London Boroughs of Camden, Barnet, and Brent. The Crown pub, now the Clayton Crown Hotel, is a local landmark and lies north-west of Charing Cross. Cricklewood was a small rural hamlet ...

on 27 February 1912. His father was a shop-keeper in the leather trade and an active

freemason Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...

. Joe attended Haberdashers' Aske's Hampstead School, a local minor public school, to which his father was a supplier. His interest in

socialism Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

may have arisen in reaction to this establishment. He was active in the Young Communist League, coming into contact with Tom Mann, John Gollan and John Ross Campbell. By 1933 he was a junior clerical worker for ASLEF in Hampstead. He visited Campbell in Paris in 1936 and met senior Russian members of the

Comintern The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internatio ...

. He was involved in the Workers' Olympic Committee which planned to organise an alternative to the

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

Berlin Olympics The 1936 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XI Olympiad () and officially branded as Berlin 1936, were an international multi-sport event held from 1 to 16 August 1936 in Berlin, then capital of Nazi Germany. Berlin won the bid to ...

. The proposal was shelved because of the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...

. In 1945 Joe joined the Oehlerite Leninist League set up by his old comrade Dennis Levin, the group changing its name in the process to the Revolutionary Workers Association, the fused group then reforming in 1947 as the short-lived Socialist Workers League. In the following decade Thomas and Levin formed the Workers League.Barberis, Peter; McHugh, John; Tyldesley, Mike (2000) Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century. A&C Black, p165-9

References

Further reading