A Resolute Bristolian Working-Class Leader George Massey (1906-2016)

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-cb ... -1906-2016" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

“The death of George Massey on October 3 marks, perhaps, the breaking of the final trade union link with the old, integrated Post Office section of the British Civil Service.

George, a proud Bristolian and honorary member of the Bristol Branch of the UPW since 1959, was the oldest surviving member of the UPW executive council.

During WWII George was an army battery sergeant, manning ack ack and bofors guns on Portland, in India and Burma.

A card-carrying — if often dissident — member of the Communist Party of Great Britain for most of his adult life, George Massey, with other Bristol communists and socialists, met in secret from 1935 but, after the war, transformed the Bristol UPW into a prominent left-wing branch and, for the first half of the 1950s, a thorn in the side of the right-wing Catholic UPW general secretary Charles Geddes.

The leader of this secret, pre-war Rosa Luxembourg Group, John Currie, became, I believe, the first communist UPW NEC member and, later in the 1950s, the first communist national UPW officer.

George joined his father at the Small Street sorting office in 1930 as boy messenger. Later George became a sorting clerk and telegraphist/SC and T and, after the grade reorganisation of the late 1940s, a post and telegraph officer, UPW section secretary and delegate to Bristol Trades Union Council.

In 1959, with the approval of the CPGB, George became a supervisor and activist in their trade union — the forerunner of the CMA, until he retired in 1976. He was at the time a member of the CMA executive council and full-time secretary of Bristol Council of Post Office Unions.

During the epic UPW strike of 1971 George held a high profile, collecting solidarity subscriptions from sympathetic managers, appearing on picket lines and speaking at meetings — actions unheard of from a supervisor.

After 1976 George was secretary of the Post Office Pensioners Federation for a dozen years. His CPGB membership had lapsed but he remained a CND member until his death.

George Massey’s funeral will be held today at 12.30pm, at Westerleigh Crematorium, Yate, near Bristol and the family has asked Dave Chapple to deliver both the eulogy and family tribute.

Dave’s full-length biography of George, Grasshoppers, Stonkers and Straight Eights, published in 2008 with financial help from the national CWU, is still available via abebooks.com.

[brentford]

Rest in peace We should all be grateful of the like's of George Massey.
without the likes of this man are jobs are becoming harder .
Having worked for Royal mail for nearly 30 years I can see that without a strong union we will suffer but with a strong union we need us as members too be strong and unfortunately collectively we are not most of the time .heartening to see pockets of offices standing up to the bullying and harassment like Luton at the present time but until we realize that are greatest strength is are union and collectively support are fellow workers and reps are jobs will just become harder.