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Tom Mann

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"MANN,' 'TOM (1856-), British Labour politician, was born at Foleshill, Coventry, Warwickshire, April 15 1856. He received a very scanty education, and at the age of nine years started work on a farm. At the age of ten he was working in a coal-mine, which he left at the age of fourteen. He served seven years with an engineer tool-maker in Birmingham, went to London at the age of 21 and worked in a number of engineering firms. In 1883 he visited the United States and worked there. Returning to England, he became a Socialist in 1884 and a member of the Social Democratic Federation. He took an active part in many trade disputes, notably the London dock strike of 1889. He became president of the Dockers' Union, and first president of the International Transport Workers' Federation, and was expelled both from France and Germany in connexion with his activities as an agitator. He later became the general secretary of the I.L.P., and worked with Keir Hardie in building it up. In 1901 he went to New Zealand, and thence to Australia, where he stayed for eight years, becoming an ardent advocate of Syndicalism. In 1910 he visited South Africa, and in 1913 the United States, where he made a lecture tour from Boston to San Francisco. In 1914 he again visited South Africa to help carry on the work of the trade-union deportees, and covered the whole of South Africa in a six-month campaign of persistent propaganda. He became secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in 1919, and resigned (per rule) in 1921.