Ben Tillett

He was pushed aside by Ernest Bevin during the consolidation that created the Transport and General Workers' Union in 1922, who gave Tillett a subordinate position.

At 12 years of age, he served for six months on a fishing smack, was afterwards apprenticed to a bootmaker, and then joined the Royal Navy.

In an era dominated by unionisation the National League of the Blind (NLB) was registered in 1899 and was soon affiliated with both the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and Labour Party.

[5] Tillett began a political career as an alderman on the London County Council from 1892 to 1898 and was a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Salford North from 1917 to 1924 and again from 1929 to 1931.

Before his victory at the Salford North by-election in 1917 as an independent candidate, he had stood unsuccessfully for Parliament at four general elections: Bradford West in 1892 and 1895; at Eccles in 1906; and at Swansea in January 1910.

In contrast to his support for friendly relations between English and Irish Catholic dockworkers in the East End of London Tillett was strongly opposed to Jewish immigration.

[8] Tillett associated Jewish arrivals with creating undesirable working conditions and poor housing: "the influx of continental pauperism aggravates and multiplies the number of ills which press so heavily on us...foreigners come to London in large numbers, herd together in habitations unfit for beasts, the sweating system allowing the more grasping and shrewd a life of comparative ease in superintending their work".

[8] In 1891, Tillett formulated what the historian Satnam Virdee has described as a "proto-fascist discourse" in a series of letters to the London Evening News.

[9] Tillett argued that Jewish workers should be removed from Britain and that British politicians were in thrall to Jewish financial power: 'Our leading statesmen do not care to offend the great banking houses or money kings.... For heavens' sake, give us back our own countrymen and take from us your motley multitude.