[3][1] A member of the Territorial Army since 1934 (he was promoted to bombardier in the Royal Artillery), in 1936 at the start of the Spanish Civil War, Jones joined and served with the British Battalion of the XV International Brigade as the political commissar of the Major Attlee Company,[4] and was seriously wounded at the Battle of the Ebro in 1938.

[1] Prior to the battle, Jones met a delegation of students, including future Prime Minister Edward Heath, who were sympathetic to the republican cause.

Jones played a key role in organising the workforce of the West Midlands motor industry in the postwar period as Regional Secretary of the TGWU.

A plan for detrimental leaks to the media was placed in the Foreign Office propaganda Information Research Department, and its head prepared a briefing paper.

[8] In January 1977 a Gallup opinion poll found that 54% of people believed that Jones was the most powerful person in Britain, ahead of the Prime Minister,[9] and is held responsible by some in the Labour Party for being "the union leader that created the Winter of Discontent and 18 years of Tory rule",[10] despite the fact that he had retired from the leadership of the TGWU in 1978, the year before the Winter of Discontent.

Jones's last public act was to unveil a memorial at Newhaven Fort on 7 December 2008, 70 years after British Battalion members returned to the port after the International Brigades were withdrawn from Spain.

At the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth in October 2003, aged 90, he received a special award in recognition of his service to the trade union movement.

She had first been married to the communist trade union organiser and close friend of Jones, George Brown but he had been killed in the Battle of Brunete in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.