Tom Barker (trade unionist)

However, due to growing health problems with the strength of his heart, he was discharged soon from the army and worked in Liverpool on the rail-road.

He also sought to unite feminists with labor movements, believing gender warfare to be a misguided ruse when women should be protesting alongside men in the streets.

After his arrest, Donald Grant publicly stated: "For every day that Tom Barker is in jail it will cost the capitalist class £10,000".

[2] In 1916, with enthusiasm for Australia's participation in World War I spreading through the ruling government, opinion was still deeply divided and political life dominated by the debate on conscription, the anti-war movement "NO", and by political gridlock and the arrests of trade unionists accused as conspirators under Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who founded the Nationalist Party.

The unionists were found to be in violation of the Unlawful Associations Act (1916), an initiative the Federal Parliament adopted in December 1916 under the Hughes cabinet, which considered certain IWW members to be involved in a conspiratorial organization.

He led numerous organizations around the globe to protest these charges and petition the government to change its decision, although these efforts proved fruitless.

From 1930 to 1931, Barker lived in Australia and then went to the United Kingdom, where he worked as an employee of an electric power company London.

As a member of the British Labour Party, he was elected a councillor on St Pancras Metropolitan Borough Council.

In the song "Gladiators", which was sung by Andy Irvine on the album Way Out Yonder, the life and political work of Barker is discussed in great detail.