George Smith (trade unionist)

Sir George Fenwick Smith CBE (24 June 1914 – 21 November 1978) was a Scottish trade unionist.[1]

Smith was born in Arbroath, Angus, and educated at Inverbrothock and Downfield Schools.[1] He worked as a carpenter and joined the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers in 1933. He also joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in the early 1940s but left it in 1954.[2]

Smith became the full-time National Organiser of the Woodworkers in 1945, and then Assistant General Secretary in 1949. Ten years later, he was elected as the union's General Secretary.[3] When the Woodworkers merged with other unions to form the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, Smith became its first General Secretary, serving until his death in 1978.[4] He also serve as the President of the Trades Union Congress in 1972, and on the council of Acas from 1974.[3]

He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969 and knighted in the 1978 New Year Honours.[1]

He died in Sutton, London, in 1978.

References
  1. "Sir George Smith – Influential Trade Union Leader". The Times. 24 November 1978. p. 16.
  2. Stephen Milligan, The new barons: union power in the 1970s, p.150
  3. Smith, Sir George. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U159695.
  4. Wolodymyr Maksymiw et al, The British trade union directory, p.357
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