Mike Hicks (trade unionist)

Hicks joined the Young Communist League in 1953 and later the Communist Party of Great Britain. He worked as a printer and was a member of the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT). A full-time branch official for the union in 1986,[2] Hicks was arrested and convicted of actual bodily harm during the Wapping dispute. His conviction and sentencing to 12 months in prison[3] were controversial, with the national executive committee of the Labour Party voting unanimously to call for his release.[4] He was expelled from the CPGB in 1984[5] "for allowing Rule 3(d) to be applied" as the chair of the London District Congress, i.e. continuing with the congress proceedings in defiance of a demand from CPGB General Secretary Gordon McLennan to close it down.[6]

He subsequently joined the Communist Campaign Group, mainly composed of those expelled from the CPGB for their opposition to revisionism and, in 1988, was a founding member of the Communist Party of Britain. Hicks served as its general secretary until his replacement by Robert Griffiths in 1998,[7] which led to an industrial dispute at the Morning Star[8] and subsequently left the party and helped to form the Marxist Forum group. He served as the trade union officer of the London-based Marx Memorial Library from 2005 to 2010. He joined the Labour Party, and unsuccessfully stood as a council election candidate in the Boscombe East ward of Bournemouth on 5 May 2011, gaining 514 votes.[9]

Hicks died at age 80 on the evening of 7 September 2017 after collapsing while accepting the position of Honorary President of Bournemouth Labour Party at its annual general meeting.[10]