William H. Andrews (unionist)

William Henry Andrews

Bill Andrews
General Secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa
In office
1921–1925
Personal details
Born 20 Apr 1870
Suffolk, England
Died 1950
Political party Communist Party of South Africa

William Henry Andrews (20 April 1870 in Suffolk – 1950), commonly known as Bill Andrews, was the first chairman of the South African Labour Party (SALP) and the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa. He was also active in the formation of the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union.

Biography

Born in England, Andrews joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in 1890. He travelled to Johannesburg in 1890, holding jobs on goldmines in the West Rand in the 1890s. Increasingly prominent as a trade union organizer, he became the official South African organizer of the ASE, the president of the Witwatersrand Trades and Labour Council and the Political Labour League in 1905, the Labour Representation Committee in 1906 and the South African Labour Party in 1909.[1]

In the 1912 Georgetown by-election Andrews was elected a Labour MP.The South African Labour Party was the first party that wanted total segregation in South Africa.[2] Andrews was a member of Parliament until his defeat in the 1915 election. A fighter for the rights of ″white″ labour, he was always quick to complain when he perceived that an African,referred by him frequently as a ″Kaffir,″(by then already regarded as a pejorative term) might take away a job from a white man.[3]

In 1915 he was elected the first president of the International Socialist League, which formed when anti-war socialists split from the SALP. He visited Britain in 1918, where he was impressed by the British shop stewards' movement. In 1921 he became the first general secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa, and in 1922 the editor of the party's newspaper The International. In 1925 he was elected the first secretary of the South African Trades Union Council.[1]

He was expelled from the South African Communist Party over the "black Republic" policy. [4]

References

  1. 1 2 Wessel Visser, 'Exporting Trade Unionism and Labour Politics: the British Influence on the early South African Labour Movement', New Contree 49 (2005), 145-62
  2. ↑ M.Roth,The Communist Party in South Africa: Racism, Eurocentricity and Moscow, 1921-1950, p.51.
  3. ↑ Ibid,p.50
  4. ↑ Kiloh, Margaret; Sibeko, Archie (2000). A Fighting Union. Randburg: Ravan Press. p. xxxii. ISBN 0869755277.

Further reading

Party political offices
Preceded by
New position		 General Secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa
1921–1925 		Succeeded by
Jimmy Shields


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