About Graham Stevenson
Graham Stevenson was for many decades a senior official of the Transport & General Workers Union and its successor, Unite the Union, covering the transport industries at a national and international level. He is a former President of the European Transport Workers Federation (ETF) and is currently National Trade Union Organiser for the Communist Party of Britain and a member of its Executive Committee and Political Committee.
This is his personal website, containing many historical resources written or edited by him. There are Communist biographies, a study of Derbyshire, the story of Spartacus, the Young Communist League, and many pieces on the struggles of the past, along with political and historical materials and illustrations. Here is a brief note of personal history:
I first made contact with the Communist Party in Coventry in 1966, just having turned the age of 16, having counted myself as a Communist for well over a year and a half before that, after reading about Marxism and then finding the Morning Star and other allied Communist publications. Although there was no formal local organisation to join during 1965 and 1966 and I was under the age of being able to join the Communist Party, I was at last was able to formally join the Young Communist League in January 1967 and became Coventry Branch Secretary within a few months. I was initially co-opted onto the Midlands YCL District Committee in May 1968 and was formally elected a member at the District Congress in 1969. I remained a member until May 1978, being a member of the District Executive or Secretariat for all that time. At the 1969 YCL District Congress, I was Chair of the Standing Orders Committee.
In February 1972 I moved to Birmingham to become the Midlands YCL District Secretary. During my period in Coventry, I was a member of the Draughtsmen’s and Allied Technicians Association Coventry Divisional Council from 1968 and also both the local and National Youth Committee of DATA. I was active in the local Trades Councils and their youth committees in a number of towns across the years. During the 1970s, I was active in the building industry national strike of 1972 in Birmingham and, unlike others elsewhere, was lucky to be found not guilty of conspiracy to trespass in a major case arising from these activities. In 1974, after beginning retraining as a capstan-lathe setter/operator, I joined the Transport and General Workers Union. In the mid to late 1970s, I worked for BSA Guns and was the elected secretary of the Joint Shop Stewards’ Committee there.
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