Mick Jenkins
Born in 1904 in Cheetham, Manchester, he joined the Young Communist League in 1924. Becoming a delegate to Manchester & Salford Trades Council and a shop steward, by 1939, he was Manchester District Organiser of the Communist Party and, in that capacity, he played a major part in organising support for the International Brigade’s volunteers and their families, as well as the Aid for Spain campaign.
During the Second World War, he worked with David Ainley at the Fairy Aviation factory in Stockport, where they established a Communist Party branch of over 300 members. The Fairy shop stewards were a key part of the campaign to open up a second front in Europe. After the war, Jenkins moved to the East Midlands to become the Communist Party’s District Secretary there.
In retirement, he wrote `The General Strike of 1842’, a book which dispels the myths about the so-called `Plug Plot Riots’ by illustrating how aspects of the struggle were highly co-ordinated. He also wrote a number of biographical pamphlets, including one Frederick Engels in Manchester and another on George Browne, a Communist political commissar who was killed in Spain; other subjects included Albert Matthew, a Rochdale activist and Les Ellis of Hucknall, Notts. He wrote many articles on the pre-war activities of the YCL and an unpublished memoir, now deposited in the Working Class Movement Library in Salford. Jenkins died on January 8th 1992.
Sources include: Morning Star 23rd January 1992
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