Wynne Bert

Bert Wynne

Herbert (Bert) William Wynn was born in 1902 and left school at the age of 13 to work in the pits at Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. He became a prominent activist in the 1926 General Strike. In December 1927, he began work at Shipley Colliery Company in Derbyshire and was elected checkweighman in 1940.

He was a prominent member of the Labour Party from 1927 for three years, being Vice President of Ilkeston, Derbyshire, Constituency Labour Party. He was also Chair of Heanor District Labour Party. He became a Derbyshire County Councillor for 1927-30 but joined the Communist Party in 1929. He became, for 24 years, Derbyshire Area NUM General Secretary during the early part of the Second World War.

Wynne was the Communist Party’s East Midlands District Chairman and chair of Chesterfield CP branch for a great deal of this time. He left the Communist Party in 1956 over Hungary to join the Labour Party but many of his close family remained in the Party and he was not hostile and remained on the Left in general. Bert Wynne died aged 64, still in office in what became the Derbyshire Area of the NUM in February 1966.

Source: Graham Stevenson `Defence or Defiance’