Horace Newbold
Horace Edward Newbold was born on 8 April 1900, in Barrow-in-Furness, into a family with strong working class affiliations. His father was Branch Secretary of the National Amalgamated Union of Labour from 1899 in Barrow, who was later appointed a NAUL full time organiser, a position until his death in 1928.
Horace Newbold served his apprenticeship to engineering at Vickers in Barrow and joined the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). He became secretary of Barrow Independent Labour Party (ILP), but later joined the Communist Party. In 1923 he was elected Chairman of Barrow branch of the National Unemployed Workers Committee Movement and attended its national conference in 1926, where he played a prominent role.
Because of his Communist Party activity in Barrow he was black-listed and was unable to obtain work, so he moved to Cardiff in 1927, where he worked on the railway and steel works and other various jobs. In 1928 he joined the Transport & General Workers Union (TGWU). Like many militant workers, he was frequently dismissed because of his trade union and Communist Party activity.
After a short period in Swansea he returned to Cardiff, where he drove a petrol lorry for Russia Oil Products. He moved to Preston, where he lived for five years, maintaining his trade union activity and then in 1939 moved to Manchester, where he became Chairman of the Manchester Road Transport (Commercial Services) Branch of the Transport & General Workers Union (TGWU).
He became a noted lucid and constructive speaker and debater; when Jack Munro (a Sheet Metal Workers union and Communist Party member) resigned in July 1944 as Secretary of Manchester & Salford Trades Council, a position he had held since 1934, Newbold was the obvious choice as his successor. He held this elected position from July 1944 until 1974, although poor health forced him to accept a shared secretaryship with Colin Davies from October 1969 until final retirement from office in 1974.
Michael Walker
Source: Edmund & Ruth Frow `To Make that Future – Now’
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