McKay Tom

Tom McKay

Tom McKay was a railway clerk in Inverness, Scotland, who joined the local Communist Party in the mid 1930s. He became active in the National Unemployed Workers Movement (NUWM) in 1938. An active Inverness branch of the movement had been established that summer by a Jewish tailor and Communist Mark Cymbalist (see separate entry), along with Jim Cochrane.

It soon had secured 50 members and held demonstrations and organised Christmas Parties for Children. The branch led off the Inverness to Edinburgh NUWM hunger march of the winter of 1939-1939 and Tom McKay was one of the marchers, although his father forbade him from marching beyond Nairn. 

Michael Walker

Source: `We refuse to starve in silence’ by Richard Croucher