Howe Tom

 

Tom Howe

Howe was an engineer and AEU member who was Communist Party candidate in 1952 for Mountsorrel, a village of just a few thousand inhabitants south of Loughborough.

The Party’s presence was nurtured by the fact that during World War Two, in 1942, Alvis an armoured vehcile manufacturer based in Coventry, acquired a factory that had previously been used to produce cardboard boxes. The move had been forced after Coventry was bombed by the Luftwaffe. Alvis built a new factory on the site of an old brickworks, which de Havilland, an aeroplane propeller manufacturer, briefly used after the war until Rolls Royce acquired the site in 1945. In common with most aircraft manufacturing establishments, the Communist Party would have had a factory branch there.

During Howe’s campaign, over 871 people were canvassed in the course of the election, with a total of 29 Party members and non-Party supporters taking part in the campaign.

Michael Walker

 

Plus additional material from Graham Stevenson