Mann, Tom (1856–1941)

English labour leader. One of the leaders of a dock strike of 1889, he was president of the International Ship, Dock and River Workers 1892–96, and general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering Union 1919–21. He was secretary of the Independent Labour Party 1894–96 and a founder member of the British Communist Party in 1920.

Mann was born at Foleshill, Warwickshire. He worked from the age of nine on farms and in the mines, served an apprenticeship in engineering for seven years in Birmingham, settled in London in 1876, joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in 1881, and became a socialist in 1885.

He was first secretary of the London Reform Union and of the National Democratic Union; he stood as a parliamentary candidate on three occasions. After living 1902–10 in Australia, where he was imprisoned for socialist agitation, he visited South Africa and returned to the UK, where he became leader of the syndicalist movement (see syndicalism) and in 1912 was imprisoned for inciting the troops to mutiny.