Jack Dash
Jack Dash | |
|---|---|
| Born | Jack O'Brien Dash 23 February 1907 |
| Died | 8 June 1989 (aged 82) London, England |
| Employer | Auxiliary Fire Service |
| Organization(s) | National Unemployed Workers' Movement, Transport and General Workers' Union, National Dock Labour Board |
| Known for | Trade Union and communist activism |
| Notable work | Good Morning Brothers! (1969) |
| Political party | Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) |
| Honours | "Jack Dash House" - Isle of Dogs |
Jack O'Brien Dash (23 February 1907 – 8 June 1989) was a
Born in Southwark to a family which was often in poverty, Dash grew up on Rockingham Street. His father Thomas was a scene shifter at the theatre where he met Dash's mother, Rose Gertrude John, who appeared on stage there. She died aged 40 of tuberculosis, when Dash was seven, followed a few years later by his father.[1]
Dash left school at 14 to work as a page boy at a Lyons Corner House. He later became a hod carrier for a bricklayer, and worked in other jobs for short periods in between which he was unemployed. He enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps and served for two years; he also became a professional boxer, fighting about a dozen bouts.[2]
Dash joined the
Jack Dash was the outstanding rank and file leader of his generation in the London. While he enjoyed undoubted success in improving conditions for workers - between 1959 and 1972 the wages of dockers trebled - between approximately 1960 and 1970, when the shipping industry adopted the newly invented container system of cargo transportation, London's docks were unable to accommodate the much larger vessels needed by containerization, and the shipping industry moved to deep-water ports such as Tilbury and Felixstowe. Between 1960 and 1980, all of London's docks were closed, leaving around eight square miles (21 km2) of derelict land in East London.
After a life-time of activism, Jack retired to become an official London tourist guide and devote more time to his other hobbies of writing and painting. In retirement, Dash became an advocate for pensioners' rights. He was commemorated by the naming of "Jack Dash House", a municipal office building on the
Jack Dash died in London in 1989 at the age of 82. His autobiography Good Morning Brothers!, published in 1969, was a testimony to his work as a militant trade unionist and his lifelong membership of the Communist Party. In it he said that the only epitaph he wanted was: "Here lies Jack Dash / All he wanted was / To separate them from their cash".
References
- ISBN 978-1-349-07845-5.
- ^ "Jack Dash" (obituary), The Times, 9 June 1989.
External links
- Jack Dash, British Communist, 82 - The New York Times obituary
- Jack Dash photo - www.portcities.org.uk
- Jack Dash House - www.towerhamlets.gov.uk