John Marchbank

John Marchbank (born January 19, 1883 in Lambfoot , Dumfriesshire , † March 25, 1946 ) was a Scottish trade unionist.

Life

Marchbank was the son of a shepherd. As a young man he began to work for the Caledonian Railway Company, for which he worked as a transport worker and later as a brakeman. In 1906, Marchbank joined the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants , the British railway union , which in 1912 became the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), on whose executive committee he was elected.

From 1922 to 1924 Marchbank served as President of the National Union of Railwaymen. From 1923 to 1924 he was a parallel member of the British trade union congress (Trades Union Congress).

In 1933 Marchbank was elected general secretary of the NUR, a post he would hold for ten years until 1943. From 1935 he also served as Vice President of the International Transport Workers' Federation. He retained this function until his death.

From 1943 Marchbank was also a director of the British overseas Airways Corporation.

Because of his position as a leading British trade unionist, Marchbank came under the sights of the police forces of National Socialist Germany at the end of the 1930s, who classified him as an important target: in the spring of 1940, the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who were the Nazi surveillance apparatus as particularly dangerous or important, which is why in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht they should be located and arrested by the occupying troops following special SS units with special priority.

Fonts

• This is the People's War , 1939.

literature

• Hugh Armstrong Clegg / Alan Fox / AF Thompson: History of British Trade Unions Since 1889: 1911-1933 , 1985.