Tom Wright

Who was Tom Wright?

Thomas "Tom" Wright was a Scottish-born Australian trade unionist.

He was born at Bridgend in Kinross, Scotland, to coalminer John Easton Wright and Kathleen Florence, née Jessop. The family moved to Sydney in 1911, living in Redfern and Hurstville. Tom left school at the age of thirteen and became a sheet-metal worker at Wunderlich Ltd, coming under the influence of socialist Paddy Drew, later a founder of the Communist Party of Australia. He joined the Sheet Metal Working Industrial Union of Australia in 1921 and in 1924 became a member of the state management committee, treasurer of the New South Wales branch, and a delegate to the Labor Council of New South Wales. He joined the Australian Labor Party and became secretary of the Hurstville branch, but after joining the Communist Party of Australia in 1923 he was expelled from the ALP in 1925. The Bruce-Page government barred him from attending the 1927 Pan-Pacific Trade Union Congress in China, but he went instead to Moscow to a meeting with the Comintern.

Within the CPA he supported Jack Kavanagh's faction, becoming general secretary of the CPA in 1925.