Hugh Scanlon

Who was Hugh Scanlon?

Hugh Parr Scanlon, Baron Scanlon was a British trade union leader.

Scanlon was born in Melbourne, Australia to parents who had emigrated from Britain. His mother brought him to Britain at the age of two after she was widowed.

He attended Stretford Elementary School in Stretford near Manchester, which he left at the age of 11 to become an apprentice instrument maker at a local engineering firm where he first joined his union, the Amalgamated Engineering Union. He then worked at the Metropolitan-Vickers engineering plant at Trafford Park where he became a shop steward, before attaining the position of convener for the plant. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1937 following the events of the Spanish Civil War and made use of its networks and organising skills to rise through the union, becoming a district official in 1947.

He left the Party in 1954 but continued as a "broad left" candidate within the union - winning the leadership in 1968. Scanlon and TGWU leader Jack Jones were known by the press as "The Terrible Twins" for their opposition to both Labour Party and Conservative Party attempts to restrict the power of the unions - Labour prime minister Harold Wilson once famously telling him to "get your tanks off my lawn."