Richard William Briginshaw

Who was Richard William Briginshaw?

Richard William Briginshaw, Baron Briginshaw was a British trade union leader and politician.

Born in Brixton, South London to a working-class family, Briginshaw left school at the age of fourteen to become a printer's devil. While his own family was relatively well off, he was exposed to the poverty of Brixton at the time, and his experiences of knowing children at school without shoes, and often without food, was to colour his political views for the rest of his life.

During his early career, Briginshaw worked as a machine hand for many different newspapers, but also attended night school, studying law and economics and eventually gaining a diploma from University College London. He also became active in the trade union movement, and in 1938 became Assistant secretary of the London branch of the National Society of Operative Printers and Assistants. However, he was dismissed from his union post because of his communist leanings - he was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and an organiser for the Printers' Anti-Fascist Movement, which the union's leadership regarded as a communist front.