British trade unionist
Jimmy Knapp
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Born
| 29 September 1940
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Died
| 13 August 2001
(aged 60)
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James Knapp
(29 September 1940 – 13 August 2001) was a British
trades unionist
.
[1]
He was successively General Secretary of the
National Union of Railwaymen
(NUR) from 1983, and then of the merged
National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers
(RMT) from 1990 to his death in 2001. He served on the executive board of the
International Transport Workers' Federation
from 1983 to 2001, the General Council of the
Trades Union Congress
from 1983 to 2001, and was
President of the Trades Union Congress
in 1994.
Early and private life
[
edit
]
Knapp was born into a railway family in
Hurlford
,
Ayrshire
one of two boys.
He was educated at Hurlford primary school and
Kilmarnock Academy
. He learned his politics at a
Socialist Sunday school
.
He was distinguished by his broad Scottish accent and his height, standing 6'4" tall. He married Sylvia Florence Yeomans in 1965 and together they had a daughter. He married his second wife Eva Leigh, shortly before he died.
He loved football and supported
Kilmarnock FC
and
Crystal Palace FC
.
He lived in
West Wickham
, and died of
cancer
in the
Bromley
,
Greater London
, aged 60. He was survived by his second wife Eva, his first wife Sylvia and their daughter Fiona.
[2]
He was the last person in Britain to have a full railway funeral in honour of the work he had done, and was carried from London to
Glasgow
by train with a piper to pipe him on and off the train at either end for burial in Hurlford in August 2001.
[3]
Union career
[
edit
]
He left school aged 15 in 1955 to work in the
signal box
in Gatehead walking 4.5 miles each way in all weather to get there.
[2]
By the age of 18 he had become branch collector for the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and by 21 he was the NUR branch secretary. He rose through the union ranks, becoming a full-time union official at the age of 31. He moved to London in 1972 to work as a divisional officer and worked in the NUR headquarters from 1981.
When
Sid Weighell
resigned in 1983, Knapp was the successful left-wing candidate to replace him as General Secretary of the NUR. Knapp had been a relatively junior union officer, having failed an exam to become assistant general secretary. A "candidate from nowhere",
[4]
he beat the sitting assistant general secretary
Charlie Turnock
by a wide margin, despite Weighell describing him as "a stooge of the Communist and Trotskyite Left"
[5]
and "wet behind the ears".
[6]
As General Secretary of the NUR, he joined the General Council of the
Trades Union Congress
and the executive board of the
International Transport Workers' Federation
in 1983. He improved the NUR's relations with other rail unions, including
ASLEF
, and fought against closure proposed in the
Serpell report
on railway finances. He offered strong public support to
Arthur Scargill
and the
National Union of Mineworkers
in the
1984 Miners' Strike
, with NUR members refusing to work on coal trains, but also sought to make the union comply with new trades union legislation, particularly the
Trade Union Act 1984
introduced to require secret ballots as a result of the Miner's Strike. Ironically, he was unable to persuade the membership to vote in favour of a strike in 1985, when
driver-only
operation trains (without a
guard
) were introduced more widely, but he then led a series of one-day strikes in 1989 which resulted in an improved pay offer.
The NUR merged with the
National Union of Seamen
(NUS) in 1990 to become the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, and Knapp continued as General Secretary of the merged union. He opposed
rail privatisation
in the early 1990s but the Conservative government forced the policy through. In 1994 he led a strike of signalmen which resulted in substantial pay increases. In the 1990s, he supported
Neil Kinnock
and
John Smith
in their efforts to reform the Labour party, including the "
one member, one vote
" proposal that ended the trades union
block vote
.
[5]
He defeated a challenge for the union leadership in 1999 from
Greg Tucker
, winning a fourth five-year term as General Secretary.
He also served as a director of the
Trade Union Unit Trust
from 1984, and on the board of the
Unity Trust Bank
from 1984, becoming its president in 1989. He was
President of the Trades Union Congress
in 1994.
His union career tracked a decline in union membership. In 1955, the NUR had over 350,000 members. When he became General Secretary in 1983, it was just over 140,000. By 1990, the combined RMT had a membership of 60,000.
After Knapp's death in August 2001,
Bob Crow
was elected as the new General Secretary of the RMT in February 2002.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Obituary: Jimmy Knapp
,
The Guardian
, 14 August 2001
- ^
a
b
"Biography page at the Jimmy Knapp Cancer Fund"
. Archived from
the original
on 25 September 2006
. Retrieved
28 December
2006
.
- ^
Clarke, John M. (2006).
The Brookwood Necropolis Railway
. Locomotion Papers. Vol. 143 (4th ed.). Usk, Monmouthshire: The Oakwood Press. p. 179.
ISBN
978-0-85361-655-9
.
- ^
Jimmy Knapp: Old school, new ideas
, BBC News, 13 August 2001
- ^
a
b
Obituary
,
The Daily Telegraph
, 14 August 2001
- ^
Mike Anson, ‘Knapp, James [Jimmy] (1940?2001)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Jan 2005; online edn, Jan 2009
accessed 12 March 2014
Trade union offices
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Preceded by
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General Secretary of the
National Union of Railwaymen
1983?1990
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Succeeded by
Position abolished
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Preceded by
New position
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General Secretary of the
RMT
1990?2001
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Succeeded by
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Preceded by
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President of the Trades Union Congress
1994
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Succeeded by
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Preceded by
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Chair of the Trades Councils' Joint Consultative Committee
1999–2001
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Succeeded by
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General Secretaries
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Senior Assistant General Secretaries
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Predecessors
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Other topics
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