Frank Chapple

Frank Chapple, Baron Chapple (8 August 1921 19 October 2004) was general secretary of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (EETPU), a leading British trade union.

Frank Chapple

Frank Chapple was born in the slum area of Hoxton, east London, in a flat above his father's shoe-repair shop. As was normal in most homes throughout the country at the time, there was no bath or running hot water in the Chapple home.[1] A Communist Party member early in his adult life, Chapple left the party after, and partly as a result of, the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Thereafter he remained a forceful anti-communist.

He served as a member of the TUC general council for 12 years to 1983, having first joined the union in 1937, and he had held offices at every level in the electricians' union. From 1966 to 1984 he was the general secretary of the EETPU. After his retirement, he was elevated to the House of Lords as a life peer on 4 February 1985 taking the title Baron Chapple, of Hoxton in Greater London.[2] His successor was fellow anti-communist Eric Hammond.[3] One of Chapple's sons, Barry Chapple, was a regional official of Amicus, which succeeded the EETPU. Amicus merged with the TGWU in 2007 to become Unite the Union.

References

  1. Goodman, Geoffrey (22 October 2004). "Obituary: Lord Chapple". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 January 2013.
  2. "No. 50030". The London Gazette. 8 February 1985. p. 1851.
  3. "Union leader Lord Chapple dead". BBC News. 20 October 2004. Retrieved 7 January 2013.

Further reading

  • Aikman, Calum, 'Frank Chapple: A Thoughtful Trade Union Moderniser', in Alternatives to State-Socialism in Britain: Other Worlds of Labour in the Twentieth Century, eds. Peter Ackers and Alastair J. Reid (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 211-42.
  • Chapple, Frank, Sparks Fly: A Trade Union Life (London: Michael Joseph, 1984).
  • Goodman, Geoffrey, 'Chapple, Francis [Frank], Baron Chapple', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2001–4 volume, pp. 196–8.
  • Lloyd, John, Light and Liberty: The History of the EETPU (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990)
Trade union offices
Preceded by
Jock Byrne
General Secretary of the Electrical Trades Union
19661968
Succeeded by
Position abolished
Preceded by
New position
General Secretary of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union
19681984
Succeeded by
Eric Hammond
Preceded by
Les Cannon
General President of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union
19721976
Succeeded by
Position abolished
Preceded by
Les Cannon
Electrical Group representative on the General Council of the TUC
1970 1982
Succeeded by
Council reorganised
Preceded by
Alan Sapper
President of the Trades Union Congress
1983
Succeeded by
Ray Buckton
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.