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Thomas Mann (15 April 1856 – 13 March 1941) was an English trade unionist and activist. Largely self-educated, Mann became a successful organiser and a popular public speaker in the British labour movement.
In 1870, the colliery was forced to close and the family moved to Birmingham. Mann soon found work as an engineering apprentice. He attended public meetings addressed by Annie Besant and John Bright, and this began his political awareness. He completed his apprenticeship in 1877 and moved to London, however he was unable to find work as an engineer and took a series of unskilled jobs.
In 1879, Mann found work in an engineering shop. Here he was introduced to socialism by the foreman, and decided to improve his own education. His reading included the works of William Morris, Henry George, and John Ruskin. In 1881 he joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and took part in his first Strike action. In 1884, he joined the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in Battersea. Here he met John Burns and Henry Hyde Champion, who encouraged him to publish a pamphlet calling for the working day to be limited to eight hours. Mann formed an organisation, the Eight Hour League, which successfully pressured the Trades Union Congress to adopt the eight-hour day as a key goal.
Along with Burns and Ben Tillett, Mann was one of the leading figures in the London dock strike of 1889. He was responsible for organising relief for the strikers and their families. With the support of other unions and various organisations, the strike was successful. Following the strike, Mann was elected President of the newly formed Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers' Union, with Tillett as General Secretary. Tillett and Mann wrote a pamphlet called New Unionism, which advanced the utopian ideal of a co-operative commonwealth. Mann was also elected to the London Labour council and as secretary of the National Reform Union, and was a member of the Royal Commission on Labour from 1891 to 1893. In 1894, he was a founding member of the Independent Labour Party and became the party Secretary in 1894. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the party in the 1895 general election. In 1896 he was beaten in the election for Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. He helped create the International Transport Workers' Federation, and was its first President. He was deported from a number of European countries for organising trade unions.
Mann's religious belief was as strong as his politics. He was an Anglican and organised support from Christian organisations like the Salvation Army during a number of strikes. In 1893 there were rumours that he intended to become a church minister. He advocated the co-operative model of economic organisation, but resisted alliance between the ILP and other socialist organisations in Britain, like the Fabians. In 1895, the Fabian Beatrice Webb criticised Mann's absolutism and described his goal derogatorily as, "a body of men all professing exactly the same creed and all working in exact uniformity to exactly the same end". Philip Snowden, a member of the ILP, liked Mann but was critical of his inability to stay with any one party or organisation for more than a few years.
Returning to Britain in 1910, Mann wrote The Way to Win, a pamphlet that argued that socialism could be achieved only through trade unionism and co-operation, and that parliamentary democracy was inherently corrupt. He founded the Industrial Syndicalist Education League, and worked as an organiser for Ben Tillett. He led the 1911 Liverpool General Transport Strike. In 1912 he was convicted under the Incitement to Mutiny Act 1797 of publishing an article in The Syndicalist, as an "Open Letter to British Soldiers", urging them to refuse to shoot at strikers (later reprinted as a leaflet, Don't Shoot); his prison sentence was quashed after public pressure. He was opposed to Britain's involvement in World War I on socialist and religious grounds and addressed pacifist rallies.
On 10 June 1913 he spoke at Wednesbury Market Place in support of strikers in the Great Black Country Trades Dispute, which lasted for two months and threatened government preparations for World War I. Mann returned to the area again on 3 July.
In 1917, he joined the successor to the Social Democratic Federation, the British Socialist Party, which had affiliated to the Labour Party the previous year.
Tom Mann continued to actively champion socialism, communism, and co-operation, until his death in 1941. He published further pamphlets and regularly addressed public meetings, in Britain and abroad. He was arrested for sedition, on several occasions. He continued to be a popular figure in the labour movement, attracting large audiences to rallies and benefits. Mann advocated animal rights and was supportive of the Humanitarian League.Kean, Hilda. (1998). Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain Since 1800. Reaktion Books. p. 136.
One of Mann's great-grandsons was Nicholas Bennett, Conservative MP for Pembroke from 1987 to 1992 and a Welsh Office minister from 1990 to 1992.
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