Bert Ramelson

Baruch Rahmilevich Mendelson (22 March 1910 – 13 April 1994), commonly known as Bert Ramelson, was an industrial organiser and politician for the Communist Party of Great Britain. He held the posts of National Industrial Organiser from 1965-77; and was editor and a member of editorial board of the World Marxist Review from 1977-90.

Early life
Ramelson was born the sixth of seven children of a Jewish family in Cherkassy, Ukraine, in 1910. His father was a Talmudist scholar, whilst his mother ran a corner shop inherited from her father which the family lived in.

His family emigrated to Edmonton, Canada, in 1922 where his paternal uncle was a successful fur trader. Ramelson won a scholarship to the University of Alberta, where he achieved First Class Honours in law and whilst studying was conscripted onto an officer training course.

After completing his mandatory year in practice as an articled clerk and qualifying as a barrister, he left to join a kibbutz in Palestine although soon became disillusioned with this after Histadruth called a strike on an orange grove his kibbutz worked on demanding that the 50% Arab workers there were replaced by Jews.

War
After briefly returning to Canada, he once again left the country to fight in the Spanish Civil War with the Canadian battalion of the International Brigades and was wounded twice on the Aragon and Ebro fronts. In 1939, he settled in Britain and for a short time was a trainee manager at Marks and Spencer.

During the Second World War, he was a tank commander in the Royal Tank Corps and in 1941 was imprisoned by German forces after the capture of Tobruk. He later organised an escape from a prisoner of war camp and fought with the Italian Resistance. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery in March 1945 and later became an acting staff captain (legal) in India.

Post-war
After the war, he became acting full-time secretary of the Leeds branch of the Communist Party. He held this post from 1946 to 1953 and encouraged political activism within the Yorkshire mining community, working with the National Union of Mineworkers, where he mentored a young Arthur Scargill.

National Industrial Organiser
In 1965, he was appointed National Industrial Organiser of the Communist Party and in 1966 during the seafarer's strike of 1966, he was one of a number of men accused by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson of being part of "a tightly knit group of politically motivated men who, as the last General Election showed, utterly failed to secure acceptance of their views by the British electorate. Some of them are now saying very blatantly that they are more concerned with harming the nation than with getting the justice we all want to see".

During his time as National Organiser, Ramelson encouraged the party to forge links with other trade unions, such as the Transport and General Workers Union and, with a range of organisers such as Jack Jones and Ken Gill, co-ordinated union resistance against the Wilson government. He opposed Barbara Castle's In Place of Strife, incomes policies and the Social Contract.

The tactics implemented by Ramelson mobilised militant trades unionists to organise within the labour movement. He opposed the 1971 Industrial Relations Act and fought for the release of the Pentonville Five. In 1972, organised flying pickets during the miner's strike. Throughout the 1970s, there was broad crossover between trade unionist and Communist Party members and in 1973, Ramelson said: "We have more influence now on the labour movement than at any time in the life of our party. The Communist Party can float an idea early in the year. It goes to trade union conferences as a resolution and it can become official Labour Party policy by the autumn. A few years ago we were on our own but not now."

Personal life
He married his first wife Marion (died 1967) in 1939. Marion Ramelson wrote Petticoat Rebellion, a work about women's rights. He married Joan Smith in 1970.

Publications

 * Social Contract: Cure or Con-trick?
 * Incomes policy: the great wage freeze trick
 * Keep the unions free'' (1969)
 * Donovan exposed: a critical analysis of the Report of the Royal Commission on Trade Unions (1968)
 * Productivity agreements: an exposure of the latest and greatest swindle on the wages front (1970)
 * Carr's Bill and how to kill it: A class analysis (1971)
 * Heath's war on your wage packet : the latest Tory attack on living standards and trade union rights (1973)
 * Smash phase III: the Tory fraud exposed (1973)
 * Social contract: cure-all or con-trick? (1974)
 * Bury the social contract: the case for an alternative policy (1977)
 * Consensus for Socialism (1987)
 * Productivity Agreements