Abe Moffat

Abraham Moffat (24 September 1896 – 28 March 1975) was a Scottish trade unionist and communist activist. He was elected repeatedly to high office in the trade unions and represented the union on government coal boards. He held major union offices: President of the National Union of Scottish Mine Workers; member of the Executive Committee of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain; Vice-Chairman Scottish Regional Coal Board; and member National Coal Board. He served as president of the union from 1942 to his retirement in 1961, when he was succeeded by his younger brother Alex Moffat, also an activist.

Joining the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1922, Abe Moffat was active in a variety of ways. In 1924 he was elected as a communist candidate to the Ballingry Parish Council, serving for 5 years. He was appointed as a full-time official of the United Mineworkers of Scotland, a communist union, becoming its general secretary in 1931. He served until 1935, when the union dissolved. He was also elected to the Central Committee of the CPGB in 1932.

Moffat was born in 1896 into a Plymouth Brethren family in Lumphinnans in Fife. His family had a long tradition of involvement in mining trade unionism; his grandfather had been a pioneer of the trade union in the Lothians in the 1860s, but was forced to move to Fife due to victimisation.

He left school at the age of fourteen to work at the local coal mine, while spending his spare time competing in middle-distance athletics. He joined the miners' strike of 1912. During World War I he served with the Royal Engineers. He did not become politically active until after the war.

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