Joe Vaughan (politician)

Joseph James Vaughan (1878 – fl.1938) was a British politician.

Born in East London, Vaughan began working at the age of eight, but remained at school part-time until he was thirteen. He worked a wide variety of jobs before he was apprenticed to a former Chartist. This encouraged him to become a radical and join the Liberal Party. However, he soon grew disillusioned with the party, and instead joined the British Socialist Party (BSP).

Vaughan eventually settled into a career as an electrician, joined the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) and became president of Bethnal Green Trades Council. The BSP affiliated to the Labour Party, and it was under this party label that Vaughan was elected to Bethnal Green Borough Council in 1914. He was the only Labour member of the council until 1919, when the party won a large majority. As the only councillor with experience, he was elected mayor each year from 1919 until 1921. In 1920, he was a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and the following year attended the Third World Congress of the Communist International. However, he also remained a member of Labour, even serving on the executive of the London Labour Party.

Vaughan stood for Bethnal Green South West at the 1922 and 1923 general elections for the Labour Party, with the endorsement of the CPGB, narrowly missing election on both occasions. However, the Labour Party nationally had decided to expel CPGB members from the party. The Bethnal Green Labour Party refused to endorse this, and was instead disaffiliated by Labour - the first of several such disaffiliations around the country. It became the "Left-Wing Committee", and the following year, Vaughan was a founder of the National Left-Wing Movement, which attempted to draw these disaffiliated groups together and promote a Labour-Communist alliance.

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