Tom Barker (trade unionist)

Tom Barker (3 June 1887 – 2 April 1970) was a New Zealand tram conductor, trade unionist and socialist. He was born in Crosthwaite, Westmorland, England. He was a leading member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and politician in New Zealand and Australia.

Barker was the eldest son of farm worker Thomas Grainger Barker and his wife Sarah, née Trotter. As a boy, he worked on the farm until the age of 11 years and then in a milking parlor until he was 14 years old. He then went to Liverpool and in 1905 joined the British military, in a cavalry regiment. However, due to growing health problems with the strength of his heart, he was discharged soon from the army and worked in Liverpool on the rail-road.

In 1909 he emigrated to New Zealand, and worked in Auckland as a conductor on the trams. He married Bertha Isaakovna, a Polish-born ballet dancer.

In New Zealand, he became an active trade unionist and secretary of the New Zealand Socialist Party. In 1913 he joined the IWW and brought a Marxist influence to the political orientation of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for a more socialist perspective. In 1913 he mobilized the IWW for the Auckland General Strike and was arrested for conspiracy in Wellington in 1913. He was released in 1914 by paying a bail to the amount of £1500.

At the beginning of 1914 he went to Sydney and took the post of editor for the IWW magazine Direct Action. There he championed the rights of colored workers and fought for equal wages for coloreds and for women. The Australian Workers Union (AWU) had refused to organize with coloreds, despite their solidarity with the AWU. He spoke out against the AWU's actions, stating: "The Class War is a nobler sentiment than the Race War, for it strives for the abolition of chains and not for their perpetuation." He also sought to unite feminists with labor movements, believing gender warfare to be a misguided ruse when women should be protesting alongside men in the streets. In 1915 he was sentenced to 12 months in prison for conspiracy and released after a public campaign in March 1916. After his arrest, Donald Grant publicly stated: "For every day that Tom Barker is in jail it will cost the capitalist class £10,000".

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