William H. Andrews (unionist)
| William Henry Andrews | |
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Bill Andrews
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| General Secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa | |
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In office 1921–1925 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | 20 Apr 1870 Suffolk, England |
| Died | 1950 |
| Political party | Communist Party of South Africa |
William Henry Andrews (20 April 1870 in Suffolk – 1950), commonly known as Bill Andrews, was the first chairman of the South African Labour Party (SALP) and the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa. He was also active in the formation of the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union.
Born in England, Andrews joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in 1890. He travelled to Johannesburg in 1890, holding jobs on goldmines in the West Rand in the 1890s. Increasingly prominent as a trade union organizer, he became the official South African organizer of the ASE, the president of the Witwatersrand Trades and Labour Council and the Political Labour League in 1905, the Labour Representation Committee in 1906 and the South African Labour Party in 1909.
In the 1912 Georgetown by-election Andrews was elected a Labour MP.The South African Labour Party was the first party that wanted total segregation in South Africa. Andrews was a member of Parliament until his defeat in the 1915 election. A fighter for the rights of ″white″ labour, he was always quick to complain when he perceived that an African,referred by him frequently as a ″Kaffir,″(by then already regarded as a pejorative term) might take away a job from a white man.
In 1915 he was elected the first president of the International Socialist League, which formed when anti-war socialists split from the SALP. He visited Britain in 1918, where he was impressed by the British shop stewards' movement. In 1921 he became the first general secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa, and in 1922 the editor of the party's newspaper The International. In 1925 he was elected the first secretary of the South African Trades Union Council.
He was expelled from the South African Communist Party in a series of purges over the "black Republic" policy. He was permitted to rejoin (1938) at age 68 after Solly Sachs, Moses Kotane, and Brian Bunting were readmitted.
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