William H. Andrews (unionist)

William Henry Andrews (20 April 1870 – 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.[1] He was also active in the formation of the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union.

William Henry Andrews
Bill Andrews
General Secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa
In office
1921–1925
Personal details
Born20 Apr 1870
Suffolk, England, UK
Died1950
Political partyCommunist Party of South Africa

Biography

Born in Suffolk, England, UK, Andrews joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in 1890. He travelled to Johannesburg in 1890, holding jobs on gold mines in the West Rand in the 1890s. Increasingly prominent as a trade union organiser, he became the official South African organiser 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.[2]

Andrews was first elected as a Labour MP at the 1912 Georgetown by-election. The South African Labour Party was the first political party that wanted full segregation in South Africa.[3] Andrews served as a Member of Parliament until his defeat at the 1915 general 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.[4]

In 1915, he was elected as the first President of the International Socialist League, which formed when anti-war socialists split from the SALP. He visited the United Kingdom in 1918, where he was impressed by the British shop stewards' movement at the time. 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 as the first Secretary of the South African Trades Union Council.[2][5]

He was expelled from the South African Communist Party in a series of purges over the "Black Republic" policy.[6][7] He was permitted to rejoin (1938) at the age of 68 after Solly Sachs, Moses Kotane, and Brian Bunting were re-admitted. [8]

References
  1. "William H. 'Bill" Andrews | South African History Online". www.sahistory.org.za. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  2. Wessel Visser, 'Exporting Trade Unionism and Labour Politics: the British Influence on the early South African Labour Movement', New Contree 49 (2005), 145-62
  3. M.Roth,The Communist Party in South Africa: Racism, Eurocentricity and Moscow, 1921-1950, p.51.
  4. Ibid,p.50
  5. Davidson, Apollon Borisovich; Johns, Sheridan; Filatova, Irina; Gorodnov, Valentin P. (2003). South Africa and the Communist International: Socialist pilgrims to Bolshevik footsoldiers, 1919-1930. Psychology Press. pp. xiv. ISBN 978-0-7146-5280-1.
  6. Busky, Donald F. (2002). Communism in History and Theory: Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 136. ISBN 978-0-275-97733-7.
  7. Davidson, Apollon Borisovich; Filatova, Irina; Johns, Sheridan; Gorodnov, Valentin P. (2003). South Africa and the Communist International: Bolshevik footsoldiers to victims of bolshevisation, 1931-1939. Psychology Press. pp. x. ISBN 978-0-7146-5281-8.
  8. Kiloh, Margaret; Sibeko, Archie (2000). A Fighting Union. Randburg: Ravan Press. p. xxxii. ISBN 0869755277.

    Further reading
    • R. K. Cope, Comrade Bill. The Life and Times of W. H. Andrews, Workers' Leader, Cape Town, 1943.
    Party political offices
    Preceded by
    New position    		 General Secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa
    1921–1925    		 Succeeded by
    Jimmy Shields
    Preceded by
    Issie Wolfson    		 Chair of the Communist Party of South Africa
    1939–1948    		 Succeeded by
    Party dissolved
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