Kingston Aviation
Name:
Frank Trigg
Transcript: 3
Communist infiltration in the Toolroom

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, left wing activity in British industry increased. Frank here recalls how they were active at Hawkers.

Is there any anecdotes you can give us regarding ‘the Rink’

Yes ‘the Rink’, yes we did have an invasion, at one time, of Communist orientated people and we never new why they had – sort of – infiltrated the place but they were trying to indoctrinate some of us youngsters into Communist ways.  I’ve always believed in listening to people and I used to listen to what they had to say and make up my own mind and see what I thought about it. But they were quite interesting people in their ways.  But they did organise that we went on strike at one time over a deficiency in the money paid to us.  And all of the tool room took their tool boxes over to the Kingston railway station, to the lockup, where they were left there until the settlement was finally obtained. But it was an interesting time.  And I had never seen anything like it at all.