I was the youngest of eight children. My brave little mother, fighting a hopeless battle, died when I was just over a year old. her mothering, the slavery of her devotion to her family, her endless services to others killed her. She came of gentle Irish stock, and was devoutly religious, but the drudgery of her life, hunger, pain, and suffering destroyed her body, though there was flame in her soul to the end.

Trade Unionism (in 1889) substantially affected only the minority of workers. Of the twelve millions of earners, he said, certainly not one million were in Unions. In one or two of the most skilled trades that unionists were perhaps in the majority. Existing Unions were those of craftsmen, relatively well paid, and their organizations were correspondingly wealthy - and well organised.

As a docker I had tried to save money, and starved to buy books. I was struggling to learn Latin, and even trying to study Greek, lending my head and aching body to the task after my day's work on the dockside, or in the tea warehouse where I was employed - work which meant carrying tons on my back up and down flights of stairs.

There is nothing refining in the thought that to obtain employment we are driven into a shed iron-barred from end to end, outside of which a contractor or a foreman walks up and down with an air of a dealer in a cattle market, picking and choosing from a crowd of men who in their eagerness to obtain employment, trample each other underfoot, and where like beasts they fight for the chances of a day's work. To remedy this condition of affairs we have formed the Tea Coopers and General Labourers' Association.

He combined the qualities of whirlwind and volcano. His was the genius of sheer energy. His tremendous capacity for the work he enjoys the most became a mighty factor in the supreme crisis of the Dock Strike. For Tom Mann I entertain a deep respect as a comrade which has not been destroyed by the intellectual vagrancy into which his energy led him in after years. I remember old Henry Hyndman saying that Tom's intellect was a tidal one, swayed by changes in the moon, and capable of the same ebb and flow. Still, he has been a consistent class-conscious fighter for the various causes to which he has adhered; sound at heart, self-sacrificing and courageous, he has never deserted the flag, even if he has sometimes attempted to plant it in impossible places.

In our marches we collected contributions in pennies, sixpences and shillings, from the clerks and City workers, who were touched perhaps to the point of sacrifice by the emblem of poverty and starvation carried in our procession. By these means, with the aid of the Press, money poured into our coffers from Trade Unions and public alike. Large sums came from abroad, especially from the British dominions, whose contributions alone amounted to over £30,000. Contributions from the public sent direct by letter or collected on our marches totalled nearly £12,000; more than £1,000 came in from our street box collections, and substantial amounts were obtained through the help of the star, the Pall Mall Gazette, the Labour Elector, and other papers.

From the first Cardinal Manning showed himself to be the dockers' friend, though he had family connections in the shipping interests, represented on the other side. Our demands were too reasonable, too moderate, to be set aside by an intelligence so fine, a spirit so lofty, as that which animated the frail, tall figure with its saintly, emaciated face, and the strangely compelling eyes.

On our side there was no margin for concession. We had made no extravagant demands. The Cardinal's diplomacy, suave, subtle, ineffably courteous to all parties concerned, yet exercised with the suggestion of authority. He endorsed with a sense of responsibility the two main claims of the dockers for the 6d. minimum, and recognition of the Union.

I can fairly claim to have played an active part in the development of the political Labour Movement. I was present at the Trades Union Congress in 1899 when adopted the historic resolution instructing its Parliamentary Committee to invite the co-operation of all Socialistic, Co-operative, Trade Union, and other working-class organisations in a joint effort to establish at a special Congress an effective political organisation for the workers. At the special Conference on Labour Representation held at the Memorial Hall in London, in obedience to this resolution early in 1900, I was a delegate on behalf of my Society and made by voive heard in the debate on the resolution proposing the formation of the distinct Labour Group in Parliament and other aspects of the policy to be pursued.

We are driven into a shed, iron-barred from end to end, outside of which a foreman or contractor walks up and down with the air of a dealer in a cattlemarket, picking and choosing from a crowd of men, who, in their eagerness to obtain employment, trample each other under foot, and where like beasts they fight for the chances of a day's work.

My experience on the London County Council brought me into contact with its distinguished chairman, Lord Rosebery. He was one of our great men, in spite of being an aristocrat. What gifts of oratory, of tongue and pen alike, he possessed! A man of outstanding culture, he was the embodiment of a tradition that made him distinguished even when physical proportions lent no imposing presence. One may talk of breeding, culture, and patter the language of the obsequious, but one can scarcely say too much of Lord Rosebery.

Ben Tillett, general secretary of the Tea Operatives' and General Labourers' Union, would pour forth invectives upon all opponents, would reach the heart's core of the dockers by his description of the way in which they had to beg for work and the paltry pittance they received, and by his homely illustrations of their life as it was and as it should be. He was short in stature, but tough; pallid, but dauntless; affected with a stammer at this time, but the real orator of the group.

It had become evident that the only thing for me to do was to go to London and explain the whole position to the Committee. Every one of us in Grañen approved of this visit as also did the Committee itself. When I arrived in London I found everyone entirely helpful and understanding. Getting the members to accept that "their" Unit should become a part of the Spanish Republican Army was not at first easy, but I was very well seconded by that great pioneer Trade Unionist Ben Tillet.

He cannot have been far from 80 years old and, to use his own words, he was roaring "to have a crack at the bastards". He drank well in the National Trade Union Club where the Committee had its offices and he sometimes dozed in meetings. He was a Popular Front adherent but showed a reserve towards the Communist Party because he had once kept a Public House in partnership with Tom Mann. By 1936 Tom Mann was a revered CP pioneer whose name was to be given to a British Company in the International Brigade. Ben Tillet did not like this at all. "It won't do; it can't be done. Tom Mann was prosecuted for watering beer. It was under gravity, all behind my back, no one can trust a man who waters the beer.”

Ben Tillet always had a refreshing influence. Once, when I was sitting next to Eilleen Younghusband (Independent MP for the British Universities seat), Franco's name had just been mentioned. Ben woke up from a cat-nap. He was alert in an instant and, before closing his eyes again, loudly proclaimed, "Franco's Mussolini's ponce that's what he is, nothing more than a ponce." Miss Younghusband, Quakerish and liberal spinster, was very taken by this intervention. She whispered to me, "What a splendid word, I must use it, but perhaps I should first know what it means."