Mike Hicks (trade unionist)

Career

Hicks joined the Young Communist League in 1953 and later the Communist Party of Great Britain. He worked as a printer and was a member of the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT). A full-time branch official for the union in 1986, Hicks was arrested and convicted of actual bodily harm during the Wapping dispute. His conviction and sentencing - to 12 months in prison - were controversial, with the national executive committee of the Labour Party voting unanimously to call for his release. He was expelled from the CPGB in 1984 "for allowing Rule 3(d) to be applied" as the chair of the London District Congress, i.e. continuing with the congress proceedings in defiance of a demand from CPGB General Secretary Gordon McLennan to close it down.

He subsequently joined the Communist Campaign Group, mainly composed of those expelled from the CPGB for their opposition to revisionism and, in 1988, was a founding member of the Communist Party of Britain. Hicks served as its general secretary until his replacement by Robert Griffiths in 1998, which led to an industrial dispute at the Morning Star and subsequently left the party and helped to form the Marxist Forum group. He served as the trade union officer of the London-based Marx Memorial Library from 2005 to 2010. He joined the Labour Party, and unsuccessfully stood as a council election candidate in the Boscombe East ward of Bournemouth on 5 May 2011, gaining 514 votes.

Death

Hicks died at age 80 on the evening of 7 September 2017 after collapsing at a meeting of the Bournemouth local Labour Party.