Joe Gormley

Joe Gormley

Joseph (Joe) Gormley, Baron Gormley, OBE (5 July 1917 – 27 May 1993) was President of the National Union of Mineworkers (Great Britain) from 1971 to 1982, and a Labour peer.

Gormley was born in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire in 1917, one of seven children, and became a miner at the age of fourteen. He was an active trade union official and became a committee member of National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in 1957. He served as general secretary of the North West region (comprising Lancashire and Cumberland) from April 1961 and joined the national executive in 1963. He was a lifelong fan of Wigan Rugby League Football Club.

Read more about Joe Gormley:  1970s, 1980s, Special Branch, Autobiography

Famous quotes containing the words joe and/or gormley:

    While we were thus engaged in the twilight, we heard faintly, from far down the stream, what sounded like two strokes of a woodchopper’s axe, echoing dully through the grim solitude.... When we told Joe of this, he exclaimed, “By George, I’ll bet that was a moose! They make a noise like that.” These sounds affected us strangely, and by their very resemblance to a familiar one, where they probably had so different an origin, enhanced the impression of solitude and wildness.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    In order to get to East Russet you take the Vermont Central as far as Twitchell’s Falls and change there for Torpid River Junction, where a spur line takes you right into Gormley. At Gormley you are met by a buckboard which takes you back to Torpid River Junction again.
    Robert Benchley (1889–1945)