McMillan Joe PDF Print E-mail
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Joe McMillan

A member of the Communist Party in Glasgow, McMillan was also a member of the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) National Executive Committee. As such, he was the Party’s major rank-and-file leader amongst the NUR in the period in which he was mostly active, during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the Railwaymen's Vigilance Movement.

This was established in late 1932 and inspired by the unofficial Grade Vigilance Committee, which had been established during World War One, to stop the dilution, and fight erosions in the pay and conditions of railway staff. Its journal was `The Railway Vigilant’.
 
The inaugural conference of the Vigilance Movement was held on the 3rd December 1932.  That month’s issue of `The Railway Vigilant’ stated that “as in the case of the London Busmen ... a movement, organised in the local depots and branches, and embracing all workers irrespective of Grade or Union divisions, can be a most powerful means of defeating ... the wage cuts demands of the companies”.
 
Joe McMillan died in 1946.

Michael Walker