Bill Richardson

From The Guardian=
"My father, Bill Richardson, who has died at the age of 93, could remember seeing marching miners during the General Strike of 1926. At 16, aware of the rise of fascism in Europe, he joined the Communist party and applied to fight with the International Brigade in the Spanish civil war. Told he was too young, instead he battled at home against Oswald Mosley's black shirts at Cable Street, east London, when they tried to foment racial hatred against the local Jewish community.
Born into a large working-class family in Acton, west London, he won an art scholarship at 14, but his parents wanted him to work, so he started in local engineering firms. As a tool-maker, he was in a reserved occupation during the second world war, working at Napier and Son on aero-engines. He became a shop steward in the Amalgamated Engineering Union and, in his spare time, became involved with the leftwing Unity Theatre, starting backstage and subsequently acting. He remembered with pride a tour, soon after the war, to the south Wales valleys, performing in local miners' halls."
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2014/aug/26/bill-richardson-obituary