Catalogue description William Henry Stokes Papers

Personalia, including diaries, 1913-1977; membership cards, 1914-1966; notebooks, 1909-10, subject files re: General Strike; AEU, correspondence and other papers, Ministry of Production, National Production Advisory Council, minutes, and subject files, 1940-1951; Iron and Steel Corporation, minutes, subject files and notebooks, 1948-53; miscellaneous subject files, 1911-1977; photographs, 1940-9, n.d

National Minority Movement Coventry branch minutes, 1925-30; Midland Bureau minutes, 1929-31, letters and handbills, 1924-30 (MSS.289), Coventry branch minutes, 1925 (MSS.180).

The Centre also holds a deposit made by Richard Croucher, labour historian, which contains some further material on Stokes (MSS.180). Authority files exist for William Stokes (GBR 0152 AAR0810) and Richard Croucher (GBR 0152 AAR0809)

A tape-recording of an oral history interview of W.H. Stokes, conducted by Dr. K.E. Richardson in 1967, is held in Coventry Polytechnic Library.

Stokes, William Henry 1894-1978

Open

The collection was donated to the Centre by Mrs. J. Satchwell, Stokes' executrix, in 1987 and 1988

• Labour relations

William ("Billy") Henry Stokes was born in Coventry in 1894, the son of an Earlsdon watchmaker. He was a pupil of Earlsdon Council School which he left at the age of 13 although he continued his education at night classes. He worked in a number of Coventry engineering factories until he joined the RAF in 1918. He married Francis Beckett in the same year. Returning to Coventry after the war, he became involved in engineering trade union activities, the National Minority Movement and the Communist Party. He played a prominent role in Coventry in the 1922 lock-out of engineering trade unionists. In the 1920s and early 1930s he was Secretary of both the Midland Bureau and Coventry Branch of the National Minority Movement.

Stokes had joined the Steam Engine Makers Society prior to his war service. SEMS was one of the unions which formed the AEU in 1920. He was nearly expelled in 1932 on account of his NMM activities in the union but in 1935 was elected to the AEU National Committee. By 1936 he had become Coventry District President and was convener of shop stewards at the Riley motor works. In 1937 he was elected a full-time Divisional Organiser for the union. His relationship with the Communist Party was effectively ruptured as a result of his insistence on contesting the election for the organiser's post for which the Party had chosen another candidate.

Whilst still a full-time AEU official, Stokes became a member of the wartime Midland Regional Board established by the Ministry of Supply in 1940. He was successively Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Board and resigned from it in 1950 when he was appointed to the Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain. The ISC was the Attlee government's vehicle for the nationalisation of the steel industry. A change of government brought the ISC's work to an early end. Although the ISC was not wound up until 1953 (and Stokes remained with it to the end), the resignation of its first chairman (S.J.L. Hardie) in 1952 marked the effective emasculation of the corporation.

For over a year Stokes was without work. During this time he travelled in the United States and Canada. In 1954 he was appointed Personnel Manager of Armstrong Siddeley, a post from which he retired in 1959. From 1959 to 1964 he served as a part-time member of the East Midlands Electricity Board. From the early 1960s he was increasingly engaged in lecturing to pre-retirement courses and to retired people's organisations. He became a JP in 1950 and was Chairman of the Coventry bench in 1966. He died in 1977.

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