Text Box: Sole distributor: Unity Books, 72 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 7DA 0141 204 1611 A Turbulent Life by Jock Nicolson JOCK NICOLSON was a leading activist in the National Union of Railwaymen, a Communist organiser who worked with Willie Gallacher in Fife and a tenants’ leader in the famous St Pancras rent strikes of the 1950s. Born in 1922, Jock Nicolson grew up in the Lanarkshire town of Hamilton during the grim depression years of the 1920s and 30s. He provides sharply focussed pictures of his life as a child and as a teenager scraping a living and poaching on the Duke of Hamilton’s estates. In the late 1930s he joined the Communist Party and describes the activism of a party then at the height of its influence in Lanarkshire and later in West Fife where he worked as a full-time organiser with Willie Gallacher, its Communist MP. Moving to London in 1950 he became the Communist parliamentary candidate for North St Pancras, organised resistance to local fascists and became a leader in the rent strikes against increases imposed by the Tory council. A railway worker in the Camden goods depot, he served on the executive committee of the NUR in the 1970s and 1980s and played a key part in resisting the union’s move to the right under Sid Weighell. Bob Crow, the current general secretary of the rail union RMT, writes: ‘It was a privilege to know Jock Nicolson. He was a life long class fighter and trade union activist. He was a thorn in the side of any trade union leader, including in the NUR, if they did not lead and defend workers. He taught us younger activists that in order to win a better deal for working people you must be prepared to fight when necessary and cajole where possible.’ Print off Order form here Jock Nicolson A Turbulent Life Foreword by Bob Crow Publication date 16 March 2009 Praxis Press ISBN 978-1-899155-04-0 Price £8.99 (including postage)

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