Jack O'Brien Dash was a British communist and trade union leader, famous for his role in London dock strikes.
12 Facts About Jack Dash
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Jack Dash's father Thomas was a scene shifter at the theatre where he met Dash's mother, Rose Gertrude John, who appeared on stage there.
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Jack Dash died aged 40 of tuberculosis, when Dash was seven, followed a few years later by his father.
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Jack Dash left school at 14 to work as a page boy at a Lyons Corner House.
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Jack Dash later became a hod carrier for a bricklayer, and worked in other jobs for short periods in between which he was unemployed.
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Jack Dash enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps and served for two years; he became a professional boxer, fighting about a dozen bouts.
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Jack Dash joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1936 and joined its front organisation, the National Unemployed Workers' Movement.
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Jack Dash prided himself on having been involved in every London dock strike from 1945 to 1969, stating that all but one had been worthwhile; the exception was an inter-union dispute.
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Jack Dash was regarded by some as a firebrand and an agitator and was vilified as a bogeyman by the conservative media in the same manner as Derek Robinson and Arthur Scargill would later be.
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Jack Dash, who was interested in poetry and would quote Samuel Butler or Robert Browning in his speeches, was often invited to address prestigious bodies: he spoke at 40 student meetings, and opposed the motion 'This House would outlaw unofficial strikes' at the Oxford Union debating society.
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Jack Dash was the outstanding rank and file leader of his generation in the London.
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Jack Dash was commemorated by the naming of "Jack Dash House", a municipal office building on the Isle of Dogs.