Patrick Walls

Patrick Walls, while secretary of the National Federation of Blastfurnacemen

Patrick Walls (1847 – 24 October 1932) was an Irish trade unionist.

Walls was born to a Catholic family in the northern part of Ireland during the worst of the Great Famine. He emigrated to Tyneside to work as a labourer, then moved Middlesbrough, where he worked at Bell's Foundry as a blastfurnaceman for seventeen years.^[1][2][3] While there, he became active in the Associated Union of Iron Workers,^[1] and in 1878 supported the split which formed the Cleveland Blastfurnacemen's Association, serving as its president. In 1887, Walls was president of Middlesbrough Trades Council.^[2]

In 1887, William Snow, secretary of the blastfurnacemen's union in Cumberland, was incapacitated through illness, and Walls travelled to Workington in an attempt to resolve a dispute there. Following a fall in the price of iron, local employers had cut wages. Walls believed that the price of iron would quickly recover, and recommended that trade unionists accept a deal where they would receive a 5% reduction in pay if it did not recover, but no reduction if it did. As he hoped, the price rebounded within a week, and wages were restored to their earlier level. Following this success, the Cumberland blastfurnacemen joined with those of Cleveland to form a new National Union of Blastfurnacemen, and Walls led negotiations which agreed an eight-hour working day in 1890. In 1892, he was elected as general secretary of the union.^[4]

Walls relocated to Workington to take up his position.^[4] Long an opponent of the Liberal Party, he formed a Cumberland Labour Electoral Association in 1891, and was a founder member of the Independent Labour Party in 1893. He was elected to Workington Town Council in 1893, and to Cumberland County Council in 1901.^[4][5] At the January 1910 general election, he stood for the Labour Party in Middlesbrough, with the support of the ILP and the United Irish League, but was not elected.^[1][3] He also served on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party for a few years.^[1]

Walls retired from his trade union posts in 1919, and died in 1932.

References

1. 1 2 3 4 Labour Party (UK), Report of the 33rd Annual Conference, p.59
2. 1 2 The Reformers' Year Book 1907, p.240
3. 1 2 Stephen Desmond Shannon, Irish Nationalist Organisation in the North East of England, 1890 - 1925, p.79
4. 1 2 3 "Mr. Patrick Walls", The Whitehaven News, 2 August 1900
5. ↑ John Duncan Marshall and John K. Walton, The Lake Counties, p.134