Kitson Alex

Scottish trade union leader, a legend in his own time. "The Kit" as he was known, began a career in the trade union movement by becoming an ordinary member of the Scottish Horse and Motormens Union in the 1930s, eventually amalgamated with the Transport and General Workers Union. He served as Chairman of the TGWU during Moss Evans illness and some commentators believe that it was due to his influence with Ulster members that Labour managed to maintain a bi-partisan approach on Northern Ireland. If Kitson had managed to persuade the Gang of Four from setting up the Social democratic Party, "we might have been spared 16 years of Tory rule." More recently, at a ceremony to grant the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh to a famous actor, with tongue in cheek he produced the union card of one Thomas Connery, announced that payments were overdue and asked it he had been working elsewhere under an assumed name. Read less