Frank Abbott was for over 40 years Secretary of the British workers’ paper The Industrial Pioneer.
He was born in Islington, London, on 18 April 1915, and became an aircraftsman and sergeant in the Royal Air Force. He served with Bomber Command in Iraq for three years, 1934-1937, protecting the desert oil fields, before basing in Alexandria, Egypt, during World War II.
On a visit to the Alexandria library, suffering from a hangover, he read a book called Life Began Yesterday, about the revival work of The Oxford Group. The librarian put him in touch with British wartime soldiers who were members of the Group in Alexandria.
Abbott had been a hard living, hard drinking young man. But an experience of prayer released him from an underlying bitterness caused by his parent’s disfunctional relationship. His father, an engine driver on the London North-Eastern Railway, had died from alcohol abuse in 1938.
As Abbot rose from his knees he realised he was a different person, he said.
After the war he worked for seven years on a farm in Suffolk belonging to the journalist Peter Howard, the leader of the Oxford Group’s campaign of ‘moral rearmament’.
In 1953 Abbott joined the ground-staff of the then British European Airways at London Airport, where he worked for 22 years including 20 years as a shop steward for the Transport and General Workers Union.
While there, he joined the staff of The Industrial Pioneer in the mid 1960s, in an unpaid position as honorary Secretary.
The campaigning paper was produced by a dedicated team of workers from the West Midlands and elsewhere who volunteered their time. It was sent to national trade union leaders, business and industry managers and readers in 72 countries.
In 1966 Abbott became a founder member of the Action Committee for European Aerospace, a Pioneer initiative which promoted European collaboration in the aerospace industry, particularly at the shop floor level, including the construction of Concorde and the European Airbus. The initiative involved taking groups of workers from Britain to meet their French counterparts in Toulouse, in a trust-building exercise. French trade unionists made return visits to Bristol and London.
In 1977 Abbott married Joy Wimbush who he had first met in 1946 when she was a land girl on Howard’s farm. They kept close links with Malta, taking their honeymoon there and visiting the country several times. He became a trusted friend of George Agius, the former General Secretary of the General Workers Union of Malta, as well as the GWU’s Assistant General Secretary, Vince Esposito. Another friend was the Maltese foreign minister and President, Dr Vincent Tabone.
In his later years Abbott kept up a fruitful correspondence with politicians, union leaders and other people in public life. He died in Birmingham on 2 December 2006, aged 91.
English