George Odger
British trade unionist
George Odger (1813 – 4 March 1877) was a pioneer British trade unionist and radical Liberal politician, who also ran as a Lib-Lab by-election candidate.
He is best remembered as the head of the London Trades Council during the period of formation of the Trades Union Congress and as the first President of the First International.
Biography
Early years
George Odger was born in 1813 in Roborough, Devon, England. Odger's father was a miner from Cornwall and the family was an impoverished one, forcing George to be apprenticed as a shoemaker at about 10 years of age. Odger's formal education was limited and primitive, but he was able to expand his intellectual horizons through self-education and reading.
Odger travelled the country in search of work as a shoemaker, eventually landing in London around the age of 20. There he became active in the nascent trade union movement, joining the Ladies Shoemakers' Society, which later became part of the Amalgamated Society of Cordwainers.
Trade union leader
Odger first came to public attention in 1859 when he served on a general committee to coordinate aid for striking workers in the London builders' strike of that year. This led to active participation in the London Trades Council when it was founded the following year, followed by election to the position of Secretary of that organisation in 1862.
Also in 1862, Odger became the Chairman of the Manhood Suffrage and Vote by Ballot Association.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Odger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.