George Shipton
British trade unionist
George Shipton (1839 – 14 October 1911) was a prominent British trade unionist.
Trade union activity
Shipton worked as a builder and became involved in trade unionism by joining the Land and Labour League, where he became a strong supporter of George Odger. In 1872, he was elected as the General Secretary of the London Trades Council. In 1873, he became the first leader of the London Amalgamated Painters union, a post he held until 1889.
In 1878, Shipton travelled to Paris, leading the English delegation at an early international labour conference. In February 1880, he stood as an independent Radical candidate in a by-election in Southwark coming third with 799 votes.
The Labour Standard
The London Trades Council had broken links with The Bee-Hive, their previous journal, in 1865, and it had ceased publication in 1878. In 1881, they resolved to establish their own newspaper, The Labour Standard, and named Shipton as its editor. He initially ran with a series of lead articles by Friedrich Engels. He resigned in 1884, being replaced by William Barnett.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Shipton” 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.