Edward James Hill, Baron Hill of Wivenhoe (20 August 1899 – 14 December 1969), known as Ted Hill, was a Britishtrade unionist. Known as a shrewd negotiator, Hill frequently succeeded in "wresting many concessions from unwilling employers."[1]
By 1939, Hill was the London delegate to the executive committee of the Boilermakers, and in 1948 he was elected to the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC). In 1949, he was elected as General Secretary of the union, and soon acquired a reputation as a left-winger, aligned with the Labour Party but often critical of its policies – a supporter of unilateral disarmament and generally an opponent of militarism.[2] In 1953, he was censured by the TUC for making a speech contrary to its policies, the first occasion on which the body is known to have censured one of the members of its General Council.[5] During the UK engineering strike, 1957, he famously asked "what's in this productivity for my members?"[2]
Hill was a colourful and larger-than-life figure, weighing in more than 16 stone (100 kg). According to The Times, Hill was a "constant source of anxiety and embarrassment to his more orthodox T.U.C. colleagues. The cloth cap "image" he created did not fit into their concept of responsible and respectable trade unionism and they regarded his ideas of class warfare as an anachronism in the mid-twentieth century."[1]