Few Remembered Him

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31004, 9 March 1966, Page 8

Few Remembered Him

In the days of multiplicities of trade unions, Mr Ellis, in 1907, was secretary of some of the five freezing workers unions in Canterbury. He was the architect of the Canterbury Freezing Workers’ Union as it is known today. “Is Violet still here?” asked Mr Ellis. Miss Violet Cox, aged 65, looked up from her typewriter. She remembered him. As the veteran of the Trades Hall, with 48 years of Canterbury trade unionism experience, she remembered Mr Ellis as the man who left the secretaryship of the tailoresses’ and pressers’

union, the day she arrived in the Trades Hall as a 17-year-old stenographer. In the clothing trade union office, Miss Cox made Mr Ellis a cup of tea. “She’s like a drop of fine wine—she’s matured with age,” said Mr Ellis. The secretary of the New Zealand Freezing Workers’ Association (Mr F. E. McNulty) said Mr Ellis was of “way back vintage.” He was one of the truly oldttmers in the union. “He was before Sid Arnst, who was before Kilpatrick who was before Revell, as Canterbury union secretary,” said Mr McNulty. “He had left the union before the 1929 depression began.” “I am the last of the Mohicans—the rest are all dead," said Mr Ellis. “The rest—Harry Worrell, of the labourers union, Jim Young and Tom Bailey of the trades council, Bob Whiting of the bootmakers, Paddy

Darcy of the freezing workers, and Freddy Cook, of the tailors’ union, are all dead.” “My opinion is that the progress of the trade union movement has made social security legislation, which in turn has taken ail the sting out of the rank and file,” he said. “You have not got the old fighter. Directly, you take want away from man, he becomes a Tory.” Mr Ellis said that in the old days, he was on the right of the extremists. But in those days, anyone who took an active part in the trade union movement was called “Red-fed.” Retirement came to Mr Ellis in 1927, when he said, he left the freezing workers union, because of militant travelling slaughtermen who came over from Australia. “They made it too darn hot for me,” he said. Mr Ellis is shown talking to Miss Cox in the Trade! Hall.