The Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff (APEX) was a British trade union which represented

clerical Clerical may refer to: * Pertaining to the clergy * Pertaining to a clerical worker * Clerical script, a style of Chinese calligraphy * Clerical People's Party See also * Cleric (disambiguation) Cleric is a member of the clergy. Cleric may a ...

and administrative employees.

History

The Clerks Union was formed in 1890 and later was renamed as the National Union of Clerks. Then, following rapid growth and amalgamation with several other unions, the name was again changed to the National Union of Clerks and Administrative Workers (NUCAW) with a membership of around 40,000. In 1940, NUCAW merged with the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries (AWCS) to form the Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union (CAWU). The union organised in the white-collar sector in the City of London and across the country, and had particular success in recruiting in the engineering industry. In the 1960s its membership grew rapidly, but it was less successful in the 1970s, membership increasing by 18%, while that of its rival, the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs (ASTMS), nearly doubled. The union changed its name to the Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff (APEX) in 1972. It was the union at the centre of the Grunwick dispute in the 1970s. APEX, like its predecessors, was an

affiliated trade union In British politics, an affiliated trade union is one that is linked to the Labour Party. The party was created by the trade unions and socialist societies in 1900 as the Labour Representation Committee and the unions have retained close institut ...

of the British Labour Party and was a key influence on the right-wing of the Party, particularly as, until 1972, it enforced a rule preventing

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

s from holding positions in the union. Its relations with other unions were often difficult, as it competed not only with the ASTMS for members, but also with the

National Union of Bank Employees The Banking, Insurance and Finance Union (BIFU) was a British trade union. The union was founded in 1946 as the National Union of Bank Employees (NUBE), when the Bank Officers' Guild and the Scottish Bankers' Association merged. In 1979, it ...

and various general unions. In particular, a dispute over members at General Accident was referred to the Trades Union Congress Disputes Committee and the fall-out led to APEX's general secretary,

Roy Grantham Roy Aubrey Grantham CBE (12 December 1926 – 25 October 2013) was a United Kingdom trade union leader who was the last general secretary of the Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff (APEX) which was involved in th ...

, failing to win re-election to the General Council of the TUC. In 1989 APEX merged with the GMB trade union and now exists as a section within the GMB.

Election results

The union sponsored numerous Labour Party candidates, many of whom were elected:

Leadership

General Secretaries

:1890: W. Moritz :1890: W. M. Sutherland :Charles Dyer :1906: Herbert Henry Elvin :1941: Fred Woods :1956: Anne Godwin :1963: Henry Chapman :1971:

Presidents

:1890: Wallas :1890: J. W. E. Hale : :1912: G. E. O'Dell :1914: R. J. W. Scott :1915: John Lindsley :1916:

Charles Latham Sir Charles George Latham (26 January 1882 – 26 August 1968), often shortened to simply C. G. Latham, was an Australian politician, former leader of the opposition in Western Australia and the 10th President of the Western Australian Legislat ...

:1918: James McKinlay :1927: Hubert Hughes :1940:

William Elger William Elger (1891 – 6 November 1946) was a Scottish trade union leader. Born in London, Elger's father was Austrian, and his mother was Scottish. He relocated to Edinburgh and became a clerical worker. He became active with the Edinburg ...

:1946:

Bob Scouller Robert E. Scouller (died 1974) was a Scottish trade unionist. Scouller worked as a clerk in Greenock. He became a socialist, inspired by ''The New Age'' magazine. He joined the National Union of Clerks (NUC) in 1912, establishing a branch with ...

:1951:

Helene Walker Helene Walker (1904 – December 1994) was a British trade unionist. Working as a clerk for a co-operative in Birmingham in the 1931, Walker joined the National Union of Clerks. She soon won election to the union's executive, and in 1946 was ...

:1961: David Currie :1972: Denis Howell :1983: Ken Smith

References

External links

GMB webpage on its history and that of its precursor unions
{dead link, date=October 2016 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes
Catalogue of the APEX archives
held at the

Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick The Modern Records Centre (MRC) is the specialist archive service of the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, located adjacent to the Central Campus Library. It was established in October 1973 and holds the world's largest archive collecti ...

Defunct trade unions of the United Kingdom 1940 establishments in the United Kingdom Clerical trade unions GMB (trade union) amalgamations Trade unions established in 1940 Trade unions disestablished in 1989 Trade unions based in London