Charles Alfred Crofts (11 July 1871 – 25 March 1950) was an Australian trade unionist. Born at

Bethnal Green Bethnal Green is an area in the East End of London northeast of Charing Cross. The area emerged from the small settlement which developed around the Green, much of which survives today as Bethnal Green Gardens, beside Cambridge Heath Road. By ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

to general dealer James Crofts and Ann Rebecca, ''née'' Luxton, Crofts entered the workforce at the age of twelve, leaving school to work in a sheet metal factory and joining the Tinsmiths, Braziers and Gas Meter Makers' Society of London. He married Agnes Humphreys at Bethnal Green on 6 August 1893. He and his family moved to

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

in 1898, where Crofts became a member of the Sheet Metal Workers' Union (SMWU), serving as vice-president (1907) and president (1908–09). In 1911 he was on the first executive of the Federated Gas Employees' Industrial Union and in 1914 was elected to the SMWU's national executive. He defied his employer, the Metropolitan Gas Company, to attend a union meeting in Sydney in 1914 and was subsequently dismissed, but soon after won the position of secretary to the Gas Employees' Union, a paid position, winning the national secretaryship two months later. Crofts, an activist president, served on the Melbourne Trades Hall Council's executive and was its president from 1924 to 1925. He was secretary of the Commonwealth Council of Federated Unions from 1923 to 1927 and was first secretary of the

Australian Council of Trade Unions The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), originally the Australasian Council of Trade Unions, is the largest peak body representing workers in Australia. It is a national trade union centre of 46 affiliated unions and eight trades and l ...

in 1927, a position he held until 1943. In 19430 he was the Australian delegate to the Fourteenth Session of the International Labour Conference in

Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...

, the

International Federation of Trade Unions The International Federation of Trade Unions (also known as the Amsterdam International) was an international organization of trade unions, existing between 1919 and 1945. IFTU had its roots in the pre-war IFTU. IFTU had close links to the Labou ...

' Fifth Annual Congress in Stockholm, and the British Commonwealth Labour Conference in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

; he also served as a deputy on the board of the

International Labour Organization The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is the first and o ...

. A leading workers' advocate during the Depression, he retired from the secretaryship in 1943 to concentrate on his presidency of the Gas Employees' Union. Crofts was also active in the

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms t ...

, serving as a Victorian executive member and Federal conference delegate and being president (1926–27) and treasurer (1942–44) of the Victorian branch. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1934. He was frequently an advocate in the Arbitration Court. Identified as a moderate within the Labor movement, Crofts was a firm anti- communist but identified as a

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

. He died at Caulfield in 1950 and was cremated.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crofts, Charles 1871 births 1950 deaths Australian Council of Trade Unions people Australian trade unionists Sheet metal workers Trade unionists from Melbourne