Alex Moffat

Alexander B. Moffat (1904 – 6 September 1967) was a Scottish trade unionist and communist activist who was President of the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the Scottish Mineworkers Union.

Early life Born into a Plymouth Brethren family in Lumphinnans in Fife, Moffat left school at the age of fourteen to work at the local coal mine. His family had a long association with the trade union movement; his grandfather, David Moffat, had been the secretary of the Mid and East Lothian Miners' Association, until victimisation by employers forced him to move his family to Lumphinnans to find work. Moffat was elected as pit delegate after only four years at the mine, the youngest ever pit delegate in Scotland.

1920s and 1930s He worked with his brothers, David and Abe Moffat, in support of the national miners' strike of 1926. He was imprisoned for two months for a speech he made during the strike, and was thereafter blacklisted by local mines. She died during the birth of what would have been their first child, in 1928.

Thereafter, Moffat devoted much of his time to the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and in 1928 was elected to Fife County Council, In 1928, he was also elected as Vice-President of the Fife, Kinross and Clackmannan Miners Association, and organised the Fife Miners' Gala, although the union was soon dissolved and Moffat instead became vice-president of the communist-led United Mineworkers of Scotland, and Fife organiser for the CPGB. He stood in Rutherglen at the 1929 general election, gaining 842 votes, and was not elected.

David and Alex Moffat, born seven years apart, were more than just brothers. They were brothers-in-arms, and usually biographies tend to combine them. Being born in Lumphinnans one of several pit towns dominated at the time by the Communist Party and even called "Little Moscow" by some they were almost destined to be mine unionists and communists. Their family had a long tradition of involvement in mining trade unionism; their grandfather had been a pioneer of the trade union in the Lothians in the 1860s, but was forced to move to Fife due to victimisation.

Working in the pits for 16 years, Abe Moffat was victimised perennially. He actively supported miners' strike actions. After joining the Communist Party in 1922, he helped publish the `Buzzer', a newsletter for militant miners at Glencraig Colliery, Lochgelly. He joined the party and was elected as a Communist councillor to Ballingry Parish Council.

He and his brother, Abe Moffat, were central to the miners' struggle for economic rights. "The name Moffat was to become legend throughout the Fife, then Scottish, and ultimately the British mining industry. The Moffat brothers were reported to be in the thick of every struggle to defend and improve the conditions of the miners and their families."

In 1959 he and John Wood testified concerning the 18 September, Auchengeich Colliery Disaster, Lanarkshire that had a death toll of 47.

In 1957, Moffat was elected as vice-president of the union. He died, still in office, six years later.