Finlay Hart

Finlay Hart (1901 – 27 December 1989) was a Scottish communist activist and politician. He served twice as a communist councillor in Clydebank, from 1935-38 and 1965-70.

Hart was born in Clydebank in 1901 and attended Clydebank High School. His political activism began when he joined the Workers International Industrial Union in 1915 while employed in Dalmuir at the William Beardmore and Company shipyard. In 1917 he participated in the Red Clydeside movement and joined the Socialist Labour Party; he was part of its majority that founded the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). In 1923 he emigrated to Edmonton in Canada in an attempt to find work. While there he became a member of the Communist Party of Canada, but then returned to Clydebank in 1926, where he worked as a plumber.

In 1934, Hart helped lead a Glasgow-to-London hunger march. The following year, he was elected as Clydebank's first communist councillor, and remained in office until 1938.

After World War II, Hart was chairman of the shipbuilding shop stewards at the Blythswood Shipyard in Scotstoun. He was an early advocate for merging the boilermaker, shipwright, and blacksmith unions into a consolidated labour federation, which became the Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers, Shipwrights, Blacksmiths and Structural Workers.

Hart stood for Parliament on three occasions: West Dunbartonshire in 1950; Glasgow Springburn in 1955 and again in 1959, but he was never elected. In the early 1970s after the collapse of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders company, he helped organize a "work-in" action. He was 88.