Jack Fitzgerald

Jack Fitzgerald ( 1873 – 16 April 1929) was a founding member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Fitzgerald was an Irishman who had settled in London, and had joined the socialist movement after becoming a secularist, embracing socialism after attending a debate between secularist Charles Bradlaugh and socialist Henry Hyndman. "Fitz", as he was known, was a very well known indoor and outdoor speaker for the SPGB – two of his debates were issued as pamphlets: The Socialist Party and the Liberal Party (1911) and Socialism and Tariff Reform (1912)—and was a prolific writer for the Socialist Standard. He was an SPGB Executive Committee member continuously from 1905 until his death in 1929 and was also on the Editorial Committee for most of that time. He was also secretary of Clerkenwell branch from 1905 to 1906.

By trade he was a bricklayer (as were George Hicks and F. K. Cadman) and after 1913 was on the teaching staff at the LCC School of Building at Brixton. He was an active trade unionist (Operative Bricklayers' Society) and a cyclist, designing and building his own bicycles. Fitzgerald had been active in the Social Democratic Federation from around the turn of the century, being a public speaker and a delegate to SDF Conferences in 1901 (Central branch) and 1902 (Burnbank). Whilst a member of the SDF he had taught classes for the party on Marx's Capital, where one of his students was Thomas A. Jackson, who described him as "very nearly the best-read man I have ever met".