Ted Hill

Edward James Hill, Baron Hill of Wivenhoe (20 August 1899 – 14 December 1969), known as Ted Hill, was a British trade unionist. Known as a shrewd negotiator, Hill frequently succeeded in "wresting many concessions from unwilling employers."

Born in West Ham, London, Hill was one of 12 children in a family with strong socialist traditions. He spent time mending boilers for P&O, and in his spare time was a wrestler. In 1934, he worked alongside Anuerin Bevan to organise a national hunger march.

By 1939, Hill was the London delegate to the executive committee of the Boilermakers, and in 1948 he was elected to the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC). In 1949, he was elected as General Secretary of the union, and soon acquired a reputation as a left-winger, aligned with the Labour Party but often critical of its policies – a supporter of unilateral disarmament and generally an opponent of militarism. During the UK engineering strike, 1957, he famously asked "what's in this productivity for my members?" Following a succession of demarcation disputes, Hill led a 1962 merger with two other unions with large presences in shipyards, the Associated Blacksmiths, Forge and Smithy Workers' Society and the Shipconstructors and Shipwrights' Association, remaining leader of the renamed "Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers, Shipwrights, Blacksmiths and Structural Workers". having taken his title from the town of Wivenhoe, where he lived in a terraced house.

He died in hospital in Colchester, aged 70.

After Hill's death, Josef Frolik claimed that he had been a KGB informer; Hill's widow strongly denied the claim.