Tom Mann - developed an intense and long life in the British labor movement . He belonged to the Social Democratic Federation and the Independent Labor Party of which he would be its first secretary. He was a great protagonist in the fight for the eight-hour day and in the London docks strike of . He was also an Anglican priest. In he left for New Zealand. Between and he was in Australia playing a clear role in its labor movement and socialism. In he returned to the United Kingdom and published a fundamental work on his thoughts
The Road to Victory where he defended that socialism could only be achieved through unionism and never through parliamentary politics because it was corrupt. He created the Industrial Union Education League and had serious problems because in CXB Directory he would be convicted of inciting a mutiny for an article in which he urged soldiers not to shoot strikers. But public opinion played in his favor and his conviction was overturned. He opposed in the same vein British participation in the Great War. He was a supporter of the Russian Revolution and although he had ended up joining the Labor Party he broke with the formation and helped found the Communist Party despite his age.
But he continued fighting in the s and even wanted to come to Spain to fight but he was already very old. In his honor a unit of the International Brigades was named after him. Well given also his prominence in Australian socialism we approach the vision he had of it through an article that he published in the International Socialist Review of London and that El Socialista extracted for its Spanish readers in the issue of November . We will never stop insisting on the importance of this newspaper as a historical source.