Allott, Percy

Percy Allott was born in Lincoln, ca.1881. He was apprenticed to a printer and moved to London when his apprenticeship ended at the age of 21. In 1907 he joined the Labour Party, which he was to support for the rest of his life (although his views often tended toward the Communist), and also became an active member of the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks (NAUSAWC). During the First World War he ran the YMCA at the Royal Naval Air Station at Leysdown, Kent. In November 1918 he became full-time Secretary of the London Wholesale Textile Branch (later City District) of NAUSAWC, a position he held for most of the rest of his working life, retiring in June 1945. He then took a post as a temporary clerk in the Board of Trade, becoming active in the Civil Service Clerical Association. During his time at NAUSAWC he served as a delegate to the TUC and as a member of the Executive Committee of the London Trades Council and was also a member of the first Catering Trade Board Enquiry and the first Grocery Trade Board. Allott was selected as Labour candidate for the Holborn by-election of 28 June 1928 and finished second to the victorious Conservative candidate, Stuart Bevan, KC, polling 2,238 votes to Bevan's 6,365. Edith, Allott's wife of over fifty years (they had no children), died on 27 September 1961, and the following year Allott left his Wimbledon home and moved to a Quaker home for the elderly (although he was an agnostic) in Polegate, Sussex. Allott was a prolific poet, much of his work, mainly political in nature, being published in a number of left-wing newspapers.

From the guide to the Papers of Percy Allott, 1915-1963, (Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick Library)