Solidarity Park

      Thomas Carter

      On 19th September 1904 Thomas Joseph Carter was born to Thomas and Margaretta Carter of 24 Lawrence Street, on Sunderland docks. Tom was the only boy in the family, having two older and two younger sisters. The 1921 census shows Tom working for his father as an apprentice House and Ship painter, employed by Thomas Carter and sons Ltd – “Paint manufacturer”. Carters Paints of Sunderland was still in business in 2014.

      In February 1926 Toms married Margaret Hubbard at the Holy Trinity Church, just across Sunderland Town Moor from his home. In 1929 their son Douglas was born.

      In 1932 the family moved to 72 Westmoreland Street, West Hartlepool, where Thomas worked on the docks as a labourer and warehouseman and joined the National Union of General and Municipal Workers (NUGMW) now the GMB. It was here that Thomas began to show an interest in politics, he joined the Hartlepool branch of the National Unemployed Workers movement, led by J W Grady. Tom campaigned when Grady stood for the South West Hartlepool Ward in the October 1932 municipal elections and was at the NUWM demonstration in December 1932 when Ron Dennison was ‘Beaten up by the police in West Hartlepool’ thus began a friendship which took them both to Spain.

      Tom joined the Communist Party in 1933 after meeting George Short at a big “Anti-Fascist demonstration”; this is most likely the Battle of Stockton when the Communists humiliated the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in September 1933. Tom was at further Communist Party demonstrations against the BUF in Hartlepool and Sunderland in 1934 and in Middlesbrough in 1935 and 1936. In 1935 he was appointed secretary of the Hartlepool NUWM and chaired the Teesside district committee of the Communist Party.

      When they volunteered for Spain Ron Dennison and Tom Carter travelled to London together. Tom arrived in Spain with the huge 120 strong 7th January Transport and was enlisted with ID number 73; Ron Dennison arrived a week later as the responsible of the 14th January Transport; the two friends stayed together, they were both assigned to Harold Fry’s No.2 (machine gun) Company. The evidence suggests that he was wounded on the 13th February 1937, that he succumbed to his wounds and died on the 27th February.

      Tom Carter is commemorated on the Teesside International Brigade memorial, produced in 1939 and now in Middlesbrough Town Hall and on the original and new Jarama memorial on the Jarama battlefield.

      Compiled by Tony Fox