People Australia

Hugh Grant (1906-1978) boilermaker and trade union official 

Birth: 25 January 1906 in Glasgow, Scotland, son of Donald Grant (b.1868), boilermaker and Annabella Love, née Campbell (b.1869), both Highlanders who spoke Gaelic. Marriages: (1) 1930 in Melbourne, Victoria, to native-born Flora Thomasina Grant (1901-1969) school-teacher. They had two daughters and one son. The marriage ended in divorce. (2) details unknown, to Gladys Grant. Death: 10 May 1978 in hospital at Randwick, New South Wales; usual residence Kingsford, Sydney. 

• Served apprenticeship as boilermaker on Clyde bank, worked at John Brown ship-building yards, emigrating to Australia in December 1927, first to Melbourne.
• Worked at various branches of boilermaking in Melbourne, Yallourn, Adelaide, Brisbane, Ipswich, Townsville and Sydney.
• Shop delegate at Evans Deakin shipyard, Brisbane, while working in Ipswich workshops of Queensland Railways.
• Arrived at Morts Dock, Sydney, during World War II. Shipyard boilermakers’ delegate, chairman of Shipyard Combined Unions Committee and elected organiser of Sydney Branch of Boilermakers’ Society in 1943.
• Secretary of Sydney Branch of Boilermakers’ Society from 1944 to 1976. Senior vice president, also, until retirement, surviving various intrigues by NCC/Industrial Groups to unseat him.
• Cause of death: septicaemia, acute bilateral pyelonephritis, left broncho pneumonia and congestive cardiac failure.

Sources
John Playford, Doctrinal and strategic problems of the Communist Party of Australia, 1945-1962, (PhD thesis, ANU, 1962); Amalgamated Metal Workers and Shipwrights Union Monthly Journal, August 1978; Boilermakers Retort, January 1951.