People Australia

Percy Trainer

Westralian Worker (Perth), 1 August 1947, p 1

Percival John (Percy) Trainer (1886-1947) miner, timber worker, trade union official and arbitration court member 

Birth: 31 January 1886 at St Peter Port, Guernsey, Channel Islands, England, son of William Robert Trainer (1852-1942), soldier, a sergeant in the Guernsey Militia, and Annie, née Gilcriss or Pickford (b.1859). Marriage: 1915 at Fremantle, Western Australia, to Hilda Lillian Scholefield (1889-1969), born at Halifax, Yorkshire, England. They had one daughter and four sons. Death: 12 August 1947 at Royal Perth Hospital. Religion: Married in Registry Office and buried with Anglican rites. 

• Trainer had a “meritorious record” in the British labour movement and was active in Independent Labour Party in Methyr Tydfil and Cardiff, Wales. His father was also an ILP activist.
• Percy arrived in Western Australia with his widowed father and siblings about 1912. Worked as a timber worker. Joined Timber Workers’ Union in 1913. Joined Miners’ Union on the goldfields.
• Returned to the coast in 1917 and linked back up with Timber Workers’ Union in Jarrahdale.
• Active in reorganising Hospitals and Kindred Institutions’ Union. Secretary of the Plumbers’ Union from 1919. Secretary of the Coachbuilders’ Union from 1922.
• General Secretary of the Australian WA Labor Party from 1933 to 1942. Succeeded E. H. Barker as secretary of State executive in 1933 on Barker’s retirement. Retained post until appointed to WA Arbitration Court bench in 1941. Highlight of secretaryship was securing, as union advocate, a 5-shilling increase in real wages in Basic Wage Inquiry of 1938.
• Trade union advocate to arbitration court 1926-1940. Delegate to Metropolitan Council from Water and Sewerage Union 1925-1935.
• President West Perth ALP. Secretary Maylands ALP and delegate to 1935 Triennial Congress. Was appointed Australian representative to the International Labor Organisation conference at Geneva, Switzerland, in September 1936.
• Delegate from the Metropolitan Council to State Executive; delegate to Midland District Council and Metropolitan District council of ALP. Member of Federal Executive ALP; vice president of the Federal Executive ALP from about 1939. Delegated by Metropolitan District Council to Young Labor League and later became a life member of the league;
• Director of People’s Printing & Publishing Co. which controlled the Westralian Worker. Trustee of Public Library.
• Active in ‘Red witch-hunts’ of 1930s: “Red witch-hunts became a popular sport with Percy Trainer, T. G Davies and other right-wingers racing out to ALP branch meetings of stem the Red tide …” [First Furrow, p. 154].
• Appointed to the Western Australian Court of Arbitration Court bench as workers’ representative temporarily, succeeding William Somerville, in February 1941 and confirmed in the position in November that year.
• Cause of death: hepatic cirrhosis, myocardial degeneration and broncho pneumonia.

Sources
Westralian Worker, 23 June 1933, p 1, 22 December 1939, pp 1 & 15, 14 November 1941, 15 August 1947, p 1, 15 August 1947; Death Certificate Perth 1694/1947; Marriage certificate Fremantle 243/1915; Justina Williams, The First Furrow (Perth, 1976).