Histories

Biographical Information: JOHN FRANCIS PURVIS (JACK), born 17th December 1920 in Silverton, Johannesburg, South Africa, died 3rd October 1970 at Ndola, Zambia. Moved (1929) with his parents to Northern Rhodesia (Zambia). Educated locally in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), then at St George's College, Salisbury (Harare), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Witwatersrand Technical College, Johannesburg. Apprentice electrician in Luanshya, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) (1938-43). Served in World War II (during which he met his wife in England), joining the South African Navy (1943), seconded to the British Royal Navy, serving on cruisers (HMS Coradoc), destroyers and submarines. Known as the "Below Deck Lawyer", he was selected for officer training but failed to pass out due to conflict with the instructing officers. Settled in Luanshya, working as an electrician in the mines and moving into union administration in the 1950s. He was General Secretary of the Northern Rhodesian Mineworkers Union (N.R.M.U.) and its president (1956-58). He was one of the most controversial and powerful men in the Copperbelt, a militant, fluent and persuasive speaker in English, Afrikaans and the African vernacular. Although this was an European union, he almost exclusively devoted his time to strengthening the African unions. However, this alienated an element of the European workforce while failing to dispel the fundamental distrust of the African union leaders (see obituary in the Zambian Times, October 1970). In 1959 he was elected to the executive of the Miners' International Federation and in 1962 he became general representative in Central Africa for the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, by which he was posted (1963) to Ankara, Turkey, to help organise the union movement in that country. He remained active in union politics until he retired (1965). Married (first on 20th January 1945 in St Johns Church of England, Kensal Green, Paddington, London, England, and second, at the insistence of his mother who was a devout Catholic, on 30th May 1945 at the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes and St Vincent de Paul, Paddington) Ada Florence Thompson (born 10th July 1913 in London, died 28th February 1981 in Durban, Natal, South Africa, of cancer), having four children:-