Sam Pierce

Samuel Hughes Pierce was born at 80 Old Road, Ashton in Makerfield, on 29 July 1913.  Shortly after learning that his father had been killed in action at Ypres, Belgium, Sam moved with his mother and younger sister to Golborne.  They returned to Ashton in 1923, eventually settling in Cansfield Grove.  

On leaving school, Sam secured a position with Thomas Crompton & Sons  (“this busy little works set right in the heart of rural beauty in Downall Green”).  His career there was cut short by the death of his mother at just 33, leaving Sam an orphan at 15.  He and his sister went to live with an aunt in Rochdale, but the relationship was never an easy one and Sam ran away to London.
Unfortunately, Sam was unable to interest a publisher in his story, and seems to have got no further than documenting the first two decades of his life.  The typescript copies of “A Working Class Autobiography” which can be found in local libraries and at Oldham Local Studies end with the author, now 19, waiting at London's Victoria Station for a train that would take him to Chatham where he had arranged to board a Merchant Navy ship.  
The acute poverty that Sam had witnessed in Ashton and Golborne, and the apparent futility of the sacrifices made by his father and others of that generation in the First World War, left an indelible impression, shaping his later political views and actions.  Among the causes he espoused after World War II were the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the establishment of what became the People's History Museum in Salford.  He spent his last years in Oldham, having been made life president of that town's Trades Union Council, and gained a reputation as the frequent writer of “endearingly blinkered letters about politics” to the Oldham Evening Chronicle and other papers.
But it's time to hear from Sam Pierce himself...  We'll follow his story up to the point of his departure from Ashton in 1928. 

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