Bernard Bagnari

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Bernard Augustus Bagnari (1902–1987) was a British trade unionist and Labour politician. He studied in London and Rome, became a clerk, and joined the National Union of Clerks in 1927. He rose to become the NUC’s London Area Organiser and later Area Secretary. He represented clerks at the Trades Union Congress, served as its auditor, and during World War II chaired the TUC’s mobilisation of labour committee for London and the South. He also worked for the Ministry of Information, broadcasting in Italian to occupied countries. An anti-fascist, he became strongly anti-communist by the war’s end. In 1946 he resigned as area secretary, saying communists inside the union hampered his work; in 1955 he argued for expelling former Revolutionary Communist Party members who had joined the Labour Party.

In local politics, Bagnari was elected to Islington Metropolitan Borough Council for Canonbury in 1945 and won a seat on London County Council for Islington East in 1949. He stood for Parliament as Labour candidate in Tonbridge (1951) and Putney (1955), but was not elected. He remained on the county council until its abolition in 1965. From 1960 to 1965 he was vice-president of the Clerical and Administrative Workers’ Union, successor to the NUC. In 1965 he wrote to The Times arguing that The Beatles should not receive government honours.