Woolf Wess

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Woolf Wess (1861–1946), also known as William Wess or William West, was a Jewish immigrant who spent much of his life in London. Born in Ukmergė in the Russian Empire, he learned shoemaking at twelve and later worked as a factory machinist. He moved to England in 1881 to avoid military service and settled in London, joining the Hackney branch of the Socialist League. He helped found the International Working Men's Educational Club at 40 Berner Street and served as its secretary and printing supervisor.

In 1888 Wess was the first witness at the inquest into Elizabeth Stride’s death, connected to Jack the Ripper. He became deeply involved in the Jewish trade union movement, helping to form many unions in the 1880s and 1890s. He was secretary for the East London tailors’ strike in 1889, helped establish the East London Workers’ Unions, and led other unions including the International Tailors, Machinists and Pressers’ Trade Union and the United Ladies’ Tailors and Mantle Makers’ Association. He also helped set up a Jewish cooperative bakery in Spitalfields.

Wess began helping with Freedom, the anarchist newspaper, in the 1880s and became manager of Freedom Press in 1891. He toured and spoke with famous anarchists and, in 1895, became editor of Arbeyter Fraynd, a weekly Yiddish anarchist paper. By the early 1900s his role in Jewish unions diminished, and he worked as a bookkeeper in a tobacco factory. He continued to be involved with Freedom and, in 1906, helped launch the Arbeyter Fraynd Club in Whitechapel and joined a tailors’ strike committee with Rudolf Rocker.

In 1928–1929 he helped rebuild the London Freedom Group, which closed in 1931 but was revived again later in the 1930s to support the Spanish Revolution, alongside Emma Goldman. He remained active in Jewish radical circles in London and spoke at events into the 1940s. He died on 23 May 1946 in London at the age of 84 and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. His obituary noted that he was an atheist.