Fred Westacott was born in the South Wales mining town of Tredegar on 19 September 1916. He was the sixth of eight children of George Henry Westacott, a bricklayer, and Sarah Ann his wife (ne Gunter). Westacott was educated at Dukestown County School until 1931 when he reached 14. Around this time, he became interested in politics and with some friends formed a youth socialist society in Tredegar that later became a branch of the Labour League of Youth. In 1936, he left Tredegar for Southampton where he worked as a fitter and a toolmaker in the aircraft industry. After a period of involvement in local branches of the Labour Party, Westacott joined the Communist Party in December 1936. He became a member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union in 1937 and was soon a branch chairman and a district committee delegate.
During the Second World War, Fred Westacott worked on Spitfire production until his factory was bombed and he was transferred to South Wales to undertake other engineering duties. He became secretary of the Caerphilly Branch of the Communist Party and of the Welsh Committee of the Shop Stewards Movement. He was for a period full-time organiser in the industrial department of the district Communist Party office. His refusal to return to industrial work led to army conscription on 1 April 1943 and he was drafted into the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers at Old Dalby near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. He established a branch of the Communist Party in Melton Mowbray. He was sent to Italy to join the Chemical and Metallurgical Laboratory of the Central Mediterranean Forces near Naples.
He was demobilised with the rank of corporal in 1947 and married Kath Powell (died 1975), a teacher from Melton Mowbray, in the same year. He returned to work, first for the British Shoe Machinery Company, then for Imperial Typewriters, and finally for BTH. He became the first secretary of the Leicester Borough Committee of the Communist Party and in 1948, the East Midlands district organiser of the party. In the 1948 Leicester City Council by-election he stood as Communist candidate for the Braunstone Ward and in the 1950 General Election, stood as candidate for the North East Leicester parliamentary district.
The Westacotts moved to Nottingham in 1949, where they remained until 1958, when he became Coalfield Area organiser of the Communist Party and moved with his family to Chesterfield, Derbyshire. He stood as Communist Party candidate for the Mansfield (Nottinghamshire) constituency on four occasions; 1966, 1970, February 1974 and November 1974. In 1971 he was made East Midlands district secretary of the party. He was also a member of the executive committee of the Chesterfield Trades Council, a delegate to the Derbyshire County Association of Trades Councils and the Trades Union Congress, and a member of the branch committee of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.
Westacott retired from full-time work with the Communist Party in April 1982 but remained for some time a member of the district committee and its secretariat. He died in May 2001.
Communism first found its national voice in Great Britain at the Communist Unity Convention (also called the First Congress) in London, 31 July-1 August 1920. The Communist Party of Great Britain first sought parliamentary representation at Caerphilly in August 1921. The party was divided into districts and within them into branches. The Nottingham branch, for example, was formed in 1928. The East Midlands district included branches in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire.
