Researching Albert Williams

Born in Berwick, Pennsylvania, Williams attended Beckley College and became a Certified Public Accountant. He worked for IBM in sales positions from 1938 until 1942, when he was promoted to a position at IBM corporate headquarters in New York City.

According to the IBM corporate website, Williams was elected IBM Controller in November 1942, IBM Treasurer in 1947, and Vice President and Treasurer in 1948. The IBM Board of Directors elected him a member in July 1951. In 1954, he was elected Executive President and, in May 1961, president of IBM. Williams became a member of the IBM Board's Executive and Finance Committee in 1956.

He chaired the President Commission on International Trade and Investment Policy, appointed by Richard Nixon on 21 May 1970.

Williams was originally signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates as an amateur free agent in 1975. He pitched two seasons in the Pirates minor league system, but was released by Pittsburgh because the Nicaraguan Government would not grant him a visa to leave the country to play baseball in the United States. This prompted Williams to sign up with the Sandinista rebels and he was engaged in jungle fighting against the forces of Anastasio Somoza from 1977 through 1978 during the Nicaraguan Revolution.

In 1979, Williams had to be smuggled out of Nicaragua and was signed a contract to play in the Inter-American League, where he pitched for the Caracas Metropolitanos and Panama Banqueros clubs. He then joined the Minnesota organization in 1980, where he spent five years. In 1984, he was the starting pitcher in the Twins season opener against the Detroit Tigers at the Metrodome.

In between, Williams played six seasons in the Venezuelan Winter League, making an appearance with the Tiburones de La Guaira in the 1983 Caribbean Series.

Born in Stockport, Williams left school at the age of fourteen and completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer with the Manchester Corporation. During World War II, he served in India and South East Asia, remaining in the forces until 1948. He then returned to Manchester, finding work as a bricklayer, and joined both the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers (AUBTW) and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).

Williams became known as a militant trade union activist, becoming a branch secretary and a regional delegate in quick succession, and was elected to the AUBTW's executive council in 1958. He was the union's youngest ever executive council member, and this despite the union's right-wing leadership.

In 1959, Williams was elected to the national executive of the CPGB, serving on it for three years before standing down. This was perhaps in order to distance himself from allegations that CPGB members in the Electrical Trades Union had engaged in ballot rigging. He remained on the executive of the AUBTW and its successors, through a series of mergers which formed the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT), and was prominent in the national strike of 1972 which led to the jailing of the Shrewsbury Two. With the union's leadership keen to distance themselves from the case, Williams was permitted to lead the union's fundraising efforts for the two.

By the late 1970s, Williams was the National President of UCATT. In 1977, he resigned from the CPGB, joining the Labour Party, in which he immediately became known as a member of the right-wing.

In 1984, Williams was elected as the General Secretary of UCATT. While he had always opposed the unionisation of the "lump" - self-employed labourers - he changed his mind, and narrowly persuade the union to adopt this policy in 1990. His next campaign was to arrange a merger of the union into the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (EETPU). However, the EETPU had been expelled from the Trades Union Congress (TUC) for poaching members of other unions, and the majority of UCATT's own executive opposed the merger. In 1991, the union suspended Williams on full pay; three organisers left in protest to join the EETPU, but fourteen said that they would join the TUC-affiliated GMB Union and seek to persuade a majority of members to follow them. The TUC undertook mediation, which resulted in the GMB withdrawing from efforts to split the union, and Williams' suspension being lifted. However, the merger with the EETPU was also abandoned, and Williams' position in the union greatly weakened. He retired the following year.