Bert Ramelson  Baruch Rahmilevich Mendelson (22 March 1910 – 13 April 1994), commonly known as Bert Ramelson, was an industrial organiser and politician for the Communist Party of Great Britain. He held the post of National Industrial Organiser from 1965 to 1977, and was editor and a member of editorial board of the "World Marxist Review" from 1977 to 1990. Ramelson was born the sixth of seven children in a Jewish family in Cherkassy, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), in 1910. His father was a Talmudic scholar and his mother ran a corner shop inherited from her father, which the family lived in. In 1922 Ramelson's family emigrated to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where his paternal uncle was a successful fur trader. Ramelson won a scholarship to the University of Alberta, where he achieved First Class Honours in law. While he was a student he was conscripted onto an officer training course. After completing his mandatory year in practice as an articled clerk and qualifying as a barrister, he left to join a kibbutz in Palestine. He later recal.led that he became disillusioned after Histadrut called a strike on an orange grove in the kibbutz, demanding that the Arab workers be replaced by Jews. After briefly returning to Canada, he left to fight with the Canadian battalion of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. He was wounded twice on the Aragon and Ebro fronts. In 1939 he settled in Britain and for a short time was a trainee manager at Marks and Spencer. During the Second World War he was an NCO driver in the 7th Royal Tank Regiment. In 1942 he was imprisoned by German forces after the capture of Tobruk. He organised an escape from an Italian prisoner of war camp after the Italian armistice of September 1943 and fought with the Italian Resistance. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery in March 1945 and later became an acting staff captain (legal) in India. In 1983 he was interviewed about his war service by the Imperial War Museum. After the war, he became acting full-time secretary of the Leeds branch of the Communist Party. Ramelson held this post from 1946–53 and encouraged political activism within the Yorkshire mining community, working with the National Union of Mineworkers, where he mentored the young Arthur Scargill. He stood as the Communist candidate at the Leeds South by-election in 1963, where he finished in fourth place; as well as at the 1964 and 1966 general elections, consistently coming last with a mere 2-3% share of the vote.