大象传媒

On a bright spring morning in 1922 a boy was born in Hunslet, South Leeds, to proud and god颅fearing parents, Walter and Mary Anna. This was their twenty-first child together and number twenty-two would arrive a couple of years later. They wouldn't have known at the time but you can be sure that they hoped that this little boy would do well in life and grow up to do great things. They called their new arrival Joseph and their hopes were certainly realised, as this short biographical testimonial! to the man will reveal.

Joseph Kitchen had an extremely harsh introduction to life having twenty-one brothers and sisters in a one up one down back to back in Hunslet, where the children slept seven to a bed and the parents sat on the only two chairs they owned. Soup kitchens and pawnshops were the natural way of life for the family. However, these experiences of the harshest periods of poverty moulded a strong young man who left school at fourteen years old in 1936 to start his apprenticeship as a coach painter at the John Fowlers Engineering Company in Hunslet, where he immediately joined the GMW.
By 1937 Joe and his fellow apprentices had formed a committee that would lead 3,000 engineering apprentices into a three-week strike in pursuit of a one shilling (O.O5p) per week increase in pay. The actions of Joe and his friends taken in 1937 opened the door for all future apprentices to be recognized and granted increases as a percentage of the adult workers? rates.

In 1940 Joe volunteered for her Majesties Forces and was enlisted to the Royal Engineers. Joe will tell you it was the first time in his eighteen years that he had ever sat down to a cooked breakfast (hard to believe but true). Within a few months of enlisting, Joe and his Unit were put on a train that they thought was destined for Blackpool, but in fact ended up at the docks in time to catch a boat that would take them to a much larger beach in North Africa. Kiss me quick hats had quickly changed to tin hats. This was the start of Joe's distinguished fight for his country and the freedom and democracy we take for granted today.

After the long, hard and terrifying fighting in the blistering heat of North Africa, Joe went on to the Landings in Italy where he would see some of the fiercest fighting action of the Second World War. Joe's fighting ended in Casinno where a battle that had lasted seven months left 250,000 soldiers and civilians dead and tens of thousands more injured and maimed. By the end of the hostilities in Italy and the war, Joe, now a Sergeant of the Royal Engineers, was transferred to a New Zealand Unit, assigned to clearing mines and booby traps around Casinno. The Unit also began clearing land at Collesseo, which was to become a cemetery. The New Zealanders pulled out shortly after starting this work and the British Number 5 War Graves Registration Unit moved in and Joe was attached to this Unit. Joe was given 250 Italian workers to help him bring in the bodies of the British troops from
the mountains around Casinno for burial.

Joe and his workers buried over 4,000 British soldiers with the dignity and respect they so richly deserved. It was during this period that Joe would meet his Italian sweetheart and future wife, Elizabetta Dibiasio (Tina).

Their love for each other would last for more than fifty years. Joe's work on the cemetery didn't finish until 1948, Joe and Tina then returned to England. Joe returned to his former employer in Hunslet, John Fowlers Engineering, where he soon became the shop steward and within a short period of time the branch secretary for one of the largest GMW branches in the Yorkshire region. During this period, Joe was busy with his own family raising two daughters; Anna Marie and Kathleen who would in later life both come to work for the GMW. Both married and emigrated - Anna Marie to Italy, and Kathleen to Jordan.

In 1978 Joe's recognition came in the birthday honours list when he was presented with the MBE (Member of the British Empire). In 1982, Joe was promoted to the position of regional secretary for the Yorkshire and North Derbyshire region, after the early retirement of his good friend and colleague Frank Booth, who sadly passed away in 1999.

Joe has also been a Magistrate since 1969, and is now a Senior Justice of the Peace on the Leeds bench. Joe was elected Alderman for Leeds in 1988.

I am sure his late wife, Tina, and daughter Kathleen, his parents Walter and Mary Anna, all relatives would agree that the boy born to poverty in 1922 grew into a truly great man. A man who has dignity and pride and is unselfish and caring. Many men aspire to greatness, but few make it - Joe Kitchen made it. A kind and gentle man to whom nothing in life is too hard, always a kind word and a helping hand
Jo visited our Peoples War session in November 2004 and related this story to me to record on minidisc but presented me with this article written about him and reproduced, with many thanks, from an article written by Jerry Nelson Regional Secretary GMB Union Yorkshire and North Derbyshire ? In Touch December 1999

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