Len Wincott and the difference between spokesmen and organizers

Len Wincott became a conspicuous member of the Invergordon strike committee, but his visibility did not necessarily make him the fleet's principal organizer. He was an able seaman who had entered the Navy in 1923 and had an otherwise unremarkable service record. He and Fred Copeman organized meetings and discussions, while the interpretation here places the chief petty officer network behind the wider coordination. A visible committee supplied an obvious leadership for outsiders to identify and officers to address. After discharge, Wincott joined the Communist Party and moved to the Soviet Union in 1934, later surviving the siege of Leningrad. His later politics encourage a revolutionary reading of the mutiny, although they do not by themselves establish what organized the fleet's pay protest.