{{Short description|English trade unionist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} thumb|right|Inskip in 1895 '''William John Inskip''' (1852 – May 1899) was an English trade unionist.
Inskip grew up in Leicester, where he worked as a {{Not a typo|laster}} in the bootmaking trade. He became active in the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives (NUBSO), of which he was elected treasurer in 1880,<ref name="radical">Ned Newitt, "[http://www.nednewitt.com/whoswho/I-J.html The Who's Who of Radical Leicester]"</ref> then general secretary in 1886.<ref name="obit">"Memorial notices: Mr. W. Inskip", ''Manchester Guardian'', 12 May 1899, p.7</ref>
In 1891, Inskip was elected to Leicester Town Council as a Liberal-Labour representative,<ref name="radical" /> and he was also appointed as a magistrate.<ref name="obit" /> However, he became increasingly politically isolated, as other leading figures in the union shifted to supporting independent labour representation.<ref name="radical" />
Inskip and Charles Freak, also a leader of NUBSO, were part of an antisemitic campaign against Jewish shoe makers. As the mechanisation of the industry continued apace, The pair of them blamed Jewish shoemakers for the economic consequences. From 1892 they started to campaign for immigration restrictions which they took to the 1895 Cardiff Trade Union Congress. However Joseph Finn, Woolf Wess and Lewis Lyons organised amongst jewish trade unionists to protest against Inskip and Freak. Joseph Finn published ''A Voice from the Aliens'' criticising them from an internationalist perspective.<ref name="Hofmeester">{{cite book |last1=Hofmeester |first1=Karin |title=Jewish Workers and the Labour Movement: A Comparative Study of Amsterdam, London and Paris 1870-1914 |date=15 May 2017 |publisher=Routledge |location=london |isbn=978-1-351-92530-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rAskDwAAQBAJ |language=en}}</ref>
Inskip was also active in the Trades Union Congress (TUC), serving on its Parliamentary Committee, and also as its treasurer. In 1898, he travelled to the United States as part of a TUC delegation, but on his return, he contracted tuberculosis, and he died in 1899, aged 47.<ref name="radical" /><ref name="obit" />
==References== <references />
{{s-start}} {{s-npo|union}} {{succession box | title = General Secretary of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives | years =1886 – 1899 | before = George Sedgwick | after = W. Boyd Hornidge}} {{succession box | title=Treasurer of the Trades Union Congress | years=1890 – 1899|before=Henry Slatter|after=C. W. Bowerman}} {{succession box|title=Trades Union Congress representative to the American Federation of Labour|years=1898|with=Will Thorne|before=Edward Harford and Havelock Wilson|after=James Haslam and Alexander Wilkie}} {{s-end}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Inskip, William}} Category:1852 births Category:1899 deaths Category:Councillors in Leicestershire Category:Trade unionists from Leicestershire Category:General secretaries of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives Category:Liberal-Labour (UK) politicians Category:Members of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress Category:Politicians from Leicester Category:19th-century deaths from tuberculosis Category:Tuberculosis deaths in the United Kingdom Category:19th-century British trade unionists