Edward Charles (Ted) Roach was born in Coledale in 1909 and spent his youth on the Newcastle coalfields. From 1928 to 1931 Roach travelled throughout northern New South Wales and Queensland searching for work and was active in organising the unemployed. He joined the Communist Party of Australia in Mackay in 1931 and became secretary of the local branch of the Unemployed Workers’ Movement (UWM). Roach returned to Newcastle and the coalfields area at the end of 1931 and became district secretary of the UWM and the Militant Minority Movement; and secretary of the May Day Committee from 1931-1934. In April 1934 he was admitted into the Newcastle Branch of the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) and transferred to the South Coast Branch in 1936. In November 1938, Roach organised Port Kembla wharfies in the Dalfram dispute when wharfies refused to load a ship with cargo of pig iron destined for Japan. Roach became Assistant General Secretary of the WWF from 1942-1967. At the end of WWII Roach was involved in the WWF black ban on Dutch ships in support of Indonesian independence. In 1949 at the time of the miners’ strike Roach spent six weeks in prison along with Jim Healy, after he was found to be in contempt of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration when he withdrew union funds to pay strike pay. In 1951, during the Basic Wage Case, he was found to be in contempt again and spent 9 months and 18 days in Long Bay prison.