the chair of the Cape Town District Committee of the Communist Party in January 1931. Simon worked in a dress shop and accompanied James Schuba who she met at the meeting of the party on the weekends to visit dock and harbour workers. Three years after her arrival, she was elected to be Secretary of the Commercial Employees' Union in Cape Town. In 1935, she lost her job at the dress shop and she became full-time organizer of the Non-European Railway and Harbor Workers' Union She was also a Secretary of the Communist Party for two years, from 1934 to 1935. Simons founded Food and Canning Workers Union (FCWU) by organising coloured, black and white workers which was known for its effectiveness and militancy. It spread through the fruit canning industry of the Boland to the west coast among fishing communities. She became General Secretary of the organization. FCWU played an important role in the South African Congress of Trade Unions on the 1950s. Using Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 to ban the communist party in 1953, she was ordered to quit the position next year. Ray Alexander Simons, Helen Joseph, Lilian Ngoyi and Florence Mkhize found the Federation of South African Women (FSAW) in April 1954 and she was elected to be General Secretary of the organization. Though, in September 1954, she met with a series of banning orders issued by C. R. Swart which forced her to resign from (FSAW). In the same year, Simons was elected as one of the three Natives' Representative in South Africa's parliament. Although the banning order forbid her from taking her seat, she still went to the parliament and pushed by a security policeman on the premise. She sued the act and received compensation which covered the cost of her election campaign. Exile life In 1965, she and her husband Jack Simons fled to Lusaka, Zambia. Jack received a lecturer position at Manchester University and moved to England. They returned to Zambia in 1967 and built a home for themselves for their three children's visitation. While in exile at Zambia, Ray co-authored a book called Class and Colour in South Africa, 1850–1950 with Jack Simons and worked for the International Labour Organization and African National Congress (ANC) which was banned in South Africa. They had lived in Zambia for most of 25 years between 1965 and 1990. In her exile in