Bill Speirs - 1952-2009.

There have been a number of obituaries in the media reporting the sad death of Bill Speirs, ex STUC General Secretary, who passed away this week. after a long illness.

This obituary by Malcolm Burns in the Morning Star is the best we have read and pays a fulsome tribute to Bill.

Our condolences go to his wife Pat and his family.

Bill Speirs (1952-2009) Trade union leader, socialist, internationalist
Thursday 24 September 2009
by Malcolm Burns

Bill was a leading figure in Scottish and British politics, where his strategic and tactical abilities were put to good use in fighting the neoliberal onslaught of the Tory years and in helping to deliver and secure the Scottish Parliament.

He was also a staunch internationalist who contributed immensely to many of the great causes of our time, especially the victorious campaign against apartheid in South Africa and the continuing fight to win freedom and justice for the Palestinian people.

Bill grew up in Renfrew and was educated at the John Neilston Institute and then at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, where he gained a first-class honours degree in politics.

Everyone who came across Bill, friend and foe, recognised and respected his sharp intellect. Communist Jimmy Milne, who was then STUC general secretary, made a shrewd appointment when hiring the 26-year-old Bill as an assistant secretary in 1978. By that time, Bill had already cut his teeth in student politics and on the Scottish Labour Party left.

In almost three decades at the STUC, Bill rose to become deputy general secretary from 1988 and general secretary from 1998. He was also chairman of the Scottish Labour Party in 1987.

His career spanned the dark Tory years between the defeat of the 1970s Labour government following the failure to deliver devolution and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.

That Scotland finally won its parliament is due in no small part to Bill Speirs and his predecessor as STUC general secretary, the redoubtable Campbell Christie.

Trade unions are not political parties, but the STUC has played a remarkable role in Scottish political, economic and social life - not only leading industrial struggles, but raising awareness, building broad alliances and seeking democracy and justice both at home and abroad.

The miners' strike, the struggle for the steel and shipbuilding industries, Caterpillar, the fight against the poll tax, opposing nuclear weapons, defending the NHS, the long campaign for a Scottish parliament - some of those campaigns we won, some we lost. But in every case we made an impact and Scotland still retains much which Thatcher sought to destroy. Bill was in the forefront of every campaign. His creativity and energy were always deployed to try to maximise the interests of working people.

His internationalism was rooted in links of solidarity between working people - with trade unionists in eastern Europe during the cold war, in South Africa and Palestine, Cuba and Chile, in war-torn Bosnia and many more. And he was no tourist. He went to places where people needed STUC solidarity and he sometimes faced danger, even bullets, as a result.

He was to the fore in the massive anti-war protest in February 2003 and also led the Make Poverty History campaign in July 2005, each of which mobilised hundreds of thousands on the streets.

Bill also did important work as a member of the Employment Appeals Tribunal and on bodies such as the Scottish Arts Council and 7:84 theatre company.

He retired in 2006, but despite continuing ill health remained an activist in the Labour Party, Scottish Friends of Palestine and in his local community.

He enjoyed joking that on his birthday, March 8, women all over the world celebrated. He made that joke every year. Of course he too celebrated International Women's Day as a strong supporter of equal rights.

Bill loved music. He had a fine voice and lost no opportunity to sing. He would make up songs in celebration of people and events. His version of Catch A Falling Star, complete with actions, is legendary - and especially his adaptation of the words: "Buy a Morning Star and put it in your pocket, read it every single day ... never let it fade away."

Bill read, supported and contributed to the Morning Star. He took the paper every day, promoted it in his working and social life. He saw it as an essential weapon in the fight for the ideas of socialism.

Scotland has produced plenty of fine socialists, communists and trade unionists. None were finer than Bill Speirs. I'd put him in the company of Mick McGahey and John Maclean. Our mutual friend the late Peter Smith, communist, lecturer and editor of the STUC magazine the Scottish Trade Union Review, used to say: "Billy is an outstanding comrade, outstanding." So he was. The working-class movement throughout the world has lost a great fighter and a true friend.

He is survived by his wife Pat Stuart, herself a leading trade unionist, and a daughter and son from his first marriage.