Tom Walmsley obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/23/tom-walmsley-obituary

Version 0 of 1.

My friend Tom Walmsley, who has died aged 87, was a lifelong communist, trade unionist and political activist.

He was born Tom Binding in Stockport, then in Cheshire. He never knew his father, and was removed from his mother, Mary, when he was eight, spending his youth in institutions. In his early teens he was adopted by the activist Arthur Walmsley. Tom was so influenced by Arthur’s ideology – “it seemed to make sense to me” – that he joined the Young Communist League, starting his interest in politics. There were many famous callers at the Walmsley house, among them Benny Rothman, the leader of the 1932 mass trespass on Kinder Scout, in the Peak District, and Sam Wild, commander of the British Battalion of the International Brigades in the Spanish civil war.

Tom signed up towards the end of of the second world war, and became a peacekeeper with the military police in Italy. In 1947 he was assigned to guard the German field marshal Albert Kesselring during his trial for war crimes; Kesselring was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to life imprisonment. When Tom returned home he finished an apprenticeship with Gardiners Engineering, in Peel Green, Salford, and married Doris. He took the Walmsley name and with Doris set up home in Peel Green.

Tom joined the Amalgamated Engineering Union, organised and led an apprentices strike, and was eventually appointed a national negotiator in London. Among his responsibilities was liaison with unions in the US, including the Teamsters union led by Jimmy Hoffa. Tom boasted of two things: first, that for some years he was denied entry into the US because of his union links and second, that he was invited to attend a royal garden party, but declined.

When Doris became ill, Tom had to return from London. He was fundamentally opposed to certain Conservative policies and was jailed in the early 1990s for refusing to pay the hated poll tax. Illness in his later years brought incapacity, and a stroke left him deaf and blind, but that never stopped Tom. He even tried to organise the carers who kept him in his home to fight the iniquitous terms under which they are employed.

Doris and their son, Paul, predeceased Tom; he is survived by two grandchildren, Anna and James.