Bill Speirs

Published on Wednesday 23 September 2009 21:10

Former leader of STUC and Scottish Labour chairman

Born: 8 March, 1952, in Dumbarton.

Died: 23 September, 2009, in Glasgow, aged 57.

BILL Speirs was a giant of the Scottish union movement, serving with the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) for 27 years, including eight as its general secretary until 2006. He was also a past chairman of the Scottish Labour Party, although he eschewed a promising career in Westminster or Holyrood to focus on the rights and conditions of workers, not only in Scotland but around the world.

A staunch internationalist throughout his career, he was as committed to a free Palestine, an apartheid-free South Africa or the rights of Colombian banana workers as he was to the saving of not only Scottish jobs but national industries such as whisky. As top man in the STUC from 1998-2006, he ensured the agenda of the unions was never ignored, indeed was never far from the centre of political, civic or cultural debate.

Speirs, who has died after suffering from an undisclosed illness for several years, found himself on the front line during several historic moments – from the miners' strike to the campaign for Scots to have their own government and parliament. At the height of Thatcherism, he was at the vanguard of the battle against the poll tax, which eventually spread south to England and Wales and helped bring down Margaret Thatcher.

William MacLeod Speirs was a "Son of the Rock", a Dumbartonian, born in the mid-19th-century baronial mansion Overtoun House, at the time a maternity hospital, looking down to the Clyde and Dumbarton Rock. He went to school in Paisley, in the historic John Neilston Institute, whose dome next to the observatory forms part of the famous skyline, before gaining a 1st-class degree in politics at Glasgow's University of Strathclyde.

After graduating, he worked as a lecturer in further education and communications studies at both Strathclyde and the Paisley College of Technology. To supplement his income, he ran his own ice-cream van in Paisley, a fact he loved to bring up in his later union days to give him extra "street cred" with the politicians and wealthy businessman he routinely had to deal with.

He joined the STUC, at the time based in Woodlands Terrace in Glasgow's West End, as a lowly 27-year-old assistant secretary in 1979, the year Mrs Thatcher arrived at 10 Downing Street and made her famous speech: "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony …."

In the early 1980s, Speirs was considered one of the "Loony Left" within the Labour Party, calling, along with his good friend, the then bushy-bearded solicitor Alistair Darling, for the nationalisation of all British banks.

While Speirs worked his way up through the congress, he saw its membership slide from more than a million to a figure closer to 600,000. He was elected deputy general secretary under Campbell Christie in 1988 and promoted to the top job when Mr Christie retired in August 1998, the year the STUC moved to its present offices at 333 Woodlands Road. "My first task will be to draw up the trade union agenda for a Scottish parliament and to secure the voice for trade unionists throughout Scotland in that parliament," he said at the time. "My aim is to ensure that the STUC remains a progressive and campaigning organisation fit to meet the challenges of the 21st century."

Personally, and as STUC chief, Speirs was at the forefront of the Make Poverty History campaign, notably leading demonstrations in Edinburgh in the run-up to the G8 summit in Gleneagles in July 2005. "The issue of international trade union rights is central to tackling world poverty," he told demonstrators. "What we demand for all workers is the right to freedom from forced labour, freedom from child labour, the right to non-discrimination in the workplace and the right to form and join a union and to bargain collectively."

As STUC general secretary, Speirs was called to give evidence to the UK parliament's Select Committee on Scottish Affairs in 2001 over the situation in Scotland's drinks and hospitality industry after a series of mergers and bonded warehouse closures. "The STUC and Scotch Whisky Association have worked close together for years in seeking to ensure that the industry continues not only to survive but develop as a significant contributor to employment and the Scottish economy," he told the committee. He also criticised "Rice-Krispy-type consultation," when the first that trade unions learn of such things as mergers or closures is when they pick up their newspaper at breakfast.

Speirs had intended to remain STUC general secretary for only five years, but it was 2006 before he announced he was stepping down, citing stress. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters in 2007 by Glasgow Caledonian University, where he had maintained strong links with the university's Trade Union Research Unit.

One of his last quoted comments came in the Guardian in September 2006, when he was asked whether John Reid, then a contender for the Labour leadership, was Tony Blair's "attack dog". Speirs replied: "He's not a thug, because if he was, he would long ago have had his nose smashed in."

His successor as STUC general secretary, the current incumbent, Grahame Smith, said yesterday: "Bill's was a life committed to the cause of working people and to the creation of a better society in Scotland, Britain and across the world. His loss will be felt throughout Scotland and beyond."

Bill Speirs is survived by his first wife, Lynda, his second wife, Pat (Stewart), and a son and daughter, David and Jacqueline, from the first marriage.