Obituary: Campbell Christie, passionate Home Ruler who headed the STUC during some of its toughest years

CAMPBELL Christie was a member of that rarest of breeds in Scottish public life – the political figure who can cross party boundaries and campaigns and still remain respected by all.

He was best known as the trade unionist who presided over the Scottish Trades Union Congress during some of its most difficult years: first through the latter days of Thatcherism and then Tony Blair’s creation of New Labour and the scrapping of Clause IV.

But there was much, much more to him than that.

Christie was a passionate Home Ruler who did more than anyone else to bring the disparate union movement behind the ground-breaking Scottish Constitutional Convention in the late 1980s.

He also was a devotee of Falkirk Football Club, heading the board of the Bairns when they enjoyed a run in the Premier League and a Scottish Cup Final.

Perhaps most significant of all, though, was his commitment to Scottish public life in general, a devotion which was seen as late as this year when, at the age of 74, he produced the report which bears his name on the more efficient delivery of public services.

Christie was born in Carsluith in Dumfries and Galloway, one of six brothers. When he was just seven, his father died suddenly of a burst duodenal ulcer at the age of just 44.

At this time, the family were living in a small cottage near Kirkcudbright. There was no running water and the nearest hospital was 50 miles away. He died before medical help arrived.

Christie was left with his mother, Johnina, and his five brothers, the youngest just two years old and the eldest 18 but with no clear means of financial support.

Christie’s father had worked as a blaster but his death was not considered then, in 1944, to be an industrial accident so there was no compensation, no pension and no financial assistance for the family he left behind.

The family picked up work which resulted in their move to Glasgow when Christie was 12. His two older brothers had secured apprenticeships in the city and that kept the family going.

Matters improved when Christie’s mother got a secure job at the canteen at nearby C&A and Christie was able to stay on at school and take his highers.

When he left school to go to London to join the civil service, Christie’s mother gave him three envelopes: one contained money for his first week’s accommodation in the capital, one had enough inside for his travel expenses and the third was to cover his membership of a trade union.

“She wanted us all to be secure,” Christie said of his mother earlier this year. “She may not have understood the politics but she understood the consequences of not having protection and rights.”

After his National Service in 1958, Christie returned to the civil service but requested a transfer to Scotland where he worked for the National Assistance Board as an executive officer.

It was then, working on a basic form of means testing, that he realised the true extent of poverty in parts of Scotland and it was then that his passion for a more equal world really took hold.

Becoming more active as a trade unionist, one of Christie’s first successes was in persuading senior civil service mandarins to locate more jobs in Scotland and the north of England. The most prominent victory was the transfer of the Post Office Savings Bank from Knightsbridge to Cowglen in Glasgow with 4,000 to 5,000 jobs.

Christie met his wife Betty around this time – she also worked for the civil service – and they were married in 1962. Next year would have been their golden wedding anniversary.

Four years after he was married, Christie joined the Labour Party to protest about rent increases in the council houses being built in the new towns which were springing up all over central Scotland.

In 1972, the transition to full-time trade unionist was completed when Christie became an official of the National Union of Civil and Public Servants.

But this took him back to London and although further promotion followed to the position of deputy general secretary, his eye – and his heart – remained in Scotland.

Throughout the rest of the 1970s and early 1980s, Christie became more and more involved in the TUC and many of his colleagues expected him to reach the top of the UK organisation before too long.

But the call of Scotland was too strong and Christie returned to take over as general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress in 1986. This was a time of deep political divisions with strong union leaders on one side and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government on the other.

This was when his skills as a negotiator, a persuader and a deal-maker came to the fore. He kept the STUC relevant and respected while some individual unions were finding it hard to do so.

Christie led the STUC for 12 years, aware that the union movement had to take a central part in the constitutional arguments raging at the time in Scotland.

He represented the STUC on the Scottish Constitutional Convention from its inception in 1989, committed to the ideal that Scotland should have greater control over its own destiny – although he apparently remained unconvinced by full independence right to the end.

When he retired from active, frontline union politics in 1998, Christie was able to indulge the other main passion in his life: Falkirk Football Club.

He was chairman of the club through most of the 2000s, stepping down after the Bairns’ 1-0 loss to Rangers in the Scottish Cup Final that year.

But he could never turn down on offer to do something he felt was important for Scottish public life, which is why he came out of retirement at the age of 73 to head the Commission on the Future of Public Services – known more popularly as the Christie Commission.

In June this year, Christie delivered his report which, ministers hope, will provide the blueprint for public services in Scotland which are solid and efficient but also caring and compassionate.

If that happens, there could be no more fitting tribute to a man who always tried to stand up for the poor and the voiceless but also for the best in public service as well.

Hamish MacDonnell