MICK CONNOLLY’S early life was not calm. He was one of five children (four
sons, one daughter) to mother Ellen and father Danny — a Communist Party
member.
During the tail-end of the Blitz in 1941, Ellen moved her children to the
relative safety of Swindon, where Mick was born in July of that year.
Returning soon to London, Ellen would again move the children to safety, this
time to Lancashire, where they saw out the war.
Danny became a university lecturer of politics and economics while Ronnie
became a Transport and General Workers Union (T&G) official, and Terry
attended Hull University on a T&G bursary.
Patsy however was evacuated to Wales with their nan, where sadly she was killed
in a road traffic accident in 1944 aged just 4.
After the war the family would return to their native Wapping.
Mick (pictured) attended Wapping’s St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Primary
School — now demolished and redeveloped — after which he followed his father
and brothers into employment in the London docks and joined the Communist
Party.
Political education started in the home and continued at work and Mick was
quickly elected as a T&G shop steward to defend the interests of his
co-workers. During this time he was a contemporary of well-known communist dock
and river workers such as Jack Dash and Harry Watson.
Mick married Paula in 1962 and they had two sons, Sean and Mark. The family
grew, and Mick’s love of his grandchildren was well known in the Southern and
Eastern Region TUC (Sertuc) office. Sean and Tricia had Chloe and Sam, and Mark
and Tania had Thomas, Joe and Zak.
While a dock worker he benefitted from the structured support for working-class
activists (that hardly exists now) to further their education, going to the
London School of Economics and graduating in 1966 with a politics and economics
degree.
He was then a T&G full-time officer, based in the union’s Stratford
district office and working and organising in east London.
The Stratford office became a hub of organising and political mobilisation as
Mick was joined by a number of key young left-wing officials, many of whom went
on to hold senior office in our movement.
One of these, Barry Camfield, who was later Unite assistant general secretary
and is now with the Australian Nurses & Midwives union, said on learning of
Mick’s death: “I was 24 when I met Mick and he was head and shoulders above
everyone. Confident, strong, principled and so supportive. I thought he would
live forever. Very sad. A big part of my life has gone, he was a rock, a mate,
a comrade. Makes you more determined to fight for union freedom and socialism.”
Mick was later appointed by Ken Livingstone, leader of the Greater London
Council (GLC) as director of the Greater London trade union resource unit
(GLTURU).
The unit’s work was wide-ranging and cemented Mick’s reputation as a leader in
anti-racist campaigning. While at GLTURU Mick also commissioned work on
London’s manufacturing base, questioning the over-reliance on defence industries
and the arms trade.
Mick was a great internationalist. He had an enduring affinity with the Spanish
republic and unions, particularly the Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO) in Catalunya.
He was quick to draw the lessons for London from the experience of economic
regeneration enjoyed by Barcelona when the city won the right to stage the 1992
Olympic Games.
Mick of course lost his job when Thatcher abolished the GLC in 1986 and he
returned to the role of lay activist. He eventually became vice chair of
T&G region 1 (London, South-East & East Anglia) regional committee, one
of the key left regions in the union.
London taxi driver, T&G executive council and TUC general council member
Peter Hagger, who died too young in 1995, was a close personal and political
friend.
During the miners’ strike the T&G established a special unit in the region
1 office staffed by Mick and Peter to track the movement of coal across London
and the south-east. It mobilised trade unionists to try to stop the coal
getting to power stations. Both Mick and Peter’s powers of persuasion and
motivation were legendary.
Barry Camfield recalls a visit to South Africa with Mick in 1989, at the
invitation of the South African T&G, a couple of months before Nelson
Mandela was released from prison.
They went to a bus depot with South African T&G president Vivian Zungo, who
worked at the depot, and union general secretary Jane Barrett.
Vivian and Jane were called inside to deal with a major dispute, leaving Mick
and Barry in the car outside. The clouds formed and it began to rain. Mick’s
comment on this turn of events: “I don’t know about you, but I didn’t need to
fly 6,000 miles to sit in the pissing rain outside a bus garage during a
strike. I could have done this anywhere in London.”
In 1993 Mick was appointed Sertuc regional secretary, a post he held until his
retirement in 2006. He made sure that Sertuc led the TUC’s anti-racism campaigning and was
instrumental in gathering a popular front of anti-racism organisations under
the banner “Unite Against Racism,” following the election of the first ever BNP
councillor.
Mick organised the TUC’s Unite Against Racism march where over 40,000 people
marched through Tower Hamlets in March 1994. Campaigning continued and the BNP
was defeated in May.
In 1997 Sertuc put on an organising conference and Mick invited as keynote
speaker the then US Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern.
He was ahead of the game as usual and 350 delegates heard the call to build our
unions by recognising the difference between organising and recruitment.
Working with mayor Ken Livingstone, Mick again showed his international
credentials by mobilising the unions to support and engage with the European
Social Forum held in London in 2004.
Mick strode the Sertuc stage like a colossus. Full-time permanent TUC regional
secretaries were a new-ish phenomenon and Mick created and coalesced Sertuc as
the TUC’s leading progressive region — always with the breadth of working-class
interests at its centre. That meant anti-racism and women’s equality was, and
is, at its heart.
CWU general secretary Billy Hayes described Sertuc as “the TUC’s broad left.”
Mick liked that.
Written by Megan Dobney (SERTUC) and Adrian Weir (UNITE)
