Newcastle Red

Terry Rodgers

From the 1960s to the 1980s the draughtsmen at CA Parsons, Newcastle, were the byword for confident workers' organisation. They won four weeks paid holiday by the late 1960s. They established 100 percent trade unionism in the office by 1970. They successfully resisted three major management attempts at largescale redundancy. Their financial solidarity with other workers in struggle was legendary. They supported political campaigns against nuclear power and the apartheid regime in South Africa, and mobilised against the fascists and for abortion rights. At the centre of that organisation was Terry Rodgers who died suddenly on 9 May sadly at the start of his campaign as Socialist Alliance candidate for the Tyne Bridge constituency.

Terry Rodgers was one of the best known rank and file trade union activists in the north east of England. He was noted for his modesty, the clarity of his thought and his rectitude. The majority of the 200 people who turned up for his funeral were work and trade union colleagues from his lifetime of organisation and activity for the draughtsmen's union on the Tyne. But Terry was much more than a trade unionist. He was a revolutionary socialist who never wavered in the pursuit of helping to bring about a democratic, egalitarian society.

Born in the 1920s just after the General Strike, he was reared in the Scotswood district of Newcastle not far from the massive Vickers Armstrong engineering factory where he was to take up his first job as an apprentice at the beginning of the Second World War. At 18 he went off for national service in the army. Sent to India, he witnessed the terrible sectarian violence which marked the coming of independence. He looked on this period as a great education in the evils of imperialism.

In the 1950s Terry returned to engineering but worked part time for his HNC. Success took him into the drawing office at a time of great change. Traditionally draughtsmen had seen themselves as a group apart, turning up to work in a collar and tie and enjoying staff conditions. In a time of economic boom such attitudes were a handicap. Companies were increasing capacity, introducing new technology and changing work organisation. Large drawing offices and deskilling of labour lowered status and wage relativities. Work was unionised but there was low participation, and the union was often far too close to management, making militant action difficult.

A new approach was called for. A new layer of activists emerged of which Terry was one. His anti-elitist democratic rank and file consciousness fitted the situation perfectly. With other activists he organised a wages campaign. Confidence was built with a successful one-day strike. He said later he had learnt the value of even small struggles in building confidence.

He moved to CA Parsons in the late 1950s and soon became chairman of the office committee. Success over 25 years was built on firm foundations and with great imagination. Continuous involvement of the membership in all decisions was a golden rule. A First Week's Rise Fund was established to finance further actions and solidarity with other struggles. Weekly deductions were made to a Redundancy Fund which paid out £2,000 per worker to those affected. The Working Without Enthusiasm tactic was initiated, of which a manager said, 'Mr Rodgers, I have never seen so much enthusiasm for working without enthusiasm.' Things were done with style. A brass band employed to accompany a return to work, an 'in office' concert by Alex Glasgow perched on a drawing cabinet, a bonfire of redundancy notices in view of management.

Terry had a disarming modesty. He did not like public speaking but his old trade union comrades speak of his tremendous mastery of an argument with management, union officials and conservative workers. His success as a rank and file leader was founded on strong will and determination, and his political ideas informed all he did.

In the 1950s he had been active in the Labour Party, where he met Doreen, his wife and companion of 50 years. He campaigned for CND and against Gaitskell's attempt to get rid of Clause Four. By the early 1960s he had concluded that the Labour Party was not a vehicle for the achievement of socialism, but its greatest obstacle. During that time he became involved with the New Left with another fine socialist engineer, the late Jimmy Murray, and the folk singer Alex Glasgow. Like Murray he was drawn to the ideas of the then tiny International Socialists (IS). In 1961 he was a cornerstone of the first Newcastle branch, a position he occupied right up to his death.

He took his political ideas into work, quietly arguing his position, building one of the first IS (SWP) workplace groups. They met on the premises to discuss Marx and Trotsky, thinly disguised as the Parsons Literary Society! They openly sold up to 150 copies of Socialist Worker a week in a workforce of 8,000. During the three national miners' strikes Parsons workers were in the forefront of support work. During the 1984 miners' strike, and near to retirement, he and Doreen were at Newcastle's Monument every Saturday, not leaving till their tins were full of donations.

After retirement in 1987 the pace hardly slackened. Terry was a poll tax refusenik, appearing in court with a foot and a half of documents to challenge the Labour council's levying of the Tory tax. Through the 1990s he was a driving force in the pensioners' campaign, latterly to restore the link with wages without means testing. His last campaign was for the Socialist Alliance. In the short time he had available he made a great impression. Much to his delight he 'won' a debate in a high school. He impressed everyone with his good humoured enthusiasm. Fighting to the last, he will be remembered for his clarity, his optimism and friendship.