Gerry Kelly, who has died of cancer aged 69, had a life that was bookended by the two things he was most proud of: his role in the building workers’ strike of 1972 and a teaching career, which began late in life.
In the early 1970s building workers were poorly paid and working conditions were grim. There hadn’t been a strike in the industry for nearly 50 years. Gerry started work in 1971 on the Woodgate Valley site in Birmingham. Together with other activists, he set about recruiting the workers into the newly formed Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians (Ucatt) trade union. By February 1972 the workers had secured a staggering 50% pay increase, the abolition of the notorious “lump” payment system and improved working conditions. Along the way, Gerry had been sacked and reinstated twice.
He was also active in the subsequent national strike, which lasted three months and secured a 25% pay increase. A vicious backlash followed. Gerry and four other Birmingham Ucatt members were put on trial for conspiracy but later acquitted. However, he was blacklisted and never worked in the industry again.
Gerry then went to university, first at Nottingham, later transferring to North London Polytechnic. After graduation he worked, among other things, as an advice worker for the Irish community in north London and as a guard on the London Underground. Clerking for solicitor’s firms was a mainstay and a legal career seemed to beckon – but teaching was his calling. He completed a PGCE at the Institute of Education, and started work at Highams Park school in Waltham Forest, north-east London, in 2001, where he taught English until he retired in 2017.
He was an active member of the National Union of Teachers and, later, the National Education Union, his early Ucatt activism and legal experience making him an able advocate for his colleagues. There was also, guitar in hand, his famed rendition of Elvis Presley’s Blue Christmas at the school’s Christmas assembly.
Songwriting was another late-flowering accomplishment, and he was very proud that one of his songs featured on the soundtrack of the documentary Miners Shot Down (2014), a powerful condemnation of the Marikana massacre in South Africa in 2012.
He was born in Roscommon in Ireland to Mary (nee Tully), a nurse, and Tom, a tailor, before his family settled in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. Gerry attended George Dixon grammar school but left, aged 16, and started building work. He was intensely proud of being Irish and was also a loyal Birmingham City fan – the latter, perhaps, being one of the few sources of disappointment in his life.
I first met Gerry nearly 40 years ago when we both lived on the same council estate in Islington, north London, and we soon became friends. Open and gregarious, he had a true gift for friendship. He is survived by his partner, Susan O’Shea, his son, Brendan, from a previous relationship, with Chlöe Watkins, and his siblings, Ann, Cathy, Maggie and Tommy.
