The death of Bob Crow has deprived workers and their families of a working-class hero who stayed true to his socialist principles.

His family have lost a devoted partner, father and brother. Trade unionists and workers everywhere have lost a courageous champion who often struck fear into bullying managers and directors who knew that his own members would follow him over the barricades.

The railway and maritime industries have lost a passionate advocate of modern, safe and affordable transport systems run for the public good rather than private greed.

The labour movement and the political left have lost a fervent, committed and consistent force for progress and socialism.

The Morning Star mourns the passing of one of its staunchest supporters, who was unstinting in his assistance of every kind - and an avid daily reader who did not hesitate to inform the editor with constructive criticism when required.

The Communist Party which did so much to help Bob form his political outlook has also lost a reliable friend and ally who invariably championed its broad left initiatives such as the People's Charter.

Open and honest in his dealings across the left, he had no time for cold war anti-communism and its legacy in the international trade union movement, forging close links between his union and CGT railway workers in France and with the World Federation of Trade Unions.

Almost alone at the top of the trade union movement in Britain, he understood how and why the European Union is no friend of working people and their organisations. Again, his friends and allies in the No2EU - Yes to Workers' Rights coalition for May's European elections are going to miss his indefatigable campaigning.

Oppressed and exploited people around the world have lost a powerful voice for their cause, not least the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Palestine.

There's a saying that it's as important to have the right political enemies as the right political friends. That's why the anti-working class, anti-trade union mass media hated and feared Bob in equal measure.

It may be too much to hope that the big business propaganda sheets feel a pang of guilt today for their shameful demonisation of a trade union leader who did his job too well for them.

Some of the coverage in papers, such as the London Evening Standard, amounted to incitement to physical violence against him. Indeed, he was physically attacked by thugs at his home on one notorious occasion.

Yet Bob also combined his anti-racism and internationalism with a working-class patriotism which, in the footsteps of Lenin, took pride in his own country's working class and its fight against exploitation and oppression.

He stayed loyal to his local community and its football club, Millwall, despite the appetite of some of its fans for meaningless violence.

Former French leader General de Gaulle once remarked, with irony, that the graveyards are full of the irreplaceables. Few leaders are irreplaceable, in reality, but it is hard to imagine a trade union leader who would embody the principles of working-class solidarity and internationalism so faithfully as Bob Crow.

Few are more worthy of the eulogy composed by Russian novelist Nikolai Ostrovsky, "Man's dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once he must so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past: so live as to have no torturing regrets for years without purpose: so live that dying he can say - all my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world, the liberation of mankind."