TODAY friends, family and comrades bid a fond farewell to a giant of the Communication Workers Union and wider labour movement, Andy Kerr.

Tributes have poured in from across the British labour movement — and internationally, given the longtime CWU deputy general secretary for telecoms and financial services also served as president of UNI Global Union’s Information, Communications, Technology and Related Services division.

CWU president Karen Rose says the entire union will miss a working-class champion who was “always smiling,” passionate about representing members and who had time for everyone he encountered.

Rose remembers a committed socialist who was ahead of his time, launching a programme called Building Tomorrow Together designed to strengthen the union and train new generations of leaders — but with a particular focus on inclusivity.

“He was passionate about succession planning. I remember him organising a policy and strategy forum and saying, you can bring three people from each branch.

“But one’s got to be a woman and one’s got to be a young member. People were up in arms about it — we were at the time something like 70-75 per cent men, right? And you had branches saying well, we can’t find any women or young members to be delegates. Andy would say ‘OK, I’ll find them for you’ and would send them lists from the national membership records of all the women and young members in their branch.

“He was very determined when he thought it was the right thing to do.”

Even so, Kerr was a leader who worked hard to bring people with him, someone who made sure he consulted members and officers about what to do, and secured branches’ buy-in before determining policy, she says.

“He was a huge believer in the collective and collective action. So even though he was quite a big figure in the union, quite a powerful force, he never lost the understanding that you can only deliver as a team.

“He had no sense of hierarchy — he was so personable, he got on with people from every walk of life, he always found a way to find common ground with people. When he died the cleaners in the CWU offices were distraught — they remembered him working after hours, having time for everyone, and doing little bits to help like tying up the bin bag in his wastepaper basket himself so they wouldn’t have to.”

Rose recalls that he was president when she was elected to the executive, and took her round the building: “He knew everybody by name, he made everybody smile and laugh.”

“He knew everyone’s circumstances, about their families, even about their pets,” CWU official Graham Colk chips in with a smile.

“Even though he was a senior official with people working for him, you’d find him doing his own photocopying, running his own errands, like he was embarrassed by the idea anyone should do things for him,” Rose resumes. 

This affability didn’t stop Kerr from forthright argument over political differences, but “he’d never fall out with you. Once that was finished, it was done: he wasn’t somebody who held grudges.”

“He was a friend as much as a colleague,” says Colk, who says many on the executive came to see him as a kind of father figure, “though he’d have hated that!”

Both remember Kerr as a strategic trade unionist, someone who always thought several steps ahead and who would never enter a dispute without the potential settlements already in mind. “And he was absolutely frank about those settlements. If he was reporting to members or the executive, it was warts and all. These are the good points, but these are the negatives.”

But beyond his own union he was a committed Labour Party man, who served on the party’s national executive for 15 years.

“In Labour he was a battler for CWU issues, but not just for CWU issues. He was a fighter for left-wing policies.

“He was a socialist through and through, and one of the moving things he said in his farewell address to conference in April” (when he knew of his terminal diagnosis) was, ‘I’ve always been a socialist and I’ll die a socialist’.”

The CWU leadership would be leaving conference early to attend Kerr’s funeral, and they weren’t the only ones. Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan told the Morning Star he’d be heading up to Scotland for the funeral too — though Kerr had lived and worked in London, I was told the family felt his return to Scotland for burial was a homecoming.

Whelan described him as a “friend, a comrade for so long, who taught me so much. They don’t make them like him any more.”

A sentiment shared by international labour movement figures, with UNI Global Union general secretary Chris Hoffman praising a trade unionist whose “dedication to working people was matched only by his kindness.”

His colleagues sent their love to his wife Andrea, whom he met through the union, as well as his children Matt and Mandy and wider family.