I AM sat writing this on Tuesday, May 7, 2024: 100 years to the day after my biggest inspiration, mentor, colleague and friend was born.
 
I first met Bill Ronksley when he was Aslef District 4 secretary. I was a freight guard at Doncaster Carr Loco and a National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) rep and activist and couldn’t believe someone of his stature had the time and inclination to spend time talking, advising, and educating a scruffy young kid like me.
 
My own NUR officer couldn’t stand me and made that quite clear  — mind you I did have long hair down my back, rode a loud motorbike, wore raggy oily jeans and had grease under my fingernails, so it was Ronksley who was the exception, not my NUR officer.
 
Eventually, I became a train driver and Aslef member. Ronksley, over the years, gave me the education that would guide me for the rest of my life. Back in the 1980s, we spent many an hour discussing politics and world events, visiting picket lines, rallies, and meetings.
 
It was Ronksley who encouraged me to get involved in the local trades council. We supported many workers in struggle, the stand-out ones being the miners’ strike and the ambulance workers’ strike.
 
On the international front, Ronksley gave me an introduction to a French rail worker (an assistant station manager) who fought with the French resistance against the Nazis, and International Brigaders who fought fascism in Spain — heroes every one of them, but also they made me aware of the horrors of war and the dehumanisation that it breeds.
 
This was not a complete surprise to me as my great uncle John had been a prisoner of war in Japan and as a child, I remembered his night terrors when he visited us.

In 1988 I toured the USSR with Ronksley and we visited locations on the Black Sea including locations that have been subject to Ukrainian drone strikes in the current conflict.
 
All around the USSR, we encountered veterans of WWII proudly wearing medals earned fighting the Nazis. The USSR lost around 27 million people during the war, including 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths. The largest portion of military dead were 5.7 million ethnic Russians, followed by 1.3 million ethnic Ukrainians.
 
Ronksley often spoke about the plight of the Palestinians and their treatment by the Israeli state and its military occupation.
 
While Ronksley had a long and full life and made a difference in the world to many people from many generations I am comforted that he can’t see the billions being spent on keeping war, death and destruction going by supplying Israel and Ukraine with the evil weapons of death and destruction, while nothing is being spent on trying to end the death and destruction, nothing is being spent on building peace. Peace and love, Bill.