Our late secretary, Jim Simpkin, was born in Liverpool, went to secondary school in Cornwall when his family moved there, and took his degree in Teesside.  He secured employment as a computer specialist at Parsons in Newcastle, where he joined the AUEW(TASS) branch – later MSF, Amicus and now the Unite TEEES branch.  He became a section representative and a member of the negotiating committee, and is described by branch secretary Bob Murdoch as “always there” and “an excellent trade unionist in the workplace”.

In the later 1990s, after Parsons was taken over by Siemens, Jim was made redundant, a victim of the active purge against union representatives.  At around this time he became more active in Newcastle Trades Council, though he was still union branch vice-chair and involved in authorising payments from the bank account.  For a period he worked for British Airways, and then became a volunteer for several years at the Newcastle & Gateshead TUC Centre Against Unemployment, associated with the Trades Council.  He was a skilled advice worker, taking on a number of individual cases regarding benefits.

Jim took over as Trades Council secretary in June 2003 when the previous secretary resigned.  Over the 14 years from 1990 to 2023, there had been 9 different secretaries elected, and in fact at times the Trades Council was without one.  By contrast, Jim held the role for just over 21 years – a really solid commitment.  Not long after taking over, he led a discussion on ‘Monitoring and surveillance at work’.  He was well ahead of his time on that.

Jim was also a delegate to:

• the Centre Against Unemployment Management Committee from 2000, and secretary of it by 2006 at the latest.
• the Tyne & Wear May Day Committee from 2005, and a long-time secretary of it.
• the Tyne & Wear County Association of Trades Union Councils from 2005, becoming vice-chair from 2016, if not earlier, and president from May 2022.
• The Northern Region TUC Council and Annual Conference for many years to the present.
• The Annual Conference of Trades Union Councils from 2005. His reports on the Conference were always very extensive.

For most of the time, while Jim was secretary, the Executive was composed only of himself, Alan Lubbock as treasurer and Martin Levy as president.  This put a lot of work on the three officers, including the occasions when they:

• decorated the new ceiling on the first floor of the building the Trades Council owned at 4 Cloth Market;
• cleaned off the aspergillus mould in the stair well, and painted it; and
• put the building up for sale.

There were also some difficult moments – in particular, over spurious legal proceedings brought against the Trades Council by one ex-delegate, which went to the County Court.

Jim rarely missed a meeting in his whole time as secretary, and assiduously produced agendas and minutes for the Full Council and Executive each month, as well as his Secretary’s Report and Annual Conference Report for the Trades Council’s Annual Report.  When he became secretary, there was a regular postal mailing of about 45 delegates, branch secretaries and other interested parties.  He often did not get round to claiming his printing and postage expenses, even when – starting with the Covid pandemic – only the Annual Report was mailed out.

It was while Jim was secretary that the Trades Council adopted its own stylised stationery and established its own web site and associated e-mail accounts.  Jim was fully involved in discussions around these, and produced some of the materials for the web site.

Jim could be relied on to turn up for events like rallies, street stalls and picket-lines, although latterly he complained that his knees prevented him from walking far.  He was a regular photographer until recently at the Tyne & Wear May Day Rally, and could be relied upon to guard the equipment at the Rally site before the march arrived, and to help with clean-up afterwards.

The Covid pandemic put an end to face-to-face Trades Council meetings for a period, and when it abated we found that the venues we had used before were no longer available.  So for a few years we met up bimonthly on Zoom, but over the past year we had shifted to hybrid in-person/Zoom meetings for the Full Council, and Jim was always there in person, until the last occasion, when he put in his apologies, on 4 September.  And that was the last we heard from him.

Jim was a dedicated trade unionist, and was well-known by delegates to Trades Councils Annual Conferences.  He had a strong sense of fairness at work and in the community, and knew that workers needed collective organisation and solidarity if they were to defend and extend their interests.  He would often bring to our attention issues about which he felt passionately, and argue his case strongly.

For us, Jim was a comrade, but also a thoroughly decent chap with a likeable disposition.  At a personal and organisational level, he will be sorely missed.  Newcastle Trades Council owes him an enormous debt of gratitude for all that he did.  He kept records of everything; and we now have a vast quantity of printed and electronic records from his flat, which will take much time to sort and archive.

In memory of Jim, the Trades Council has submitted a proposal to the Regional TUC Executive for the institution of an annual award for “innovative use of information technology in trades union campaigning activities, education and recruitment and retention of members.”  The application goes on to say that:

“The trade union movement needs to find new ways of reaching out to the many millions of unorganised workers, and is facing a demographic cliff-edge, with less than 1 in 20 union members being aged between 16 and 24, and over half of union reps being aged 50 and over.  It is a fact that young people rely increasingly on mobile phones for entertainment and information, in particular from 30-second reels on such platforms as TikTok. Far-right organisations have latched onto this, and their influence needs to be countered, quite apart from making the case for trades union membership.

“The shift to partial home working has already made difficulties for building trades unions in the workplace, and ways need to be found to overcome that.  In the not-so-distant future, workers and their unions will also face many challenges with the increasing application of artificial intelligence.  Unions need to find ways of embracing this new technology for their own purposes, in order to meet those challenges.”

Farewell, Jim.  Rest in power!