Ken Gill

The LRD executive committee and staff were saddened to learn of the death on 23 May of former colleague Ken Gill.

Ken was a member of the LRD executive committee from 1969 to 1974 in the period leading up to his election as general secretary of AUEW (TASS), the white collar union in engineering. This was a time of major growth for the LRD with the number of affiliated organisations rising from 1,206 to 1,612 and three additional research staff being appointed. Ken pushed hard to ensure that LRD took full advantage of the new opportunities provided by the expansion of the union movement, and met the challenges presented by the Tory government of the time.

LRD continued to work closely with him after he left the executive, and the LRD undertook a number of studies for AUEW (TASS), covering deindustrialisation, among other topics.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber described Ken as “a big figure in the trade union movement” and we are pleased he played a role in the history of the LRD.