Jack Dromey, who has died suddenly aged 73, was one of the leading trade unionists of his generation and a Labour politician. He was elected MP for Birmingham Erdington in 2010 and sat on his party’s frontbench for all but a few months of his parliamentary career. His working life was devoted to the interests of union members and later to those of the people he represented in the House of Commons.
A dynamic and energetic man, he constantly sought a way forward in pursuit of whichever cause he was seeking to advance, yet he always tried to build a coalition of opinion in order to do so. In consequence, he was both immensely successful in his trade union and political campaigns and simultaneously won widespread respect, even from those who did not share his political opinions.
He spent 25 years as an official in the Transport and General Workers’ Union (later Unite) and a further seven years in the elected post of deputy general secretary. Twice he stood for the top post in the union, in 1995 and 2003.
He was the elected Labour party treasurer from 2004, a post he held until he entered parliament. This brought him into conflict with Tony Blair in 2006, when it was disclosed that, without informing Dromey, the prime minister had accepted £3.5m in commercial loans on behalf of the party from three individuals who were subsequently nominated for peerages.
Dromey was married to Harriet Harman, the longest serving female MP – and mother of the house – and took immense personal pride in her political career as a former cabinet minister and deputy leader of the Labour party, never hesitating to acknowledge the strength he drew from their marriage. It was his domestic support that enabled her career – he called her “the outstanding parliamentary feminist of her generation” – and he would dismiss any suggestion of conflicting loyalties between their personal and professional lives as “sexist claptrap”.
Dromey first came to national public attention in 1976, then a bearded, young radical secretary of the Brent Trades Council, who represented the workforce, mostly Asian women, employed by the Grunwick print works in Dollis Hill, north-west London, who engaged in a two-year strike for union recognition.
Born in Brent, Jack was the son of Irish parents who came to London from Cork and Tipperary in search of work. His father, Jimmy, was a labourer who had become a train driver, and his mother was a cleaner; their experience helped radicalise their bright son, who passed the 11-plus and travelled through London to attend what was then the Cardinal Vaughan grammar school in Holland Park.
After leaving school and studying law for two years, he worked in a print shop. In the early 1970s he helped found the Brent Law Centre, where he first met Harman, when she worked there as a solicitor; she would become the legal adviser to the Grunwick strikers. For 10 years he was a member of the executive committee of the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty), where Harman was the legal officer from 1978 to 1982, the year the couple married and she entered parliament in the Peckham byelection.
Despite the gulf between their social backgrounds – Harman’s parents were a doctor and a lawyer and she a former pupil of St Paul’s girls’ school – their marriage was “blissfully happy” according to friends’ accounts. They were dubbed “Mr and Mrs Moderniser” when Blair took office and Harman was first appointed to the cabinet. Dromey, always a funny man with a sharp sense of humour, would sometimes dub himself “Mr Harriet Harman, nee Dromey”.
As a young activist he was a Marxist – although “more of the Groucho tendency” he would later joke – was a member of the now defunct socialist group Solidarity, and had been involved in the occupation of the Centre Point tower block in a 1973 protest against homelessness in central London. He learned the importance of pragmatism but was true to his personal beliefs. “I was born on the left and I will die on the left,” he said.
He became a district officer for the TGWU in 1978 and the national officer for public service workers in 1984. He first ran for the post of deputy general secretary in 1991, and although then unsuccessful he had by this time established himself as a highly effective organiser and someone with both vision and drive. “He was head and shoulders above any other union officer I had ever come across in terms of his strategic approach,” said his former Unite colleague Chris Kaufman. He represented defence industry workers for a decade, which gave him an understanding of the patriotism that exists in the British workforce and which, in turn, informed his skilful political campaigning. In 2003, he secured national publicity by offering honorary union membership to Prince Charles.
Dromey first tried for a seat at Westminster in advance of the 1997 general election, but failed to make the shortlist for Pontefract and Castleford. He had also hoped to contest a seat had there been a general election in 2007, as was anticipated when Gordon Brown took over as Labour leader and prime minister. It was claimed two years later, however, that a £1m TGWU donation to Labour party funds had been part of a deal to secure a safe seat for Dromey in the event of an election. He won selection for Birmingham Erdington in February 2010, when the sitting Labour MP Siôn Simon stood down shortly before the general election in May.
The first of the new intake of MPs to make a maiden speech in the 2010 parliament, he spoke of the importance of industrial activism, which he called “that necessary partnership between industry and good government”. He was always heard with respect by the Commons because of his industrial experience and because he spoke with an understanding of what he called “the real world and the real economy”.
When Ed Miliband became Labour leader in September 2010, he appointed Dromey shadow minister for housing. In 2013 Dromey was switched to the home affairs team with responsibility for the police, a post he retained under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn until 2016. He resigned from the frontbench that year, having supported Owen Smith’s challenge to the leader, but was subsequently reappointed by Corbyn as spokesman on labour until 2018 and on pensions until 2021. He was a member of the select committee on business, innovation and skills in 2010 and on regulatory reform from 2010 to 2015.
Keir Starmer made him shadow paymaster general in the Cabinet Office team early last year and only in December gave him additional responsibility to speak on immigration issues, which he did for the first time on the day before his death, in a parliamentary debate on the problems of the Afghan immigrants to the UK.
He is survived by Harriet and by their children, Harry, Joe and Amy.
Jack (John Eugene Joseph) Dromey, trade unionist and politician, born 29 September 1948; died 7 January 2022
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