It is with great sadness that the PFLCPSA notes the death of John Macreadie, who passed away just before Christmas. Sadness because while John had happily retired to France he never got his three-score years and ten, dying from a return of a brain tumour at the age of 64. While it may not have been quite the end of an era it does mark the departure of one of the last big guns of the old, fractious left in CPSA.

We are disappointed that the PCS website has failed to even give a nod to his passing, despite a short eulogy from Janice published in a national newspaper.

John Macreadie had been a leading member of the old Militant Tendency in CPSA and a senior full-time officer in that union and its successor, PCS for many years. He won the CPSA general secretary race in 1986 only to see the result challenged by an unholy alliance between the Commissars and the right-wing Moderate faction and then lose on the re-run to John Ellis.

John joined Mendicant when he was in the Labour Party. He left Labour when most of them broke away during the Kinnock purge, ending up in the Scottish Socialist Party which split over the Sheridan scandal and has now collapsed. But for virtually all his working life he was an activist in CPSA and PCS.

For some he was an incompetent fool with a "negative-Afro" haircut, to others a saint who with Terry Adams formed a dynamic duo that steered the Broad Left (later Left Unity) onwards and upwards. But for us he was simply "John McVicar", the "other Scottish gangster" who neither dyed his hair nor his pubes and was vertically challenged as we say in the PC world that PFL has itself challenged throughout its long existence.

John's relationship with the PFL goes back to the very beginning in 1978. Two of our founders, Colonel Islam and Kevin Brandstatter (who didn't want to be associated with a "movement name" because he stood for president on the anarchist ticket every year and wanted to be "known"), were CPSA branch secretaries in two Research Councils that came under Macreadie's wing.

John speaking in 1978 - note the CPSA tie pin

When the PFL took off, John came under pressure from some Broad Left biggies to shut us down. Most notably from "comrades" who later fell by the wayside like Kevin Roddy, who left the Mendicant to pursue his civil service career and retired early on a hefty pension or Steven Corbishley, a firebrand Trot from what has now become the "Independent Left", who buggered off to Australia and sold out to become a bourgeois solicitor.

John resisted this because:

•  there was nothing he could do about it

•  he had a sense of humour

And humour is always in short supply. All Macreadie would say to us was keep focused on the employer and don't take satire too seriously.

At Conference 2002 we published this photo-cartoon:

which even Islam though was near the knuckle! But the public loved it and even John and Marek said they were amused. Though the captions were obviously fictional, the pic demonstrates real exchange between John and Mark in the presence of Judas and Barrabas. Marek actually pointed out the following day that at least he didn't dye his hair like Barrabas - something that was apparent to everyone but had escaped Judas for years.

He never ignored any dispute that had national implications. He was a good negotiator and if the members were ready to fight he always made sure that their disputes were officially supported.

John was a cultured man and was widely read. He was an avid opera fan like his friend Terry Adams, and his conversation went far beyond the union, Trotsky and Stalin, golf and football.

He sometimes gave us stories. Ah yes, only when it suited him some will say. But isn't that always the case? The motive of all our sources is either political or personal or a bit of both. We take info from wherever it comes, verify it as far as we can, and if it is in the public interest it gets published in our august columns. He once gave us a fiver at Conference, as a contribution to our print costs. He always stopped by at the PFL table in the bar to have a chat when he was still working and he continued during his retirement on the occasions when he popped back to see the old guard at Conference. He didn't come this year though he did send best wishes to Islam via Janice. We all assumed he was now getting used to easy street in his French villa and gradually letting the past go. None of us thought we would never see him again.

We salute a true soldier of the working class movement. RIP McVICAR!

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