My colleague Ron Curran, who has died aged 94, was Scottish national officer of Nupe (the National Union of Public Employees, now part of Unison), when the Scottish Labour movement swung behind Nupe’s campaign for the national minimum wage in 1984. Ron was born in Wallsend, then in Northumberland, the son of John, a coal miner, and his wife, Winifred (nee Stott). He began work at 16, as a blacksmith at the Rising Sun Colliery, Wallsend; his family hailed from the Ayrshire coalfield, where his father had started out as a trapper boy, opening and closing the ventilation doors, at the age of nine. In the late 1960s, after 25 years at the colliery, Ron spent two years as a mature student at Newbattle Abbey College, an adult education institution in Dalkeith, Midlothian. Nupe was expanding, shaking things up, recruiting part-time female workers. Ron became an organiser, running the Newcastle office. There he crossed swords with local leaders of the GMWU (the General and Municipal Workers’ Union, now the GMB), Andy Cunningham and T Dan Smith, later imprisoned for corruption for their role in the Poulson affair. He “ripped through the north,” said his union colleague Tom Sawyer, impressing the general secretary, Alan Fisher, and becoming Scottish national officer in 1975, replaced in Newcastle by the up and coming Rodney Bickerstaffe. Life as a Geordie outsider was no picnic in Scottish trade union politics. Ron pressed on – recruiting members and restructuring the union. He served on the STUC general council, becoming president in 1987. He supported the miners during the 1984-85 strike. He ensured Nupe sponsored the Kinneil Colliery Band, continuing in Unison, and leading off demonstrations. He retired in 1989. For Ron, being a union official was not a job but a vocation, a mission to improve the lives and opportunities of working people and their families – working for the union was a privilege, to be exercised with diligence and integrity. He wrote: “The cause that I believe in is the fraternity of communities, where social awareness is bred and fostered, where honesty is a basic precept and integrity is a basic virtue. It is within this communal spirit that neighbourliness is an accepted responsibility without an expected reward, where the elderly are respected and the children cherished and where the value of worth is measured in people’s actions and not money.” In 2009 he had two books published: one on his time at the Rising Sun, Wallsend Best, and the other a biography of a Jarrow MP, Voices from the Past: In the Life and Times of Pete Curran. His passion was drawing and painting. He had exhibitions and taught in a local community centre. His wife, Doreen (nee Stoneman), was his rock. She died in 2019. He is survived by two of their three children, Susan and John, and five grandchildren, Barry, Mark, Ryan, Kynan and Danielle, the last of whom became a Labour MP.