My father, Bob Quick, who has died aged 68, was a senior trade union official and passionate defender of the NHS. While training as a nurse as a teenager, he made an early mark by leading a Confederation of Health Service Employees union campaign in support of a pay rise for nurses in 1974, after which he left nursing to become Cohse’s youngest full-time regional official at the age of 19. He spent 24 years as a paid officer with Cohse, involved in all aspects of industrial relations – from representing members in grievance procedures, misconduct hearings, pay negotiations and industrial disputes to building campaigns and organising and training shop stewards. Continuing with Cohse after its merger with two other public sector unions to form Unison, he was an internationalist to the core, and later led trade union education projects in Bulgaria, Romania and South Africa. Also involved in solidarity work in Cuba, he was awarded a national medal in that country for helping to deliver medical aid during the US blockade.
Bob was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, to a Liverpudlian father, Jim, and an Irish mother, Teresa (nee Geary), both of whom were nurses. Raised in Chester, where he went to Grange secondary modern school in Ellesmere Port and then Upton-by-Chester high school, he followed in his parents’ footsteps, training as a nurse at 16. His father had been a leading activist in Cohse since its inception in 1946, so it was natural that Bob soon became involved with the union too. In the early 80s he also served as a Labour councillor in Liverpool, spending time as chair of its library and arts committee. He left Unison in 1999 to become a UK project manager for the Community Mental Health Managers Association and then, in 2000, a workplace learning consultant at Derby College. In 2002 he joined West Yorkshire health authority as a learning development manager before moving in 2003 to be deputy head for Yorkshire and Humber at the NHS University, which trained NHS staff. When the NHS University was closed in 2005, he crossed the shop floor to take on managerial roles with NHS trusts in Barnsley (as deputy director of HR, 2005-09) and Rotherham (associate director of HR, 2009-13), and then became an HR consultant with the Bart’s trust in London. Eventually, however, his love of the trade union movement drew him back in 2014 to be national officer for the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association, and in 2021 to be London regional officer for the Society of Radiographers. Working mainly from home in those two jobs, he was able in 2016 to move to the village of Cromford in the Peak District of Derbyshire, saying: “If I can’t live near to the Med or by the sea, I shall have views of hills and castles.” He retired in 2022. Bob’s first two marriages, to Pauline and Gayle, both ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, Helen, whom he married in 2010, as well as two daughters, Alice and me, from his first marriage, two children, Joe and Abigayle, from his second, and two stepchildren, Emma and Paul, from Helen’s previous marriage, and eight grandchildren.