[jaysay]

Originally Posted by garinda

Mike Perkins - Trade unionist, anti-apartheid campaigner.

Born 9th April 1940 Oswaldtwistle. Died London 1987.
Educated Accrington Grammar School.
Former President of the Society of Civil & Public Servants.
Member of the International Trade Union Committee for Peace and Disarmament, also sat on the National Council of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
Appeared many times on television in the seventies/eighties, speaking at the TUC conference.
Lifelong Communist.
Lived Barbican London.
Memorial speakers Peter Parker, President SCPS, & Abdul Minty, Honorary Secretary, Anti-Apartheid Movement.
Music by the choir of the ANC.
Donations to the Morning Star.

Communist biographies -
Mike Perkins
Long-standing member of the Communist Party, Mike Perkins was elected to his union branch committee at the age of 30, he served first the customs and excise officers' union and then the Society of Civil and Public Servants, which it joined with.
He was sometime President and also Vice-President of the SCPS, which is now part of PCS.
Perkins died of a heart attack in June 1987, at the relatively young age of 47.
Source: Morning Star June 24th 1987
Perkins Mike

There is also a prize awarded in his name.
In 1990 Claire Ward won the South East TUC Mike Perkins Memorial Award for Young Trade Unionists. She went on to become MP for Watford.

(Michael/Mike Perkins was the son of George and Marjorie Perkins, and brother of Oswaldtwistle butcher Tony Perkins. He was also the nephew of well known local comic Bernard Perkins.)

I remember the wake was in the Stop and Rest, I was actually there, didn't know Mike at all but know Tony very well, he was the butcher my parents used and was and I think still is a regular at the Stop