Graham Stevenson

Graham Stevenson (28 October 1950 – 1 May 2020) was a British communist, trade union leader, and writer who specialised in British socialist and labour activist biographies. He was one of the most influential trade union leaders in Britain, becoming the national secretary of the TGWU in 1999. As a founder and later president in 2009 of the European Transport Union Federation, he helped organise strikes across European docks in 2003, forcing the European Union to stall privatisation plans. Between 2007 and 2008, Stevenson played a key part in the negotiations that formed Unite the Union, the largest trade union in the United Kingdom. He also served on the Executive and Political Committee of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), and served as the treasurer of the Marx Memorial Library from 2013 to 2019.

He is the biographer of Jessie Eden, among many other British communist icons.

Early life Graham Stevenson was born on 28 October 1950 in the mining village of Keresley near Coventry, England. Born into a working class family, his mother worked as a textile worker and his father was an engineer and a lifelong trade unionist who worked with the Amalgamated Engineering Union. Many months after the attempted occupation, Stevenson and his colleagues were arrested by the police and charged with 'conspiracy to trespass', with potentially unlimited penalties. where he successfully re-unionised bus services and expanded the union's activities into the wider community. he helped organise dock worker strikes across Europe in January 2003, forcing the European Union to abandon the commission's Directive to seek privatisation. receiving just under 6,000 votes. He also had a daily column in the Morning Star and redeveloped the CPB's Communist Party History Group.

Death Stevenson died of cancer on 1 May 2020 at the age of 69.

ITF President Paddy Crumlin praised Stevenson's legacy:"He was a trade unionist to his bones and lived a life of campaigning, organising and mass mobilisation in the defence of social and community values, including the fight against privatisation, industrial deregulation and discrimination in any form, but particularly on the basis of gender, age and ethnicity. Comrade Stevenson was a communist in the true sense of the defined word." Mac Urata, the senior policy officer of the International Transport Workers Federation, also praised Stevenson's legacy as a trade union leader:" He held a very senior position in the ITF, but the rest of responsibilities that his union had in the ITF, he shared with his elected officials, members and staff — something that not all of us can do, but I firmly believe that it made the ITF strong, and we owe him a huge appreciation."