My husband, Graham Trickey, a journalist and campaigner, who has died aged 73 of mesothelioma, was a quiet one that was usually the motor behind, and typically the chief of, political and environmental campaigns.
He first grew to become energetic in pupil politics within the Sixties at Newport Faculty of Artwork, and later joined the Communist get together. In 1976, Graham took a job with the CP day by day newspaper the Morning Star, and he quickly grew to become chief subeditor; he was a talented manufacturing journalist. However rifts throughout the get together had been deepening: the management and most members had opposed the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and turned in direction of “eurocommunism”; the Star, nevertheless, had change into the centre of a faction hostile to democratic socialism. Graham’s willpower within the ensuing occasions was effectively regarded. Together with different colleagues, he resigned from the newspaper in 1985.
Born in Raynes Park, London, Graham was the second son of Winifred (nee Hardy), a major schoolteacher, and Tom Trickey, a businessman. He attended Mitcham grammar college for boys, the expertise igniting an already-dissident spirit. Graham enrolled at Sutton Faculty of Artwork and in 1968, Newport Faculty of Artwork.
There, in 1969, Graham and his colleague Wealthy Coates organised a protest in opposition to the tour of the apartheid-era South African Springboks’ rugby crew to the UK. Graham had beforehand campaigned for amenities for the school’s pupil union. Newport city council ultimately determined to fund buildings and a full-time officer; and in 1971, Graham was elected to the publish. The next yr, he enrolled on a PGCE at Liverpool Polytechnic, the place he was once more elected as union president, serving two phrases earlier than he joined the Morning Star.
After leaving the Star, Graham grew to become a contract subeditor. He and I met in London in 1986 and in 1989 we had a son, Adam. Later we moved to Marple, Stockport, and within the Nineteen Nineties, Graham took an modifying job on the Manchester-based Graduate Prospects.
His ardour for horticulture was evident within the superb backyard he designed on our often-sodden, north-facing plot. He was a faithful father, attending each soccer match Adam performed, regardless of having little curiosity within the sport.
Upon retirement, Graham’s campaigning abilities once more blossomed. In 2012, he referred to as the primary assembly of an NHS campaigning group, Stockport NHS Watch, which notably opposed cuts to hospital beds within the later-abandoned “Stockport Collectively” scheme.
Subsequent, he launched the Goyt Valley SOS! marketing campaign in opposition to a street chopping by uncommon inexperienced areas within the Goyt Valley in Offerton, Stockport: Graham proved capable of rally folks with differing backgrounds and views. Together with organising quite a few public conferences, he led colleagues in persistently opposing the A6-M60 “bypass”; ultimately the plan was dropped. One other marketing campaign regarding a warehousing proposal on greenbelt land in Stockport and Tameside, for which Graham needed to find out about transport and planning legislation, was additionally profitable – though, by then, he was in poor health.
All through these endeavours, Graham confirmed nice independence and a depraved sense of humour. He remained immensely sort and devoted to the top of his life, by no means searching for the limelight.
He’s survived by me and Adam, and his brother, Alan.
