My brother Dave Spooner, who has died of cancer aged 69, spent 40 years in the international trade union movement, and for the past 14 years was director of the Global Labour Institute (GLI) in Manchester.
At GLI from 2010, Dave promoted solidarity among trade unions around the world through education and research. He had a particular interest in helping to organise workers in the informal economy, co-operating closely with the Building and Wood Workers’ International, the International Union of Food Workers and the International Transport Federation.
Dave was born in Eltham, south-east London, to Douglas, a mathematics teacher, and Audrey (nee Marchant). He attended the nearby Colfe’s grammar school before studying full-time at the Italia Conti stage school, which was then in Clapham, from 1970 until 1972, a move that landed him the lead role in a children’s film, Blinker’s Spy-Spotter (1972).
After taking part on a Royal Geographic Society expedition to rural Iran in 1975, Dave studied history at Sussex University, graduating in 1979. Active in student politics, he joined Big Flame, a small Marxist/feminist/libertarian group. He spent two years as a national community organiser with the Student Community Action Resources programme in Manchester, then in 1981 joined War on Want’s transnational project as a co-director, focusing on export-processing zones but also preparing educational material for British trade unions.
Following fieldwork in Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Hong Kong, in 1984 he co-founded International Labour Reports, a bi-monthly international magazine on the globalised economy and trade union organisation. Dave edited the publication while working as a researcher at the Greater London council’s popular planning unit. He then moved to Hong Kong as co-director of the Asia Monitor Resources Centre (1986-89).
As senior economic development officer for Manchester city council from 1989 to 1992, Dave helped to set up the Labour Telematics centre in Whalley Range, supporting the use of computer communications by the trade union movement, before undertaking a feasibility study (1993-94) on the use of telematics in four African states as a consultant to the International Labour Organisation and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
He became general secretary successively of the European Workers’ Education Association and the International Federation of Workers’ Education Associations. From 2008 he worked as an operations manager at Wiego (Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising). From 2012 to 2016, he organised residential GLI summer schools for international trade unionists, drawing on his experience of training for Unite.
Dave’s most recent publication, Understanding Informal Transport in Africa: Labour Impact Assessments as Tools to Improve Workers’ Conditions, drew on years of innovative fieldwork he had carried out in several African cities. His archive is being curated by the Working Class Movement Library.
He married Elaine Morrison in 2016. She survives him, as do two sons, Sean and Joe, from a previous relationship, with Mary Sayer, seven grandchildren, and three brothers, Robert, Stephen and me.
