A CHAMPION of Irish construction workers in Britain over many years has died.
Waterford man Tommy Finn passed away on Tuesday (November 28) at home with his family.
He was among many thousands of Irish people who came to Britain during the rebuilding programme after World War II to work on Britain's construction sites.
He was soon to meet his life-long partner Maureen, and would later become one of the leading activists campaigning for Irish workers' rights in this country.
Remembered as one of the great fighters of his generation who "battled against the oppressive working conditions of construction and fought for those in his community", Mr Finn honed his campaigining abilities in Ireland as a teenager when he persuaded golf caddies to go on strike until they got a decent rate of pay, according to his friend Tony O'Brien.
"He was involved in many struggles over wages and conditions of work, including the 1965 to 1967 Barbican strikes in the City of London, and was a major influence in bringing east London construction sites to a standstill with flying pickets during the 1972 national building workers strike," Mr O'Brien explained.
"Like many other building worker trade union activists, he went to work for Hackney local authority building DLO after the 1972 strike because of the blacklisting activities of the building employers," he added.
"He would later discover in 2012 that he was one of those 3,200 building workers who were on the blacklisting files of the consultative organisation and, as a result, received compensation."
Mr Finn, an active Irish socialist republican and member of the Connolly Association, was a member of the AEU construction section national committee in the 1980s and was also the President of the Tower Hamlets Trades Union Council during that period.
After the death of late Jim Franklin in 1990, Mr Finn became the chairman of the Construction Safety Campaign.
"It was the likes of Tommy who were the essential driving force behind successful work of the campaign in those early years," Mr O'Brian admits.
Mr Finn, together with Dan Jones, Frank McGuinness, Kevin Alpen and others in 1969 brought the east London community together by organising the famous community E1 Festival, an annual celebration of east end life.
"He and Maureen were great singers and together with Andy Higgins would give many of us great entertainment," Mr O'Brien recalls.
In 1995 Tommy returned to Waterford in Ireland and continued his campaigning and community activities, being the lead coach to the youth involved in sports activities in his area.
He had become ill in Ireland a number of years ago and returned to London, where he lived with his wife Maureen and daughter Sharon in Stepney, east London until his death on November 28.
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