Bryan Stanley, who has died aged 83, was, from 1972 to 1986, General Secretary of the Post Office Engineering Union (POEU, which after a series of mergers became the Communication Workers Union in 1995). A lifelong member of the Labour Party, he was on the NEC from 1973 to 1978 and a campaigner against the hard left. In the early 1980s, his rallying of the moderate bloc of trade union leaders against militant extremists helped bring the Labour party back to the centre.
Bryan was born in Walsall, West Midlands, on the first day of the general strike in 1926. He left school at 14 and, in 1942, began working for the Post Office, digging trenches to lay cables for telephones. He joined the union on the very day he started work. He took the chance to train as a telecoms engineer, which is what he was doing when he met Eileen, a young telephone operator. By that time Bryan was an active trade unionist and member of the Labour party, campaigning in the 1945 election. Eileen recalls how she spotted the handsome engineer, but realised that if she wanted to see more of him she too would have to join the Labour party. They married in 1951.
Bryan rose through the POEU, moving his family in 1959 from the West Midlands to Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, to take up a position as a full-time organiser. He became general secretary in 1972 and the following year was elected to the Labour party’s NEC.
In his book Hammer of the Left (published posthumously in 2003), the former MP John Golding – and general secretary of the POEU’s successor union the National Communication Union – tells how Bryan was approached by Shirley Williams and encouraged to defect to help set up the new Social Democratic party. At this point Stanley vowed to defend Labour against the militants and Trotskyites, and worked with other trade unionists and Neil Kinnock to defeat the left and build the party for government.
Bryan stood down from the NEC in 1978 to concentrate on the interests of his members, and took up a seat on the TUC general council. Unable to halt Thatcher’s privatisation of British Telecom in 1984, he retired from the union in 1986, at the age of 60. But a new political career lay ahead. He joined the Industrial Tribunals (now Employment Tribunals) as a panel member and became closely involved in the Labour party in Borehamwood, taking on a variety of offices in the branch and constituency along with Eileen.
In 1990 he was elected as a councillor to Hertsmere borough council, and, in 1996, became leader when the Labour group took control. He led the council into buying the remaining film studio at Elstree after a long battle with Brent Walker, the property company that had purchased the whole site in 1988. Much of the backlot had been sold off and a Tesco superstore built. Bryan’s leadership was visionary: the studio is once again a major filming location, and home to prominent TV shows including Big Brother and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Bryan gave much to his community, including service as mayor of Elstree and Borehamwood in 1997.
Bryan Capewell Stanley, trade unionist, born 3 May 1926; died 19 July 2009
