OUR MARY

Born in 1938, Mary Turner moved from her home in Tipperary, Eire to live with relatives in the North of England in 1947, before settling in Kilburn, London. The first thing her father asked her when she started work at sixteen was “have you joined the union yet?”. She had, and never looked back.

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Working in Jackson’s the Tailors on Oxford Street, she joined the Tailor and Garment Workers’ Union, which fittingly is now part of the GMB family of amalgamated unions, before working in the print trade and being elected as Mother of the Chapel. In the meantime, she had met and married her husband Dennis, within six weeks of their first meeting. They shared a life full of love and humour, we sadly lost Denny in 2015.  

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When her children, Denise and John, were born, Mary determined  that they would not be “latch-key kids” and gave up full-time work; returning part-time as a dinner lady, at Salisbury Road School in Brent, to fit in with their routines and holidays. Already an experiences trade unionist, she noticed that the workforce – compromising mainly of young Irish girls – received no training for the job, were expected to know already how to cook, and had no protective clothing or gloves. The management would visit the kitchens once a week, on a Monday, but would studiously ignore the dinner ladies; and Mary noted both this and the stigma that attached to the children who qualifies for free school meals who were forced to queue up separately. Having determined to challenge this state of affairs, she began to recruit he 9 workmates to the GMWU and when confronted by management, who demanded to know she thought she was, replied laconically “I’m their representative”.  

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After being elected shop steward, she was nominated to go onto the Joint Works Committee, managing to win over the local council, extending the fight to include pension rights – previously denied to dinner ladies – and gaining access to college training “though all of my members were initially terrified of it”. She remembers those days fondly as “fun as well as damn hard work” and took pride in her friends’ growing sense of confidence. During the 1978 local government strike, Mary was able to recruit 200 dinner ladies to the union at a single mass meeting held at Pound Lane School.

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Together with her members, Mary was heavily involved in the 1980 Steel Strike and the nurses’ disputes that broke out in the following year.  By 1981, Mary was the branch secretary of the Hendon (General) Branch North London, and was instrumental in organising the feeding of the contingent of 600 young people during the People’s March for Jobs. “The union did brilliantly”, she considered, “and the women did brilliantly” in finding supplies for the marchers after Labour Councillors were banned from using council facilities for the purpose. In 1983, the exercise was repeated for the Jobs Express but on that occasion the National Front chose to target the large number of Black youngsters on the march and on their arrival in Kilburn. Mary and Barbara Benham found themselves desperately wedging a set of doors closed in order to keep out a gang of skinheads and to keep their own people in.

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Mary was still working as a Cook Supervisor when, in 1983, she was elected to the District Committee and became the first woman lay executive member for London. At this point she was fortunate to come under the wing of John Cope who helped and supported her at a time when there were few high profile women in the trade union movement.

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Mary’s high profile in campaigns against the privatisation of national assets and amenities helped ensure her subsequent election to the union Executive, where she found herself to be the only woman among a body of 40 members.

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Her work in campaigning for decent school meals had already led her to record a part political broadcast for Labour, which was broadcast on television before the council elections in May 1982. In it, she had old audiences that “all school meals should be free and it could be done and should be done as in Scandinavian countries – a balanced nutritional meal for all”. A lifelong campaign for Mary, that was rooted in her own experiences working in schools, she never stopped championing the need for free school meals and was proud to see it in the Labour manifesto.

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At the GMB Congress in 1997, Mary was elected as the President of the union and had been re-elected to that position every year since. In 2003, Linda Lord – one of the delegate captured the essence of her ability and style in chairing Congress: “Mary, very quietly welcomes them to the rostrum, assuring them that she has been there, knows how they feel and says ‘Please, just take your time’. Calm then descends like a protective cloak. There is another side to this red-headed, Irish Gemini…Mary Turner, President of the GMB, can point out the errors of their ways to Congress delegates who should know better. They are told in a very measured, no-nonsense, humorous way that clearly says, ‘Don’t push it’.”

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After a couple of turbulent years in the early 2000s, Mary said one of her ‘proudest days of my life’ was seeing her Regional Secretary Paul Kenny elected as GMB General Secretary.

Serving by Paul Kenny’s side throughout her time as President, Mary remained in post after Paul’s retirement in 2016, working closely with new General Secretary Tim Roache, always fighting for GMB members.

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Having already served as Chair of the Labour Party in 2004 and been a long time member of the party’s National Executive; she was honoured with an MBE for her services to trade unionism in the New Year’s Honours list in 2010 and with a CBE in 2017.

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Mary was a beloved part of GMB, often referred to by Tim Roache as ‘the beating heart of our union’. She will be sadly missed by all, but the principles and values she spent her life fighting for will always be at the heart of her union.

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