My father, Bob Quick, who has died aged 68, was a senior trade union official and passionate defender of the NHS.
While training as a nurse as a teenager, he made an early mark by leading a Confederation of Health Service Employees union campaign in support of a pay rise for nurses in 1974, after which he left nursing to become Cohse’s youngest full-time regional official at the age of 19.
He spent 24 years as a paid officer with Cohse, involved in all aspects of industrial relations – from representing members in grievance procedures, misconduct hearings, pay negotiations and industrial disputes to building campaigns and organising and training shop stewards.
Continuing with Cohse after its merger with two other public sector unions to form Unison, he was an internationalist to the core, and later led trade union education projects in Bulgaria, Romania and South Africa. Also involved in solidarity work in Cuba, he was awarded a national medal in that country for helping to deliver medical aid during the US blockade.
Bob was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, to a Liverpudlian father, Jim, and an Irish mother, Teresa (nee Geary), both of whom were nurses. Raised in Chester, where he went to Grange secondary modern school in Ellesmere Port and then Upton-by-Chester high school, he followed in his parents’ footsteps, training as a nurse at 16.
His father had been a leading activist in Cohse since its inception in 1946, so it was natural that Bob soon became involved with the union too. In the early 80s he also served as a Labour councillor in Liverpool, spending time as chair of its
