My father, Arthur Leonard, who has died aged 89, worked at the inky end of the newspaper industry – as a printer’s assistant on the News of the World and the Radio Times. The Radio Times printing operation was acquired by Robert Maxwell and subsequently Arthur lost his job. He later lost most of his pension as well after Maxwell plunged overboard from his yacht in 1991. When Rupert Murdoch moved the printing of the News of the World from Fleet Street to Wapping in 1986, Arthur was once again out of work.
My daughter, Shel, and I used to join my father on the picket line at Wapping. He always wore a red woolly hat so we could find him. To his fellow picketers, he was known as “Arfur Bitter”. Luckily his union, Sogat, got him some shifts on the Daily Express and my parents decided to downsize and moved from London to the coast.
At Hill Head, in Hampshire, they threw themselves into local activities, taking part in beach clean-ups, latterly with Arthur helping on his mobility scooter, conserving a wood and stream in Fareham, driving people to hospital and visiting people in their homes as part of a voluntary care group.
He was born and grew up in Ten Mile Bank, a village in the Fens on the Cambridgeshire/Norfolk border, where he went to the local school, leaving early to work in a shop. His parents, Susan and David, had six children and lived in a tiny house built into the river bank. Dad moved to London, managed to avoid national service and secured a printing job.
Cheerful by nature, he remained his jovial self when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I often overheard the carers, who had to come in four times a day for many years, say: “We love coming to see you, Arthur. You always make us laugh.” When he could no longer read or write I would read out the clues from the Guardian quick crossword and he would solve them, spelling the letters out so I could fill in the solutions.
He is survived by his wife, Beryl, whom he married in 1950, his brother, Cliff, me and my brother, Steve, four grandchildren, Shel, Stuart, Ruth and Hazel, and by two great-granddaughters, Jasmine and Keira.
