My husband, Ernie Gordon, who has died aged 93, was an engineer and trade union official who eventually became an economist at the National Economic Development Office.
He was born in Southwark, London, to Sam, an engineer in a machine-tool factory, and Lilian (nee Darton). The family moved to a new council estate in St Helier, south London, where Ernie went to Glastonbury Road boys school. At the outbreak of the second world war the family moved to Salisbury, Wiltshire, where Ernie followed in his father’s footsteps by working for a local engineering firm, Moore Brothers.
There Ernie began an engineering apprenticeship and joined the Royal Navy at the age of 17. Based in Portsmouth, he served as a ship’s engineer until demobilisation in 1945. He then returned to his job in Salisbury, where in 1950 he married Mabel Marsh. They had a daughter, Jane, in 1954.
At Moore’s Ernie became an active member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU), and in 1962 was supported by the union to go to Ruskin College, Oxford, where he studied politics and economics. The experiience of Oxford and the people he met there marked a turning point in his life, but he remained close to the trade union movement, and on finishing his studies joined the research department of the AEU in Peckham, south London.
Ernie then worked as an economist at the National Economic Development Office, where in 1967 we met. In 1977, after his divorce from Mabel, we married, and he retired in 1982. Two years later we left for Paris, where we lived for four years: there Ernie attended the Sorbonne, learned French, discovered Paris and enjoyed watching the horse racing at Longchamp.
We then spent five years in Brussels before settling in Norfolk, where Ernie trained three generations of golden retrievers. A lifelong Labour party supporter and Chelsea fan, he also had a passion for racing, owning a share in several horses and maintaining his membership of Newmarket racecourse for 30 years.
He is survived by me and Jane.
