PETER Barrack's wife, Dianne, had been adamant that this would be a family funeral.
"The unions have had him for long enough," she said before the service attended by more than 300 people at Wests Newcastle, the former workers club.
"It's our turn now."
And it was their turn. The "the Barrack women", as Di called them - daughters, in-laws and friends - ran the service and gave the tributes to the man, and the public figure whose decades of activism culminated in 21 years at the head of the Hunter Region's peak union body, Newcastle Trades Hall Council, known nowadays as Hunter Workers.
READ MORE:Monday's obituary, a union giant remembered
But even with his family in charge, Peter Barrack's funeral, was always going to be a political event.
It opened with the solemn beauty of Joan Baez's version of the classic union ballad, I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night, the song about an executed Swedish migrant U.S. dock-worker and union activist, made famous by Paul Robeson.
Many in the service silently mouthed the lines, which open with: "I dreamed, I saw Joe Hill last night, Alive as you and me; Says I 'But Joe, you're ten years dead', 'I never died' says he."
They whispered the final verse, too: "From San Diego up to Maine, In every mine and mill; Where working folks defend their rights, It's there you'll find Joe Hill."
Proceedings closed with Mr Barrack's coffin, draped in the Eureka Flag, being borne out to the sound of Jimmy Barnes singing Working Class Man. In between, daughter Kerri give a eulogy that took the room through a potted history of her father's public life, an account she acknowledged drew heavily on the essay that Peter had written with fellow activist, the late Bob Phillips, in 2001 - a history that she said had given her a different perspective on a lot of things she had memories of as a child.
While her father had "not been universally loved" - no union official ever is - she said he had been described at one stage as "the Jack Mundy of Newcastle" - an appropriate comparison, she thought, for a man whose unionism was heavily tinged with environmental and community concerns.
Another daughter, Peta Brown, told the room that the past week had been "a great reminder of the amazing work" her father had done over the years.
"My daughter, who is 24, was not around to see Dad at the height of his career, or to see how as his career profile grew, so did his hair!" Ms Brown said of her father's steel-coil locks. "To her, he was just her Pop. She said to me just a couple of days ago: 'Wow, mum, Pop was kind of a big deal, wasn't he?' (I said) 'Yes, Jordan, he was."
Ms Brown spoke of tagging along on picket lines as a child, knowing the inevitable stop-off at the workers club would mean "a fire engine drink and Twistees for us".
Dianne Barrack rose to speak towards the end of the service, and we learned the extent of the Alzheimer's Disease that had made her husband's life increasingly difficult in his final years, and of the effort he made, at the same time, to keep up important friendships.
She passed on another description of her husband from a Catholic friend, who said: "He was not a religious man, but he was one of the most Christian men I've ever met."
No-one present disagreed.
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