My good friend Rick Sumner, who has died aged 88, was a trade unionist and a stalwart supporter of the miners during and after the bitter national strike of the 1980s.
Rick was for several years a miner at Shuttle Eye Colliery in West Yorkshire but also worked as a trawlerman in the North Atlantic, as a scaffolder and steel erector in the north-west and, later, as a community and grass roots advice worker in Moss Side, Manchester. Throughout it all, he was a dedicated trade unionist, a member of the Constructional Engineering Union, the NUM, and the Manufacturing, Science and Finance union. He believed strongly in workers’ democracy.
Rick was born in Miles Platting to Walter and Ethel Sumner (nee Wilkinson), who ran Manchester pubs, including the Whalley Hotel and the Anglesey Arms. He attended North Manchester grammar school and left aged 16, going to work as a fisherman on boats around Iceland and Greenland.
In the 50s he was a miner for about seven years at Shuttle Eye. In 1964 he married Christine Clark. In the early 70s Rick became a community worker in Moss Side and was involved in the local advice centre.
After the end of the 1984-85 miners’ strike, in solidarity with former mining colleagues and friends, Rick and Christine established the National Justice for Mineworkers’ Campaign (NJMC), raising money to sustain miners who had been sacked during the strike and their families, and campaigning alongside the NUM for the sacked miners’ rights. He was a co-sponsor of the annual memorial meeting in Barnsley to commemorate David Jones and Joe Green, two miners killed during the strike.
Rick also campaigned in Manchester against racism, antisemitism and fascism. In Moss Side, he and Chris started tenants’ organisations and worked with the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination to fight racist landlords. Rick was also an activist-supporter of Searchlight, the anti-fascism magazine.
He retired in 1994 and moved to the Yorkshire coast. In retirement Rick was able to devote more time to following Manchester City and supporting the local lifeboat service.
Christine died in 2019. He is survived by their children, Suze and Dan, by a daughter, Cassie, from a previous marriage, which ended in divorce, and by seven grandchildren, Richard, Max, Declan, Erin, Thomas, Joe and Eden.
