Reminiscences of a worker correspondent

Roy Jones is a journalist of an unusual kind, a real worker correspondent. He became an reporter on the Morning Star after a hard apprenticeship as an itinerant industrial worker, as a militant trade unionist working as a pipefitter on industrial sites throughout Britain where the weather was as challenging as the bosses (and bosses' placemen) who made a guaranteed weekly wage an uncertain prospect. Proud of both his traditional manual skills and his newly acquired craft he was respected by trade union leaders as much as he was trusted by workers on picket lines not least because he brought to his reporting a sharp intelligence combined with a real insight into the daily problems workers face. These reminiscences arrived at Manifesto Press as a series of witty, entertaining, insightful and politically perceptive political accounts of his unusual life and work. Some recalled in conversation and recorded by friends and family, some culled from his decades of clippings, some the product of discussion with his colleagues and comrades. The finished text bears the marks of its transcription from oral and written accounts and we are indebted to Manifesto Press volunteer Alan Tucker who carried through the first and most rigorous edit. Alan is a former engineer, systems analyst and project manager, and technical author and the text is the result of his discipline and energy.