COVENTRY trade unionists, socialists, friends and colleagues of Sergio Requena-Rueda were sorry to hear of his death in hospital after battling with cancer. He was with his wife Tina, and his two daughters, at the end.

Sergio Requena-Rueda arrived in Britain as a political refugee in June 1977. Two years earlier he had been captured by Augusto Pinochet’s secret police and was tortured for 44 days in the infamous Villa Grimaldi by the DINA ( the Chilean secret police during the Pinochet regime), and then imprisoned in a concentration camp for over a year.  

An estimated 4,500 people were detained at Villa Grimaldi, and of those at least 226 “disappeared” forever.

After the coup d’etat he chose to stay in Chile, and rejected any asylum opportunities. He wasn’t mandated to do this by his party, but decided to stay and build the resistance against the dictatorship as a matter of principle and honour. He therefore spent several years fighting for the the MIR, the left-wing revolutionary resistance group to which he belonged.  

In 1980 he arrived in Coventry, with his family, to work for GEC Telecommunications as a development engineer and soon became a local trade union activist, becoming an elected local, regional and national representative.

At GEC Telecommunications/Marconi he was the senior national negotiator for Unite the Union, and the secretary of the Tom Mann branch, for many years. He was the elected president of Unite’s electrical/electronic and IT engineering sector for four years, and for many years a member of the WM regional executive committee. He was also the president of Coventry TUC and the longest-serving member of the CTUC EC.

More important than his trade union positions was his reputation among his membership as a principled, hardworking and generous man. He worked tirelessly for his members and was incredibly well respected.

I acted with him as a trade union rep in Unite the Union and its predecessors in ASTMS, MSF and Amicus. He was a nationally known figure in these unions.

He once explained to me how he heard the news that workers in Rolls-Royce in East Kilbride, Scotland, were blacking any work on Chilean air force planes in response to the coup when he was in one of Pinochet’s torture camps. A guard had uncharacteristically left his radio on within his hearing and it gave him back hope!  

He also told me how he acted as a representative for fellow victims in the camp — even in such a prison, I was surprised to learn there was some small room for this!

He was always active in the Chilean Solidarity Campaign and other campaigns in support of the left in Latin America and particularly recently a strong supporter of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Medical Aid for Palestinians.

He will be sadly missed by many in Coventry and elsewhere in the movement.

Sean Leahy is chair of Unite Coventry Tom Mann branch.

For funeral details please visit https://sergiocarlosrequena-rueda.muchloved.com.