TRIBUTES have been paid to a Lancashire trade unionist, campaigner and communist whose battles included imprisonment for refusing to pay the much-hated Tory poll tax.

Ron Spencer, who died on April 28 aged 86, was active in the former Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (AUEW) and a shop steward at Lucas Aerospace when unions developed the ground-breaking Alternative Corporate Plan away from weapons production in the 1970s.

He was a member of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Communist Party, serving on the party’s Lancashire district committee and national executive, and a member of Lancashire regional committee of Co-operative Retail Services.