DEMOCRAT, internationalist and peace campaigner John Boyd has passed away at the age of 89. Boyd was active in the Connolly Association in the 1970s and was influenced by Desmond Greaves, editor of the Irish Democrat.

Greaves invited Boyd to write about the deindustrialisation of Britain under Tory leader Margaret Thatcher and her then ardent support for this country’s membership of the then Common Market. Boyd went on to contribute a regular column in the Irish Democrat on the subject.

Following the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which massively centralised power within the European Union in 1992, he helped found the Campaign Against Euro-Federalism (CAEF), which sought to win British labour and trade union opinion to oppose supranational EU integration.

After retiring as an engineering lecturer, he edited the CAEF journal, the Democrat, for 25 years, wrote and lectured extensively on the anti-democratic and imperialist nature of the EU and was active on the winning Leave side in the 2016 Brexit referendum. He also acted as co-ordinator of the international TEAM network of Euro-critics for a period.

Using his educational experience, Boyd encouraged and inspired confidence among those who campaigned with him without dictating every detail.

He always emphasised the all-important right of nations to self-determination and their right to establish their own nation-states if they so wish, which was crucial to understanding democracy and day-to-day politics.

Boyd was a lifelong champion of the view that the way forward for progressives in Britain was to lead the movement for national independence in the face of the EU and to support the reunification of Ireland.

He maintained that socialists and the left in general should seek to be the foremost advocates of national independence and democracy in whatever country they live in, and he led by example in that regard.

He had a profound belief in what ordinary working people could achieve by themselves, never spoke down to his audience and used the plainest possible language to explain often complicated issues.

This plain speaking collided with prevailing views in support of EU membership within the labour movement and often put him at odds with sections of the left. He suffered these brickbats with great dignity and patience.