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. 

The Co-op was the first major retailer to boycott goods from apartheid South Africa.

He was instrumental in establishing May Day celebrations in Burnley and was a keen seller of the Morning Star at union conferences and events nationwide. 

Communist Party general secretary Rob Griffiths described Ron as “a comrade of the greatest integrity, salt of the Earth, the kind of communist on which the party has been built and sustained.”

He is survived by his partner Kath, children and grandchildren.