Stylish writer and staunch trade unionist
CATHARINE HODGES, who has died of cancer, was a formidable NUJ activist, becoming chair of the Magazine and Books Industrial Council (MABIC) in the 1980s, a member of the union’s National Executive Council and mother of the Morgan Grampian chapel.
As a journalist she was stylish and meticulous; as a trade unionist she was tireless in helping those in trouble, and she raged against injustice.
A victim of the British 11-plus system, Kate worked as an editorial secretary at the Daily Mail while securing the GCEs her secondary modern education had denied her. She graduated with a master’s degree in philosophy at the LSE before abandoning her work as a lecturer and a PhD on the history of ideas, for work in Canada, where she began her career in journalism.
On her return to Britain she worked as a medical journalist and joined the union.
Her partner, former NUJ president Eddie Barrett, told the many friends who attended her funeral: “Kate was independent, interesting, intelligent, brave, fiercely loyal and concerned for her friends and all those around her.”
Francis Beckett