The laughing photographer
THE ABIDING memory of photographer Ernie Greenwood, who died in March aged 82, was the deep chuckle that followed his anecdotes, his huge frame gently shaking.
This was even so with the most dramatic event in his working life, when while taking pictures of a police riot during the Wapping print dispute he was run down and dragged under a police horse. He broke his arm but made light of it, because, he said, he had worked with horses in the army and was able to avoid more serious injury by knowing where the horse would put its hooves.
His photography took him into two spells at the Daily Worker and, in the 1980s, as it had become, the Morning Star.
Ernie was the NUJ FoC, in difficult times for the paper — both politically and financially. His vast experience and calm negotiating stance in trying to balance the needs and rights of the staff with the need not to endanger the paper’s future played a big, if unacknowledged, part in keeping the Star alive.
Roy Jones