Propagandist, publican and publisher
JIMMY BARNES was a socialist who mixed journalism, philosophy and trades unionism with extraordinary practical skill.
Apprenticed as an engineer in 1966, he worked for London Underground and the National Coal Board. From 1977 Jimmy studied philosophy and politics at Sunderland Polytechnic and was a Communist Party activist, but always his own man.
Jimmy’s finances were precarious. Living on benefits and erratic freelance journalism he devoted his energies to his own publications, Trade Union CND, which tackled “arms conversion” — how nuclear arms industry workers could be persuaded to support nuclear disarmament — and Trade Union Review, which dished the dirt on the more unsavoury union leaders. Both projects generated intense hostility as well as stories that ended in the Guardian.
In 2000 Jimmy returned to Carlisle to care for his dying parents and helped revive the NUJ Cumbria Branch. For a few years he was a forceful if sometimes irascible delegate to union conferences.
Three years ago he bought a pub near Accrington, Lancashire, and set up a publishing company. He republished John Milton’s classic tract on freedom of expression, Areopagitica, for which I wrote an introduction.
The pub made Jimmy financially stable and last December we were discussing his plans to reprint another classic, Ralph Korngold’s Citizen Toussaint. But in January he died suddenly, aged 57. Friends intend to publish the book in his memory.
Granville Williams