Other people 1

I want to remember the man I considered my political father, Fred Higgs. I wrote this piece as his obituary in 2015 and read it at his funeral in Leigh-on-Sea, breaking an unspoken rule in trade unions by speaking openly about how exceptional just one person can be. Fred was of the generation of trade unionists who never spoke about himself, avoiding anything that sounded like bragging and so leaving a silence around how much of the world he had travelled doing useful and brave things.

In the last stages of writing UberTherapy Fred’s wife Rita died in 2025. Rita was similarly modest about her political contributions - she would also have hated me saying this out loud but she was quietly and honestly brilliant. In my memory, she always did the right thing.

I wish they had been alive to read UberTherapy because I think it’s the one thing I’ve written that they might have liked.

Love Letter 1

Three words that don’t fit, Fred is dead. Fred was my boss, a working class man who rose up in the ranks of the T&G to become the General Secretary of one of the largest trade unions in the world.  Twenty million members in the hard core sectors of mining, oil and energy. Fred gave me my first proper job at a time when women didn't get invited to take power in unions. His model of trade unionism was not the macho heroics of capitalist-counterpower but the ordinary everyday of sticking together. 

We worked together for over a decade, with Fred’s role as old-school gaffer, political dad and true friend. My memories of Fred are dominated by smoking and laughing. Lots of both. 

Sitting in a car park in Harare a week before the Zimbabwe elections with the threat of violence hanging over us for uncovering corruption. After a week of forensic inquiry, waiting for a plane to take us out he says, between puffs “Cheer up, they won’t let us back in the country again”. 

Crawling along a seam in a potash mine in Belarus, Fred, me and our man mountain interpreter Eugene. Fred joking that it was the first time being short was his competitive advantage as we smash our heads. Fred inviting Ludmilla to lunch to talk about human rights despite her being general secretary of a state controlled union in Lukashenko’s dictatorship. Even the Dutch who funded the work, normally immune to his gruff ways, were offended by his lack of political correctness, preferring only to court the traumatised leadership of the independent trade unions. As we ate a dinner of pork fat and vodka with them that night, watching the male leadership joke about who would have sex with me, Eugene stopped translating instead whispering a story about his time in the Russian army in Angola as his eyes watered from shame. Fred said gently “There are good politics and bad politics in all of these trade unions. Everything about this place is sent to dehumanise working people. You have to go with your gut what you’re dealing with”. When we got outside our hands were so cold it was the only time I didn't see Fred light up. 

A trip to Nigeria to support the oil workers unions, when Fred goes missing for eight hours. Picked up by security at the airport interrogated and dumped, minus computer and cash in the middle of Lagos. Sheltering Shell trade union leaders at his and Rita’s home in London years before, raising the alarm to Nigeria’s head of police. His laughter at the look on my face as he walked into the hotel lobby. Apparently I was the whitest person in Africa that day. 

Our quiet conversation about how to prepare for our arrest the next morning - deleting files and phoning loved ones. A memory of me being on the phone to the British Embassy asking for representation and being told that the ambassador and his team were playing golf and couldn't help. I can still feel the Tsunami of expletives coming at me from Fred across the room almost choking on the generations of class war behind that statement. Then working for seven long days of mundane niceties, wondering why nobody had answered their phones in response to my calls for help. Eight hours of pressing redial. Each day Fred smoked three packets. 

A decade of solidarity visits to Colombia, considered the most dangerous place in the world for trade unionists. In the later years we went to mediate the first ever negotiations between the Colombian Government, multinational companies and unions. Tripartite discussions about security, contract workers and even HIV/AIDS leading to belly-laugh trips to the Cerrejon mine, talking about sex and smuggling condoms into the ladies lavs (that was me, not Fred). Fred walking out of the room when a key affiliated union was presenting their renewal strategy which included a strategic error threatening their survival. To criticise the Colombians is the political equivalent of punching kittens so right in the middle of the power point he walked out of the room waving a packet of cigarettes. His smoking break let them change their minds without losing face. Fred was a genius at strategic smoking. 

I remember working with a Brazilian union caught up in another political scandal. Four months living in Rio, how bad can it be? Well, pretty bad. The day before I was due to fly out I was told that there was a contract out on my life. I went to see Fred, shaking.  Fred without pause for breath said “If they were going to kill you they’d just do it. A threat is just a threat’. And while I was momentarily speechless he took the opportunity to tell me that the Brazilian man I was in love with was, in fact, married and it was probably best not to rely on his support any time soon. Fred held my hand as my legs went from under me. He smoked ten cigarettes in one hour while he waited silently for me to scrape my heart and my chin off the floor. 

I remember negotiations with Sir Mark, the then CEO of a large mining company at their offices tucked behind Buckingham Palace. Fred and Mark had negotiated with each other for years - a begrudging respect for each other’s long service in industrial relations. As part of our work to secure HIV/AIDS provision in mining communities we’d gone to negotiate a pilot in the mines of Ghana and Colombia, work which at the time was groundbreaking. Throughout the whole meeting Fred swore. Like punctuation in his own and everyone else's sentences, at one point I counted twelve expletives in one sentence. Sir Mark looked sadly down at his hands and sighed. And then said “Fred, you know what we used to call you? Fred and his Bag of Fucks. I’ve never met anyone refuse to adapt their behaviour like you. It’s a good thing that I’m very fond of you.” They both smiled. I think Fred was tickled that despite the extraordinary class and political distance in the room Sir Mark was a bit sweet on him. Fred smoked less in London. 

Fred did not adapt to a diplomatic international world, remaining resolutely with the underdogs. It meant that he rarely spoke about his travels - not wishing to come across as obnoxious - preferring to keep his feet on the ground even in these exotic settings. Fred had a political instinct like no other - no pause for thought or getting tied up in details, he cut the crap. It meant that he was often unbending and frustrated, waiting for the rest of us to catch up on the political realities around us. 

When Fred retired, I returned to the UK to train as a therapist and started working part time in academia. I wrote my Phd on international solidarity and was within two weeks of my viva when he died. I had not spoken to Fred about my thesis, scared of his hating it, thinking me a pretentious intellectual to even have an actual thesis. I think my love of psychoanalysis genuinely made his toes curl. I didn’t dare ask him what he thought of Surviving Work, despite my view that the politics behind it were formed during my time working with him, long before reading Freud. 

Sometimes being in the union can feel like a suffocating bond where independent thought means breaking rank. But I regret allowing this aspect of being in the union stop me showing him and Rita my mind and my heart, and with it my immense love and gratitude to them. 

I, like many women in the union who didn't stand a chance of making their mark, am indebted to Fred for taking a punt on me. He taught me to be as good as my word and to live according to what I fucking well believe.

Surviving Work has moved socially to @survivingwork.bsky.social @survivingwk

@UberTherapy.bsky.social @ubertherapies

UberTherapy: The Business of Mental Health October 2025 Bristol University Press. Pre-order here.