As trade union General Secretary's go, Paul Mackney is right up there with the best. I sat briefly with Paul on negotiations about preventing redundancies at the Walsall College of Continuing Education. He was brilliant and I learnt so much about negotiating in those few hours a week. Paul will not be a candidate for General Secretary of the new University and College Union next year. His health has been bad over the last year, and he knows as well as anyone that the graveyards are full of comrades who thought they were irreplaceable, although when I saw him at the Chavez meeting a couple of weeks ago he was looking good. Well, Paul has just made his final speech as General Secretary of NATFHE after nine years at the helm. It reads like a good one.
