Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since 1945, Stan Turner, the only surviving founding-member of the Transport and General Workers' Union, has campaigned in every British election. Of the heroic Attlee generation that saw in the National Health Service and the great post-war rebuild and reimagining of England, he was for twenty years secretary of the TGWU, now Unite, and for decades town councillor in Sheldon, who with his beloved wife of 72 years, Joan, produced twelve children—six boys and six girls—and over a hundred subsequent descendants, one of them Ben Turner, the Cardiff footballer. He went aggressively doorknocking in the meantime for Attlee, Gateskill, Wilson, Callahan, Foote, Kinnock, Blair, Brown and Miliband, who in 2014 gave him a dedicated award for his tireless and unstinted service to the party. He started as a wartime co-op van driver and recounts Nye Bevan as the great inspirational Labour leader of his youth. He was still undauntedly doorknocking and leafleting for Labour in May at the age of 92 and has been an enthused example to five generations. It is a pleasure for me to mention him in this House, and I also acknowledge the presence of his daughter Janice, who is with us in the gallery, Stan Turner, the undiminished local Labour hero, continues to believe in our cause to this day, and we salute you.