A Tribute to David Mottley

Dave Mottley- long standing Chair of Lewes Trades Council, and NASUWT local secretary lost his battle with a brain tumour earlier this month. Dave was an inspiring socialist and trade unionist, and his long-standing friend and comrade, Bill Ball pays this tribute:

Dave (seated) surrounded by his family.

Rarely but occasionally we are privileged to encounter someone who transforms our life through inspiration and makes us look differently at the world.

David Motley, who has died, was such an individual.

An NASUWT rep,he was a teacher par excellence, spending many years of his career teaching KS2 at Newick Primary School. In the course of a 37 year teaching career he enriched the lives of countless youngsters with his compassion & enthusiasm. 

But it was as a union activist that I came to know him.  He became a delegate to the old Ouse Valley Trades Council, now Lewes Trades Council, some 26 years ago. The movement was still reeling from the defeat in the miners` strike and the crushing of the print unions at Wapping. Our Praetorian Guard had been wiped out in the space of two years.   Thatcher was waging relentless class war against the left and organized labour. Trades Councils were going to the wall right across the county: Bexhill, Rye, Haywards Heath, Uckfield. It was an uphill battle just to get a quorate meeting each month. It was also an achievement.

It was not an auspicious moment to get involved in the local Trades Council movement. But Dave Motley took to it with his characteristic unflappability. The fight for survival for Ouse Valley TC was not going to be easy, but  Dave`s arrival meant that our extinction was put on hold.

Under Dave`s chairmanship the Trades Council fought back. We became ever more audacious, organizing events that should have been way beyond our punching power.

When John McDonnell made his pitch for the Labour leadership, the Trades Council organized a public meeting at Lewes Town Hall to support him. John shared the platform with Tony Benn. 500 people packed into the hall. Standing room only. Dave, the consumate teacher was taking the biggest class of his life. But he chaired the meeting with his normal relaxed and gentle humour.

In 2008, under Dave`s leadership, we became the first Trades Council in England to mount a four event festival of socialism & trades unionism. Jack Jones in his last public appearance opened an event celebrating the fight against fascism in Spain.

Our second festival was held in Lewes in 2011.  But by then Dave was ill. A cancerous brain tumour, that had haunted him like Mephistopheles throughout his working life, kept in the shadows by medication, had flared its defiance and begun to grow again.

He was taken into the Royal Marsden & the monster was zapped with massive doses of radiation over a two month period. It seemed to have worked. He emerged with a new lease of life & an energy that seemed boundless.

A third Lewes Festival of Socialism & Trades Unionism was planned.  Dave ploughed ahead with the zeal of someone who felt that his time maybe short and should not be wasted. In retrospect I suspect that he knew that he would not live to see the fruits of his labours.

And the cancer was not to be denied. When it awoke from its irradiated sleep, its ravaging revenge was swift and complete. I last saw Dave in the hospice in North Chailey. With difficulty he tried with little power of speech to tell me what needed to be done for the festival.

The doctors had given him four weeks to live. He took four months. The union rep had brokered his last deal. Sleep well old pal. You touched many lives for the better. We`ll never forget you.