John Bailey, a journalist and press officer who served as president and treasurer of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), has died at the age of 86. He was a central figure in the union's largest strike in 1978-79, which secured a 14% pay increase for 8,000 local newspaper journalists.
Early life and career
Born in Southend, Essex, Bailey was the only child of Ernest, a second lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps, and Josephine (nee Smith), a secretary. The family lived in Kingston, Jamaica, until he was eight, where he was educated by Jesuits at Campion College. This experience influenced his lifelong devotion as a Roman Catholic. After returning to the UK, his father was stationed near Wolverhampton, and Bailey attended St Chad's boys' grammar school, opposite the girls' school where Maureen Neenan was a pupil; they married in 1963.
Bailey began his journalism career as a trainee reporter at the Grays and Thurrock Gazette in Essex before spending 11 years as a news reporter at the Hartlepool Mail. There, he became actively involved in union activity, representing local newspaper journalists in the north-east on the NUJ's national executive council.
NUJ leadership and strike
Moving to the Sunderland Echo in 1974 as features editor, Bailey served as NUJ president from 1973-74 and treasurer from 1975-82. As treasurer, he was one of the central co-ordinators of a seven-week strike in 1978-79 against low pay, involving 8,000 local newspaper journalists. The strike, the largest stoppage in the NUJ's history, won a national pay increase of 14%. In 1978, he briefly represented the NUJ on the Press Council before the union withdrew from that body.
Later career and personal life
From 1998 until his retirement in 2005, Bailey worked as a press officer for Sunderland City Council. Outside work, from the mid-1980s until 2010, he revived The Northern Cross, a monthly Catholic newspaper in the north of England, serving as editor for most of that time. In retirement, he worked with the ecumenical group Churches Together.
Bailey's enthusiasm for union good practice extended to family life: to his children's amusement, he created a collective bargaining mechanism to negotiate a written agreement on their pocket money, renewable every six months. Maureen, a teacher, died in 2023. Bailey is survived by their eight children—Tim, Clare, Dympna, Greg, Colette, Ben, Dom, and Dan—and 16 grandchildren.
