Richard Rosser, Lord Rosser, who has died aged 79, a long-serving former general secretary of the rail union TSSA (Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association). He helped maintain the stability of the industry during the turbulent period of railway privatisation in the last years of John Major’s Conservative government.
He spent his lifetime working with the railway industry and after retiring from the union in 2004 joined the House of Lords, later becoming Labour’s frontbench spokesman on transport.
Rosser was a diligent, mild-mannered man, but a doughty fighter on behalf of working people, who was credited with being a terrier at the government’s heels when speaking at the opposition dispatch box.
As a young man he stood once for the House of Commons, losing narrowly as the Labour candidate for Croydon Central in February 1974. He was a member of both the Labour party national executive (1988-98) and the general council of the Trades Union Congress (2000–04) and chaired the Blackpool Labour conference after Tony Blair’s triumphant victory in 1997.
He was born into a family of railway enthusiasts, in Northwood, Middlesex, the younger of two sons of Gordon Rosser, a proofreader for Sun Printers in Watford, and his wife, Kathleen (nee Moon), who worked in the insurance industry. The family chose not to own a car, preferring rail travel, which would lead Richard to develop an encyclopedic knowledge of routes and timetables. His elder brother, John, later worked at British Rail research headquarters in Derby.
Richard was educated at St Nicholas grammar school, Northwood Hills (now Haydon school, Pinner), leaving at 16 to work for London Transport as an industrial relations clerk. He joined the Labour party on the day he left school and the TSSA on starting employment.
In 1966, he became a research officer at the TSSA and in 1970 was awarded a BSc in economics as an external student at London University. He was seen as a high-flier in the union, rising through the organisation to become assistant general secretary in 1982 and general secretary seven years later.
He pursued his political interests as a Hillingdon councillor (1971-78), chairing the finance committee for the latter four years. He was appointed a magistrate in 1978, chaired the Uxbridge bench from 1996 to 2000, and retired in 2014. He was also a non-executive director of the Prison and Probation Service management board (2000–09) and chaired its audit committee from 2004.
Rosser was an enthusiastic supporter of Blair’s leadership of the Labour party and delivered a stern message to the trades union movement in 2003, warning its members that given the 40% decline in union membership that had occurred during the 18 years of the Conservatives in office before 1997, they should be less complacent about the realpolitik of general elections and that to undermine a Labour government was “to score an avoidable own goal”.
After joining the Lords, he served as a member of the whips’ office in opposition (2010–11) and thereafter spoke from the front bench on defence, home affairs and transport matters. He continued to cover the transport brief and remained an active working peer until last year. Rosser was a member of the procedure and privileges committee (2005–09) and the secondary legislation scrutiny committee (2008-10).
An enthusiastic supporter of non-league football, Rosser collected programmes from around the country, sometimes with the help of fellow members of the Lords. From 2008 he was vice- president of the Isthmian League, becoming president in 2019.
In 1973 he married Sheena Denoon, a computer programmer. She survives him, along with their two sons, daughter and five grandchildren.
• Richard Andrew Rosser, Lord Rosser, trade unionist and politician, born 5 October 1944; died 10 April 2024
• This article was amended on 24 May 2024. Richard Rosser left school at 16 rather than 18.
