My friend Sean Feeny, who has died aged 71, ran a successful Glasgow printing firm and was an active member of the “Gramscian” or “Eurocommunist” wing of the Communist party of Great Britain (CPGB) in its final, fractious years.
After the party disbanded in 1991 he helped to found Democratic Left Scotland, a non-party network of socialists, feminists and greens. In 2002 DLS launched Perspectives, a quarterly magazine of politics and culture, and appointed Sean as editor.
Sean was born in Bromley, Kent. His father, Max, was a barrister; his mother, June (nee Camplin), was a housewife. When he was one, his parents moved to Birkenhead in Merseyside, where, over the next 12 years, six more children were born: two boys and four girls.
After taking A-levels at Birkenhead Technical College, Sean went to Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham Trent University), where he came away with a degree in fine art and was elected to the executive committee of the students’ union, serving for 12 months as student liaison officer. It was during this period that he decided to join the CPGB.
On completing an MA in publishing at Essex University in 1978, Sean moved north and became an adoptive Glaswegian, joining the Partick branch of the CPGB and standing as a party candidate in local and regional elections. In 1987 he married Joyce Caulfield and started working as a graphic designer for Hampden Advertising. When the owner died unexpectedly, Sean took over as director in order to save the business and the jobs of its employees. Under his management it became the go-to printer for the broad left, and within a few years he was able to buy out the owner’s widow.
In 2019 he sold the business as a going concern and took up the piano, but Covid-19 and the need to care for Joyce after she suffered a life-changing accident put an end to his lessons. He nursed and supported her and only weeks after her death last September he was diagnosed with bowel cancer.
Sean was a quiet, reserved man, but behind an unassuming exterior beat a large and passionate heart. Meticulous in his professional life, he was a vegetarian and a lover of music and the arts.
He is survived by his siblings, Charles, Mark, Kate, Charlotte, Brigid and Miranda.
