I’M NOT quite sure what Jack Larkin Jones’ family will think of Ian Cummings’ assumption that he was a Lord. The principled socialist that he was, he turned down his peerage.

He was awarded the CH, (Companions of Honour) and MBE for services to the trades union movement. I suppose one could argue he could have refused any honour but apparently he wouldn’t stoop to a peerage. I’m guessing he didn’t want to be with other former socialists in the Lords. Maybe he saw the honours he accepted as recognition for unions, not just his work.

Jack Jones was introduced to socialism after reading Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

I would certainly take with a large pinch of salt the story in the Daily Mail that he was a Soviet spy/agent.

My late father adored him as a campaigner for a better world and in later life, pensioners. He wanted a world free of war, poverty, unemployment and repression. Perhaps we can agree that he was a decent man?

TIM W SIRET Millmoor Crescent Eynsham