Tony was born into what he described as “a privileged, skilled working class family.” His grandmother was left well provided for by a Bohemian associate, part of Tony’s Czech connection. This enabled Tony’s father to obtain a good education at what was later to become South Bank University. Tony’s father worked installing lifts in residential houses and railway stations while his mother was a servant cleaner.

Tony failed his 11-plus and so went to an elementary school, missing out on the chance of higher education like so many working class children. He left school at 14  and joined the Communist Party in the 1930s after meeting the ceramicist and one-time Southwark party candidate in local elections, Nell Vyse, at a meeting where he heard Harry Pollitt speaking.

When war broke out, he was called up and was given a basic training on radio and equipment maintenance as a member of RAF ground staff. He was based in a number of places, including Bridgnorth in Shropshire, Henlow in Bedfordshire, Kirkham near Blackpool and on the Wirral as an armourer.

Tony recalled that the most interesting part of his life in the air force was his political awakening. One of Tony’s colleagues at Henlow base was Jack Sherman, a leading comrade who produced a monthly war newspaper. Tony and others were released from duties by their enlightened commanding officer to help Jack produce the paper and to organise troop entertainment. Tony recalled that, on his base alone, they had daily sales of 120 Daily Workers, which Tony collected and distributed at the base.  

After the war, in Staithes, Yorkshire, where party comrades had organised an educational week, he met his future wife Florence (neé Denham) who ran the party bookshop in Middlesbrough. She had previously worked in a local steel factory. They married in 1948.

Florence was very active in the peace movement, in the British Peace Committee — the British section of the World Peace Council, founded 1949 — which was a forerunner of CND, founded in 1958. She also did a lot of groundwork in preparation for the Helsinki Accords on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975, which was a big breakthrough in the cold war. Tony became treasurer of the World Disarmament Campaign, founded in 1979 by Fenner Brockway and Philip Noel-Baker, and later became vice president of Uniting for Peace.

Florence worked as secretary to George Elvin the then general secretary of the cine technicians union, ACTT. She also worked for London Trades Council and in the office of Soviet Weekly. She would go on to organise big concerts, including one in the Festival Hall for the British Peace Committee and the party and she and Tony would organise art exhibitions in their home to raise money for various progressive causes.

After being demobbed Tony was given the opportunity to do a one-year crash teacher training course in Worcester, specialising in history and art, although he said the history course was boring, concentrating only on the British constitution.

He first taught in a primary school near Elephant and Castle, then at Langbourne Primary School in Southwark, moving on to Friars Primary School and Webber Street  in Blackfriars where he became deputy head. It was one of the schools called out on strike by the NUT.

At that time the NUT was primarily a professional association. Tony became active in Southwark NUT and was very proud of his role in a campaign to affiliate the union to the TUC and turn it into a more militant, bona fide trade union. Tony was also active in campaigning for the Stockholm Peace Petition, collecting over 800 signatures from locals. Soon afterwards he was called to the local education office to explain his involvement, but once Tony explained his reasons the education authority left him alone.

Tony was a member of the Communist Party’s London education advisory committee. He was elected chair of Southwark NUT on two occasions,  helped establish and was an active contributor to the party’s education journal, Education for Today (today no longer a party journal but continuing under the title Education for Tomorrow) and attended his union conference year after year.

Southwark, in the 1940s, had four CP branches. Tony soon became a Southwark party  branch secretary  and a public speaker for the party. Every Sunday the party held open air meetings at the end of East Lane. Once, when the police tried to stop the meeting, he was arrested along with other comrades. He was also involved with other leading comrades, including Joe Bent, in a big housing campaign for the building of more council housing.

Tony was appointed head of a primary school in 1973 after applying unsuccessfully for a number of jobs — he was undoubtedly on a blacklist as a well-known communist and union activist. He retired in 1983, aged 63, after teaching for 36 years.

In retirement Tony became very active in the pensioners movement, helping to establish the Southwark Pensioners Action Group and participating in national Pensioners Parliaments.  

Tony continued his Communist Party work well into the 1980s as an active member of Dulwich branch. There he used not just his political skills but also his musical talents as a pianist to organise fundraising events for the branch. He left the CP in solidarity with those expelled from the party and towards the end of his life joined the Labour Party in support of Jeremy Corbyn.

He remained a strong supporter of the Morning Star and Marx Memorial Library to the end of his 98 years.