Ron Singer obituary

My friend and stepfather, Ron Singer, who has died aged 71 following a heart attack, was a doctor, trade unionist and socialist.

A GP who was passionate about organising doctors into a union, Ron was chair of the Medical Practitioners’ Union, later Doctors in Unite, (2000-14), and represented the union on the GP committee of the British Medical Association for more than 20 years.

In 1975 Ron had led a junior doctors’ strike to shorten the 80- to 120-hour working week. Forty years on he campaigned with today’s junior doctors, supporting their strike against the Tories’ attempt to impose an “unsafe and unfair” contract.

In 2012 he pursued the then health secretary Andrew Lansley down a corridor at the Royal Free hospital, insisting that he should answer questions about the health and social care bill, which furthered privatisation of health service provision. Ron wrote for the Guardian on both these matters.

Born in east London, Ron was the son of Louis Singer, who ran a furniture retail business, and Patricia (nee Kempner). Louis died when Ron was seven, and Pat took over the family business. She went on to own and run the Best of British shop in Bloomsbury, selling handmade craft items. Ron went to William Ellis school in Highgate. After studying medicine at Clare College, Cambridge, and training at King’s College hospital, London, he qualified in 1973, and began working as a junior doctor the following year at the Hackney hospital.

Ron immediately began to organise his fellow workers at the hospital, and led a campaign against cuts. In January 1977 he was featured on the front page of the Daily Mirror in an article about his campaign by the journalist John Pilger.

From the early 1980s Ron worked as a GP partner at the Forest Road practice in Edmonton, north-east London, where he stayed for more than 25 years. He was widely respected and loved by colleagues and patients alike.

Ron campaigned to defend local services and to extend healthcare to vulnerable people. In all he did, he was a voice for the voiceless, a principled yet considered colleague, and always committed to his patients and community. He lived his politics.

Ron found love later in life when he met my mum, Jan Blake, a health visitor, in 2005. Their home was full of love, hospitality and music – Ron was a talented trumpeter and loved jazz – and they married in 2018.

Earlier this year Ron was due to have a defibrillator fitted. The procedure was cancelled twice due to a shortage of anaesthetists.

He is survived by Jan, his stepchildren, Liam and me, and his sister, Jill.