Former Timex worker and Lochee councillor Charlie Malone will be laid to rest on what would have been his 64th birthday.
Mr Malone was born on August 16 1960 and raised in Lochee.
The impact of the jute industry had attracted Irish workers to Lochee in the 19th Century and members of his family were employed at Camperdown Works.
Mr Malone was proud of his Irish heritage.
He enjoyed a happy childhood with siblings Bernadette, Tracy, Gary and Rory.
His parents were lifelong socialists and strong influences on Mr Malone.
He was politically engaged from an early age and became a principled socialist and passionate advocate for equality, fairness and social justice.
His lifelong commitment to socialism never wavered.
Timex career began in 1976
Mr Malone was educated at St Clement’s Primary School and Lawside Academy.
At weekends he volunteered at the psychiatric hospital his parents worked at.
In 1976 he started his apprenticeship at US-owned Timex in Dundee, which employed 6,000 people and was the UK’s largest supplier of watches.
Mr Malone became active in the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union.
Everyone in the city knew of someone who worked at Timex.
Its employees were some of the most advanced in championing workers’ rights.
By the end of the 1970s, the business had started to feel the pinch of the global recession and the relentless pressure of cheap imports of digital watches.
Timex found sub-contract work in new technologies, such as the Nimslo 3D camera and Sinclair computers.
The saddest day in Dundee’s industrial history unfolded when Nimslo decided to cease production of their 3D camera at the Milton of Craigie plant in 1983.
Timex also decided to bring to an end their traditional watchmaking operations and started a formal consultation on 1,900 redundancies.
The job cuts were virtually half its workforce and 1,700 were secured voluntarily.
The remaining 200 would be compulsory redundancies.
On April 8 Mr Malone was among the Timex employees who resisted compulsory redundancy by occupying the plant during a six week sit-in.
The campaign ended in victory for the workers.
But the sun was setting on Timex
Ten years later he was one of the workers who voted in favour of industrial action to save the Timex factory at Camperdown.
Timex management, led by Peter Hall, responded by sacking all strikers – some 343 people – and hiring new workers at lower wages.
Mr Malone chaired the strike committee in the six-month industrial dispute that followed, and brought him to such unsought local prominence.
Timex closed its doors for the last time on August 29 1993.
“It was a really tough time for the workers,” he said afterwards.
“And I credit that dispute with igniting in me a need to help others.”
He was unable to get a job after the 1993 dispute.
He studied commerce at university and gained a first class honours degree.
Mr Malone became a lecturer at Abertay University.
He eventually became head of the division of accounting, business and management.
A passionate believer in the importance of education as a route to social mobility, he was dedicated to his students.
He was highly respected for his innovative approaches to learning, including leading the Innovation for Global Growth Project.
Mr Malone described his most rewarding achievement as being recognised by students for his approaches to teaching through the Students Association Awards.
Charlie Malone entered the political arena in 2017
He was increasingly concerned about poverty and poor health outcomes in Lochee.
Mr Malone wanted to help his community.
He stood for the Lochee Ward for Labour in May 2017.
He won.
Lochee was in his blood.
He took great pride in representing a community he grew up in.
In September 2018 Mr Malone took a very public stand against austerity.
He declined an invite to the opening of the Dundee V&A, which cost £80 million to build.
“As a councillor in a ward that suffers from areas of multiple deprivation — where poverty affects one in three children — I cannot indulge,” he said.
“Many of my constituents will never be able to afford to take their families to visit the exhibitions, nor indeed, the bus fare.
“In the last few months, I have met people who did not have enough money to feed themselves or their kin properly because of the grinding consequences of austerity.
“Poverty is not a lifestyle, it‘s a punishment for the weakest for the failure of others.”
The stance he took was a measure of the man.
Opening up about his mental health issues
Mr Malone was re-elected in 2022.
He reached out to people and became an authentic and trusted voice for Lochee.
He was also a workaholic.
Mr Malone opened up about the reasons why he threw himself into his work.
He marked Mental Health Awareness Week 2022 at Abertay by addressing students about his own demons.
Typically, he went public to encourage others to realise they were not alone.
“Now I’m approaching the end of my career, I feel it’s time to start talking about my struggles with my mental health,” he said at the time.
“I was first diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder, or GAD, when I was 21.
“As well as GAD I’ve had brushes with PTSD and depression.
“I’ve never really spoken openly about these illnesses, not even to professionals.
“Work has been my escape.
“All my adult life I’ve been a workaholic.
“The truth is, my addiction to my work is borne out of an intrinsic need to keep busy and concentrate on absolutely anything other than myself or my problems.”
His life’s work was to improve people’s lives and contribute to making workplaces and society fairer and more equal for workers and communities.
“Sometimes people think history is written from the pens of others,” he once said.
“It is not.
“It is written in the memories of those who experience events – working class consciousness cannot be imitated.”
Family man who gave so much to others
An internationalist, he campaigned against apartheid and condemned the “suffering and denied legitimacy of the Palestinians”.
Mr Malone derived great pleasure from his family life.
He was dad to Marc and Stephen and grandfather to Freya.
He enjoyed travel with his wife Lorraine and family and they shared an interest in outdoor bowling as members of the Lochee Bowling Club.
There was understandable shock when he passed away under the care of Roxburghe House in Dundee at the age of 63 on July 29.
His death brought tributes from all sides of the political divide.
And a book of condolence was opened for colleagues and students at Abertay.
But the loss was most keenly felt across the Lochee ward he called home.
One tribute from a local stood out and summed him up best.
“Charlie was a working class Lochee lad who always looked after his own.”
- His funeral will take place at James Ashton in Lochee High Street at 11am on Friday August 16, followed by a celebration of his life at the Logie Club.
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