Jack Jones volunteered to fight fascists in Spain and went on to become one of the most powerful men in Britain as leader of the largest trade union.
His death at the age of 96 on Tuesday evening marked the passing a man who personified and pursued a socialist vision which he considered worth fighting and dying for.
If he was a young man today, where would he invest his extraordinary energies?
Anyone who reads Mr Jones’s obituaries will be struck by the utter transformation of politics which has taken place in less than a century.
When people remember the union movement of the 1970s they often recall the Winter of Discontent.
What is easily forgotten is the idealism and power of conviction which burned in men like Mr Jones. They envisaged a system of industrial democracy which would protect communities and drive the economy.
Wales today is drenched in the rhetoric of sustainable development and corporate social responsibility, but these commitments are essentially about restraining capitalism’s most self-destructive tendencies. While any effort by government and corporations to protect the planet for the next generation of consumers is welcome, such efforts represent a taming of market-driven democracy, not an alternative to it.
But within living memory, people of brain and brawn, idealism and action, invested hours away from family, television, wireless and pub in seeking to build a just society.
As Mr Jones and many other young idealists demonstrated when they volunteered to fight Franco’s forces in Spain, they had an uncompromising commitment to internationalism.
The irony today is that the rhetoric of spreading democracy through armed intervention is now associated with neoconservatives (many of whom were former Marxists) who successfully urged the Bush administration to give history a nudge by invading Iraq.
But as Mr Jones is laid to rest, it would be a mistake to write the final epitaph for his vision of border-crossing solidarity and justice.
Barack Obama’s internet-alert presidential campaign harnessed the rhetoric of change and transformation and excited at least as many people beyond the borders of the United States as those entitled to vote in the election.
Opinion polls for the most respected intellectual regularly honour radical luminaries such as Noam Chomsky. Visit the politics section of any mainstream bookshop and you will find a plethora of polemics against the dominance of corporations and growing inequality; these titles find readers because there is a gnawing sense among left and right-leaning people that something is wrong.
The new tools of social networking may well be used in the coming years to develop truly international groups of level-headed people committed to values Mr Jones would have shared.
If citizens can pool intellect and cash to help fight disease, share knowledge, defend rights and expose corruption, Mr Jones’s dream is not dead.
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