Who was General Secretary of SOGAT from 1983 to 1985, the first woman to lead a major trade union?
Brenda Dean Brenda Dean Brenda Dean, Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, (29 April 1943 – 13 March 2018) was a British trade unionist and Labour Party politician. As general secretary of SOGAT from 1985 until 1991, she was "the first woman elected to head a major industrial trade union." She was born in Salford; her father was a railway signalman and her mother worked in a carpet factory. As a child the family moved to Eccles, and she attended Stretford High School for Girls. She began her career as a trade unionist as a teenager, initially as a member of the National Union
Brenda Dean of Printing, Book-binding and Paper Workers. In 1972 she became assistant secretary of the Manchester branch of the print union SOGAT (Society of Graphical and Allied Trades), and became involved in negotiations over the introduction of new technology to the printing industry. Rising through the union hierarchy, she became President of SOGAT in 1983, and was elected as its General Secretary in 1985, becoming "the first woman elected to lead a major industrial union". She recognised the threats to her members' jobs of impending changes in the print industry, and, it later became clear, held private meetings with Rupert Murdoch