My husband, Fred Twine, who has died aged 83, was an analyst and campaigner on low pay and in-work poverty, whose work building union and policy support for a national minimum wage helped lead Labour to introduce it in 1999. In a career shaped by his early experiences growing up in working-class communities, his research and campaigning were always focused on improving people’s lives.
Fred was born in Bethnal Green, east London, the eldest of three sons of Cecilia (nee Ormes) and Fred Twine, a french polisher. He left the William Morris technical school in Walthamstow at 15 to become an apprentice draftsman with British Rail, where he studied electrical engineering and joined the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association union, the Labour party young socialists and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
