Union leader had heart transplant after catching virus while washing dog

30 January 2024 , 18:03

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Mark Serwotka has had a heart transplant (Image: Julian Hamilton/Daily Mirror)

Union leader Mark Serwotka is grateful he has a lively retirement to look forward to thanks to a heart transplant operation seven years ago.

Mark, 60, is retiring as the longest-serving leader of a major British trade union. Since 2000 he has been General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents 180,000 civil servants.

The orphan from Cardiff, adopted by a Polish-born miner, rose to the position after leaving school at 16 to work as a social security clerk. But his career and indeed his life were jeopardised when in 2000 a virus damaged his heart.

The illness took hold after his dog rolled in a dead fox it found on a walk, picking up a virus. Mark caught the virus when he washed the dog. It all-but killed his heart and for two years an electric pump kept him alive. A heart donor was finally found in 2016.

He says: “I’m incredibly grateful to the NHS and to the donor, it’s given me a new lease of life. December was the seventh anniversary of my transplant. I still go to Papworth twice a year.”

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Mark and Kevin in 2015 (Rowan Griffiths)

But he adds: “I am in remarkably good health. I’m definitely sort of healthier and fitter than I was before. When you’re given a second chance, you want to live long and healthy and you think, you know, of the sacrifices that others will have gone through. I know it’s a terrible, sad thing but a lot of the people don’t survive as long as me.

"So I’m incredibly grateful to be where I am now. And in part it’s why I’m retiring, because I sadly know too many people who didn’t get a retirement or died very early in retirement, including family members.”

Re-elected repeatedly after winning a court battle in 2002 against union right-wingers who tried to stop him taking office, the charismatic left-winger hands over to Fran Heathcote, who has been elected the PCS’s first female General Secretary.

Mark on picket line last year (PA)

He is proud of what the union achieved under his stewardship – pay battles, resisted pension cuts, saved jobs, battled anti-union laws and opposed the Rwanda exile plan.

And he is furious that Tory austerity put public services on their knees. He rejoined Labour in the Corbyn era after being booted out in 1992 and, unlike some alienated left-wingers, wants Keir Starmer in No10.

He says: “There will still be lots of difficulties. Labour won’t solve all the problems of low-paid workers and underfunded public services. But a Labour Government is better than a Conservative Government.”

Kevin Maguire