From the website of the Scottish Socialist Party:
Red Ron Brown, former Labour MP for Leith and a founding member of the Scottish Socialist Party has died aged 69.
Colin Fox, SSP national convenor writes:
"The Scottish Socialist Party has today lost a dear comrade and friend. Say what you like about Ron Brown but he held true to his socialist principles to the very end. Very few of those Labour MP's he sat beside at Westminster between 1979 and 1992 can say that.
Ron was a founder member of the Scottish Socialist Party. His belief in working people and their determination to change the world was unshakeable and inspired us all.
"But it will be his commitment to trades union values, struggling for better pay and conditions and struggling against attacks from bosses and government that people will remember him most. He is a former President of Edinburgh TUC.
"Working people in Edinburgh owe Ron Brown a great deal. In particular the people of Leith. He represented them at many levels for many years, and he was first and foremost a Leither.
"I first heard him speak in the early 1980's. I was a Labour Party Young Socialist [yes there used to be such a thing] he was the 'firebrand' left wing Labour MP for Leith. Both of us retained our socialist beliefs, but looking back the list of those who abandoned them and brazenly embraced the establishment is long and monotonous- John Reid was in the Communist Party, Adam Ingram was in the Workers Revolutionary Party, Hugh Henry was in the Militant. Why even Gordon Brown used the 'S' word with abandon in those days. Ron saw Blairism for the deceit it was - the capitulation to brutal global market forces, the privatization of publicly owned assets, the warmongering and above all the vast wealth being taken from the poorest to feed the greed of the rich.
"As a trades union shop steward in the electrical and engineering unions he suffered a shocking accident at work which left him badly burned and scarred.
Above all Ron had optimism, an undying faith, in the determination of working people to fight against injustice, intolerance, exploitation, greed and misery the world over. That is the precious gift he leaves behind.
"Ron is survived by two sons and grandchildren. On behalf of the Scottish Socialist Party I offer his family our sincerest condolences."
