Last modified on Mon 11 Jan 2021 07.48 EST
A Balliol graduate who, to his eternal regret, just missed an Oxford rowing blue, Leif Mills was an unlikely figure to have been elected president of the TUC and to have regaled its general council for a decade with Greek and Latin tags and witty interjections.
With a briar in his hand, Mills, who has died aged 84, played up to his image as a pipe smoker and beer drinker. As chairman of the Covent Garden Market Authority (1998-2005), he had a brewer’s tap installed in the offices and would regularly join market porters for an early-morning pint.
Leif Mills, alumnus of Balliol and the Royal Military Police who became a union leader – obituary
At TUC meetings he had a habit of using Latin and Greek phrases, and he advised Margaret Thatcher on how to manage the hard Left
Leif Mills, keen pipe smoker
Credit: family
Leif Mills, who has died aged 84, was General Secretary of the white collar Banking, Insurance and Finance Union (BIFU, formerly the National Union of Bank Employees, NUBE) from 1972 to 1996.
Mills had an unusual CV for a trade union leader. He was a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, and when he became president of the TUC General Council in 1994-95 he declared himself proud to have made it to the top of “the last unclimbed peak of British life for the college”.