Life-long campaigner and Trade Union activist, Keith Howard ‘Andy’ Andrews, has died aged 101. In 1936, Andy was one of the first of around 2500 from Britain and Ireland to volunteer to join the Spanish Republican army in its struggle against the forces of General Franco and his German and Italian backers.

Andy was born in Kilburn, north-west London, in February 1907. At the age of 16 he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and in 1924 was posted to Quetta, in British India. In 1926 Andy was posted to Shanghai, to help protect British interests, prior to the April 1927 massacres of Chinese communists and trades unionists by Chaing-Kai Sheck’s right-wing Nationalist troops.

Andy became a member of the Independent Labour Party and then, in 1931, the Communist Party. During a Mosley rally at the Albert Hall in March 1936, Andy was thrown down several flights of stairs and beaten up in full view of the police who, he recounted, stood by smiling. In August of the same year, Andy travelled to Spain in a British ambulance donated by the Spanish Medical Aid Committee. He stayed in Spain as a front-line hospital worker for over 18 months, attached to both British and other International Brigade units. Andy served at field hospitals at some of the toughest battles in the civil war; on more than one occasion hospitals Andy was working in were attacked by German or Italian airplanes or shell-fire. Following Franco’s successful assault in Aragon in the Spring of 1938, which cleaved the Republic in two, Andy returned home to Britain.

During the Second World War Andy served in the Royal Artillery, and was part of the British Forces evacuated under fire from Dunkirk in 1940. After the war and demobilisation Andy moved to Somerset and became an active member of the Taunton Peace Group, the South West TUC and local trade union councils. In 1955 he established a branch of COHSE at Taunton hospital, and was Branch secretary and Taunton Trades Council delegate until he retired at the age of 65 in 1972.

In 2006, aged 99, he rejoined the Communist Party, joined the Taunton Peace Group and thereafter was seen regularly on the streets of Taunton handing out leaflets protesting against the renewal of Trident nuclear missiles. The following year Andy delivered a passionate speech at the Glastonbury festival, attacking the British National Party.

Prominent figures in the British Labour and peace movements came together in Taunton in February this year to pay tribute to Andy on his 101st birthday. Messages from veteran former Labour MP Tony Benn and Kate Hudson, chair of CND were read out, and many speakers from the local trade union and peace movement came forward to add their good wishes.

Andy Andrews died on 7 May 2008, following a short illness.