London - The leader of Britain's biggest union spoke of his joy yesterday after tracking down a secret family of three brothers and several aunts, nephews and nieces.
Mr Rodney Bickerstaffe (53), general secretary of public service union Unison, was brought up alone by his mother, Elizabeth, a nurse, until she married when he was 11. He never knew his father. But recent inquiries have unearthed his father's family in Ireland.
Mr Bickerstaffe said his 78-year-old mother told him for the first time about a wartime romance in London with an Irish carpenter named Tommy Simpson. She gave him an address in Dublin, which Mr Bickerstaffe visited in the autumn, when he was in the Republic for a trade union conference.
Weeks later the first reunion was held, while Mr Bickerstaffe was attending the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool in October. Since then there has since been a full reunion in Dublin.