Clare McDermott

I was really sad to learn of the death of Clare.

I was the Moscow bureau chief and the Moscow-end Olympic Games Reuter advance organiser in 1980 when he brought his team out, only to have a strike declared in London at the end of the first week which NUJ members were all supposed to join. As far as I remember, it was in support of the Guild in a dispute with management in New York. Although an NUJ member, Clare was given union dispensation as an executive to continue working, and he worked himself into the ground over the final week of the Games. Dave Nicholson and Ron Cooper, one or two others in the Olympics team, and the Moscow bureau staff were also all given the nod by the union to carry on.

Despite the pressures of trying to cover the Games with only about 10 people, I saw Clare only twice show a glimpse of his famous temper - the first when Soviet security guards made him take his belt off at the entrance to the Press Centre one morning. These were days long before this became a common occurrence at airports. The second was when a couple of Soviet journalists came round to the Reuter office asking why our strikers were aiding the British government’s campaign to undermine the Games - Margaret Thatcher had wanted the British Olympic Committee to boycott Moscow together with the US Committee and others over the invasion of Afghanistan the previous year. Clare, towering over them and glowering, gave the Soviet reporters short shrift. “Where’s your working class solidarity?” he demanded, not totally in jest.

“We don't take orders from any government.” The Soviet reporters retreated. But it didn’t stop them writing that Reuters reporters had succumbed to pressure from “the banks of the Thames” to stop writing about the Games.

In the event, despite the reduced team, I think we came out alright, largely because of Clare’s determination to make sure we did. ■