Murray began his career as a journalist but has been a senior official for various trade unions over a couple of decades . After forty years in the Communist Party of Great Britain ( CPGB ) and then the Communist Party of Britain , he joined the Labour Party towards the end of 2016 . He was chair of the Stop the War Coalition from its formation in 2001 until June 2011 , and again from September 2015 to 2016 . Murray was born in 1958 to Peter Drummond-Murray of Mastrick , a stockbroker and banker who was Slains Pursuivant from 1981 to 2009 , and The Honourable Barbara Mary Hope , daughter of former Conservative MP and governor of the Madras Presidency in British India from 1940 to 1946 Lord Rankeillour . He was educated at Worth School , a Benedictine independent boarding school in Sussex . Murray left school at 16 with 4 ' O ' levels . After working as a messenger at '' Reader 's Digest '' and a copy boy for the '' International Herald Tribune '' , he undertook journalism training at the '' Sussex Express '' . Murray was appointed as a parliamentary lobby correspondent at the age of 19 . In this post , he " marched with a million Leningraders to mark the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1977 " and was reportedly the first journalist at the scene when Airey Neave was assassinated in 1979 by the Irish National Liberation Army . From 1986 to 1987 , he worked for the Soviet Novosti news agency . He was also a '' Morning Star '' journalist , a publication to which he still contributes . At the Transport and General Workers Union , an organisation for which Murray worked from 1987 to 1998 and again from 2003 , he was heavily involved in the conduct of the British Airways cabin crew strike of 1997 , and in the successful general secretary election campaigns of Bill Morris ( 1991 and 1995 ) and Tony Woodley ( 2003 ) and , after the formation of Unite as a merger of the T&G and Amicus , of Len McCluskey in 2010 . Murray was appointed as chief of staff for Unite in 2011 following Len McCluskey 's election as general secretary late the previous year . Responsible for most of the union 's central departments and for its ten regions , he was elected to the TUC General Council in April 2011 . Ahead of the public sector pension strike , he was named by Education Secretary Michael Gove in November 2011 as being , along with McCluskey and Mark Serwotka , one of three union " militants " who were " itching for a fight " . He has also worked as an official for the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen ( ASLEF )
assassinated in 1979
Assassination of Airey Neave
Andrew Murray (trade unionist)