"I was born in 1925 in Throsk, outside Stirling. My father, James, was very badly wounded in World War One. He used to have to get shrapnel taken out of his arm every so often. Unfortunately, when we moved from Throsk to Glasgow, the poison spread and he died. He was only 42.

Our name should really be McCaffrey but some sergeant put a 't' in so all the documents were McCafferty. My mother was a fluent Gaelic speaker from Glencoe. There were five children: John, myself, James, Francis and Ina. We had another brother called Eddie but unfortunately he died in infancy.

I was about seven when we moved to Glasgow. It must have been a real wrench for my mother: to leave a nice place like Throsk and land in the Gorbals, among all that poverty and deprivation. We lived in a tenement, three storeys up.

We had neighbours from Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland, and an awful lot of Irish people. There was Jewish people who used to shout down to me on a Saturday. I'd go up and the fire was all set and all I had to do was put a match to the fire and a match to the gas and they gave me a penny.

When my father was living he had a pound a week pension but immediately he died, that pension died with him. What my mother got for raising the family was two shillings a week, it was nothing.

I can remember going to the British Legion one time and we got a parcel o'groceries. Old Mrs Kidd, down in the close, she used to shout: "Will you go a message for me?" And what was the message she was sending us for? A penny packet of tea. She couldn't afford a full packet of tea and this country had tea plantations all over the world! How could you see all this poverty around you and not react?

The May Day demonstration in Glasgow was fantastic, every band in Scotland would be playing.

I also remember the International Brigade. When I was going up Crown Street to school, the Communist Party had a shop there and in the window would be tins of milk and corned beef to go to Spain for the republicans. And the people of the Gorbals had nothing themselves. I couldn't really be selective because the injustice of poverty was all around me. I was a member of the Young Communist League in Glasgow for a while, then I gravitated to the Labour Party and was a member for many years.

I left school at 14 and served my time in the shipyards. I worked in nearly every shipyard on the River Clyde but the main one was Harland and Wolff in Govan. I was a riveter.

It was very noticeable that you never met a Catholic in certain trades in the shipyards because when you went for an interview, if your name wasn't identifiably Catholic they'd ask you what school you went to.

I'd say Holyrood RC Secondary, and more often than not you wouldn't get the job. There wasn't a head foreman anywhere that was a Catholic.

The sectarianism was atrocious when I was growing up in Glasgow but it has never been part of my outlook at all and I've had friends and workmates who were Orangemen. I spent 30-odd years with BICC as a jointer and we travelled all over Scotland, England and the east coast of Ireland. The last 15 years of my working life were spent on the railway.

I met my wife Sybil Rider, from Lancaster, in 1952, It was a five year courtship and we lived on Scotforth Road more than 30 years. When my wife died I got a smaller house. I've got four children, Robert, Linda, Sheena and Paul, nine grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

When I was a boy and I looked round at the poverty and deprivation in Glasgow it shaped my politics and I'm a lifelong socialist.

I'm not a member of any party now but I'm very involved in the Cuban Solidarity campaign and going to Cuba for the 45th anniversary of the revolution was fantastic.

I was also a member of the British Bulgarian Trade Union Association and I've visited Bulgaria at least 25 times. I'm not just a tourist; I'm really with the people.

At 84, I'm the oldest member of the Trades Council. I subscribe to many different organisations helping poorer people all over the world and I buy Fairtrade products whenever I can.

When it was my 80th birthday, on my birthday cake there was a picture of me, wearing my late friend Billy Knox's hat, standing in front of Che Guevara's mausoleum with three quarters of a million Cubans singing their national anthem. I made a little speech and I said: "It does my heart good to see so many people here, good friends and family. It looks as if I gathered many friends in my journey through life, which I appreciate."