Ron Singer

Ron Singer was brought up in north London and studied medicine at Clare College, Cambridge, and King’s. His ambition to become a haematologist was thwarted when he developed keratoconus. He changed direction to healthcare of the elderly and then general practice after the first attempts at corneal transplants failed.

Ron was an uncompromising socialist. As a junior doctor in the 1970s, he was featured on the front page of the Daily Mirror in an article by John Pilger, outlining the horrors of the cuts affecting Hackney Hospital. Ron organised 45 junior doctor colleagues into signing a statement that cuts meant patients were not being admitted to hospital through lack of beds.

In 1975 Ron had a leading role in the junior doctors’ strike to shorten the 80-120 hour working week. Forty years on he campaigned with today’s junior doctors, supporting them in their strike against the attempt by the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to impose an “unsafe and unfair” …