Communist prime ministers, being totally subservient to the party apparatchiki, seldom made international headlines and were often shadowy, minor figures even in their own countries. Yet Constantin Dascalescu had his 15 minutes of unsavoury fame. He had been made Prime Minister in 1982 when Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu was enduring a ferocious austerity brought about by the dictator’s determination to pay back the foreign debt accumulated over the previous decade. Dascalescu’s “fame” was to be earned by dealing with the social distress that the programme inevitably caused.

The first major occasion for intervention was in Brasov in 1987 when enraged and famished workers from the Red Star Tractor Factory downed tools, marched into town and sacked the Communist Party offices. Dascalescu was sent to negotiate with them and calm them down. Two years later he was sent to perform a similar function in Timisoara. It was the beginning of the revolt that was to topple Ceausescu. He, however, was off to Iran to negotiate defence contracts, and Dascalescu was sent to Timisoara to contain the problem. Once there he refused to talk to what he called “hooligans”.

The name stuck and in future months students, resisting what they considered to be the continuance of communist dictatorship under another name, ironically referred to themselves as “Hooligans”. Dascalescu failed in Timisoara and the revolt soon spread to Bucharest and then throughout the country. In the early days of the chaotic Romanian revolution there were attempts to establish a new communist regime without Ceausescu, and Dascalescu was one of the two front-runners for the post of new party boss.

By then, however, it was too late for such a solution. Dascalescu was arrested and charged with genocide. The charge was later changed to that of murder and Dascalescu was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1991. He left his cell because of a failing heart which caused his death.

Rachel (Bunty) Lewin, medical social worker, was born on January 16, 1921. She died on April 23, 2003, aged 82.

With her work as a medical social worker, Bunty Lewin played a key role in the postwar years within the new welfare state. Her contribution was primarily in the field of care of the elderly and infirm, and in the voluntary sector.

After ten years working on the rehousing in Lambeth of patients of St Thomas’ Hospital, she moved to Bristol where, in 1972, she founded Third Hand, a scheme that encouraged GPs to take on social workers within their practices. This was later adopted nationally.

She was born at Northaw, in Hertfordshire, where her father was the vicar. In 1938 she went up to St Andrews University, but at the outbreak of the war she was called home. In 1942 she became a Royal Navy VAD supervisor at the Royal Naval Hospital at Chatham.

At the end of the war she moved to London and began training as an almoner at the London School of Economics and the Institute of Almoners, and in 1947 she was appointed assistant almoner at St Thomas’ Hospital. She was also involved in the rehousing of Lambeth residents. In 1957 she became head almoner at the United Bristol Hospitals.

From 1979 until 1985 she held a senior lectureship at Bristol Polytechnic. This was a challenging time, when her traditionalist views of social care came up against more modern theories, but students who were initially hostile were soon won over by her caring personality and practical approach.