The seventh of Aristides Inácio da Silva and Eurídice Ferreira de Mello’s eight children, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was born on 27 October 1945 in the small town of Garanhuns in the state of Pernambuco in north-east Brazil. Aristides had left his family to work as a stevedore in the port of Santos, near São Paulo, and it was only at the age of five that Lula first met his father.

In December 1952 Eurídice and her children left Pernambuco in the hope of finding a better life in south-east Brazil, embarking on a thirteen-day journey in the back of a truck to the state of São Paulo. They settled in a poor district of the coastal town of Guarujá.

Lula attended a local school, but by the age of seven he was also supplementing the family income by selling peanuts, tapioca and oranges on the streets of Guarujá.

In 1956 Eurídice, who had separated from her husband, took her children to live in the city of São Paulo in a single room at the back of a bar in the district of Ipiranga. Outside school hours, Lula worked as a shoe-shine boy and ran deliveries for a dry-cleaner’s.

Lula left school at the age of fourteen, working first in a warehouse and then a factory which made screws. While employed at the factory he started a three-year part-time course in order to qualify as a mechanic and lathe-operator.

In January 1966 he started work at Indústrias Villares, one of Brazil’s biggest metallurgical companies, located in São Bernardo do Campo in the industrial area of metropolitan São Paulo known as the ‘ABC’. It was there, through his brother José, that Lula first got involved in trade union activities.