Two very different fighters lost

TONY BENN at Bread and Roses club in Clapham, welcoming American trade unio nits from US Labor Against the War.


Below, MICK ABBOTT, wearing Shrewsbury pickets tee shirt, with Ricky Tomlinson and other campaigners, at Westminster.   

AS though the death of RMT leader Bob Crow was not enough, we have lost two other fighters from our side, two men from very different backgrounds, TONY BENN and MICK ABBOTT, both of whom dedicated their lives to the cause of socialism and the working class, and both of them sadly missed. 

Warm tributes have poured in to Tony Benn from all sorts of people who genuinely admired him and appreciated his contribution to the movement and British politics. Often they come with memories of this or that speech which inspired the listener, or occasions when  they were grateful for Tony Benn's support. It must niggle Labour's self-styled "modernisers", if they are not too thick-skinned, to reflect that Benn's popularity is unlikely to ever accrue to the likes of Tony Blair.

There's some question which the genuine Benn admirers have found more sickening, the hypocritical and patronising praise for Tony Benn now he's dead from politicians who opposed eveything he stood for when alive; or the way some old adversaries have been coaxed back out of obscurity to denounce Benn before he is buried. He has been accused of splitting Labour, and being "destructive", and this by people like Shirley Williams who broke from the Labour Party to form the SDP and encourages her Lib Dem colleagues to back the coalition's attack on the NHS. 

They accuse Benn of "resisting new ideas", and Williams, whose own "new idea" when a Labour minister of Education was to propose replacing student grants by loans, says "Tony was yearning for a world that was gone. …He didn’t really recognise that the world was becoming global." Really? Is that the man I remember as Anthony Wedgwood Benn, dragging Parliament into the 20th century so he didn't have to become Lord Stansgate? The Postmaster General who opened the GPO Tower in London to the public? The champion of Concorde (part built in his Bristol constituency) who restored that "e" at the end as an earnest of Anglo-French co-operation?  

I was never one of Tony Benn's uncritical fans, and won't pretend so now. I even attacked him on occasion. (Like when he fell into bad company -i.e. Socialist Action and its Serb nationalist chums who formed the 'Committee for Peace in the Balkans'.) 

But on the positive side, I remember my Mum and Dad, admonishing my youthful cynicism, saying that " At least he fought to stay out of the House of Lords when most of them could not wait to get in there". My Dad, one of the disappointed generation,  still jeered bitterly about "Earl Attlee" and rarely had a good word for any politician, so praise from him was praise indeed. Benn earned it,and thus probably persuaded a lot of people that politics and voting was still worthwhile..

Second, I saw a message on Facebook (unfortunately I did not save it) from someone involved in support for the Hillingdon hospital cleaners' fight. These were mainly Asian women, who found themselves in the frontline fighting the privatisers, as they resisted having their wages cut. They were delighted when Benn accepted an invite to speak at a public meeting in their support in Southall. Apparently more than they got from Southall's then Labour MP (or some in the union).

Thirdly, talking of new ideas, during Benn's time as Industry Minister he took his belief in democracy beyond the palace of Westminster by supporting workers who took over their factories to resist sackings and closures. Skeptical as we were about things like the Meriden co-op for their utopian aspect, and the danger they could descend into class collaboration before reaching a dead end, it is worth thinking about them again today's context (as well as contrasting Benn's efforts with New Labour's distance from anything involving workers). One workers' occupation may be worth a thousand words about "nationalisation" in a left-wing paper.  And  even naive co-operatives are better than Labour MPs and councils demanding, as some recently did, tougher action against squatting.


I don't know whether Tony Benn was ever associated with the campaign for the Shrewsbury building pickets. (perhaps someone can tell us?) .But Mick Abbott, who died at his home in Wigan on February 27, most certainly was. I think Mick was one of the Wigan building workers who brought the issue of the jailed pickets on to a march in Preston called by the union in 1974, and he was one of the leaders of the march from Wigan to London the following year, as well as accompanying Ricky Tomlinson to the TUC in Blackpool. Having worked so hard to keep the issue alive when others, not least the Labour and trade union leaders, preferred trying to bury it, Mick came to the fore in the more recent campaign to bring out the truth about what happened to the pickets, hidden in still secret government documents, as w ell having the sentences squashed.

Unlike Benn, Mick was not born into a privileged background and did not have a career in politics. He was one of 12 siblings born in Kirkdale, Liverpool, on March 24, 1939, and he worked most of his life -when he could - in the construction industry. Married to Mary, and a father of four, he was a warm, friendly man with a typically Scouse sense of humour, but he could be serious, whether patiently reasoning with employers, or winning the confidence of fellow workers.

There were 400 people, relatives and friends, at his funeral to pay tribute, but as for fame, if his name did not make the papers or television, he had a different kind, in the dossier compiled on him for over 40 years by the secretive Consulting Association, financed by big construction companies. Like more than 3,000 other building workers and others, having acquired a name for asking for decent conditions and reporting safety breaches, Michael Abbott found himself not wanted time and again for work that was going on the sites.     

 Working as a scaffolder, Mick was also a TGWU shop steward on several sites, and with his brother Terry, also TGWU, he led a strike at  Stanlow oil refinery in Cheshire. An earlier major dispute came during the construction of Fiddlers Ferry power station near Warrington. A 1964 CA entry states: “Mr Abbott said: ‘I started on the Monday morning and the guy who was in charge said to us he wouldn’t take his lads up on the wet steel. At about 10.30am that morning an old man about 62, a steel erector, came hurtling down and was impaled on the steel barriers. We are always having to fight for safer conditions in the construction industry.’”

When I met the Wigan building workers contingent on that Preston march in 1974 they were surprised to hear that I was working on the Heysham power station site, having used somewhat irregular methods to get on site without going through Taylor Woodrow, the main contractor. They told me that none of them, who had been at Fiddlers Ferry, had been able to get a job at Heysham.

Taylor Woodrow was a major subscriber to the Consulting Association, and before that, to its predecessor, the right-wing Economic League. When the the CA's offices in Droitwich were raided in 2009 as part of an investigation by the Information Commissioners Office, a total of 3,200 names were discovered on its database. Among documents found were invoices showing that 44 construction firms, including some of the UK’s biggest, were regularly using the database. David Clancy, ICO investigations manager, gave evidence to an employment tribunal that some of the information in files used to blacklist workers “could only be supplied by the police or security services.”

It was during the 1972 building strike, the first national strike in the industry, that Mick Abbott got to know Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson, who were later jailed on "conspiracy" charges for their part in organising pickets during the strike. At his trial, Des Warren famously said that the only conspiracy had been betwen the big employers, the Tory government, and the police. When Labour got in Home Secretary Roy Jenkins -another of the SDP "gang of four" - refused to release the two pickets, who spent more time in jail under Labour than they had under the Conservatives. A later Labour Home secretary, Jack Straw, told MPs that government documents concerning the Shrewsbury trial must be kept secret for reasons of "national security".

Talking about the CA blacklist, Mick Abbott said last year; “My file goes back to 1964, and the last entry says that I rekindled the campaign for justice for the Shrewsbury picketers in 2006. They have been watching me all these years and passing this information around, blighting my life over four decades.”

Banned from sites, Mick became self-employed, installing kitchens. But he continued campaigning, including support for the Construction Safety Campaign, and the Blacklist Support Group, as well as the Justice for Shrewsbury 24 pickets campaign. In 2012 he met MPs on the Scottish Affairs select Committee who were discussing the effect of blacklisting. He had previously been with Ricky Tomlinson and other activists to a meeting in the Commons about the Shrewsbury case, and he carried on campaigning even though he was seriously ill.

But then Mick Abbott along with other campaigners found themselves up against another kind of obstruction, something which we have been aware of for some time, but refuses to explain itself and therefore remains to be explained. Some people within the Shrewsbury campaign have set themselves up as the "official" campign, according to their website, casting aspersions on activists, and winding the campaign down. Here, added to a tribute to Mick Abbott, is some experience narrated by Pete Farrell:
 

In December 2013 Mike dispite suffering from just having had chemo went along with others from the Justice for Shrewsbury National committee to the press conference at Parliament. We were prevented from going in by Police who had been told by E.Turnbull we were not invited.  (Eileen Turnbull is a researcher and treasurer for the campaign) Mike had re-established the present campaign in 2006 after having looked after Des Warren and promised Des before he died he would, a man of his word. Mike had as a young man marched from Wigan to London with others demanding their release ! Why is this woman so frightened of the truth ? Why did she walk away without explanation from the National Committee which had a democratic constitution and ignore it ? Why did the Annual Shrewsbury march get cancelled listen to Bob Crow and R.Tomlinson at the rally Ricky states Mike Abbott has spent 30 years fighting for Justice, where's Justice for Mike ? Lets have the truth !

SHREWSBURY marchers ready to start. The marches attracted a wide range of trade union activists and some young people learning about the pickets' case for the first time. Why did the marches stop?


Obituary for Michael Abbott 

liverpool-news/politicians-call-release-secret-documents-3338978 

MPs vote for release of papers 

True to the End. Norman Harding

SAD NEWS reaches me from friends in the North.

Dear comrades

Norman died a few hours ago. I understand from his stepson Graham that he had been free of pain over the past 2-3 days thanks to care by staff at St Gemma's in Leeds. A vigil had been maintained at his bedside by family members for the last day or so.

After his admission to St James' Hospital in Leeds with a serious chest infection, Norman's stay there became a nightmare as they were unable to control his pain properly. His underlying condition was pulmonary fibrosis that possibly resulted from his time working as a cutter in the textile industry. He went home 2 weeks ago, but it soon became clear that he and his wife Pauline could not cope. His admission to a rehabilitation unit still didn't relieve his pain and lack of rest, so he was taken to St Gemma's palliative care unit last Thursday. I spoke with him on Friday and he had managed to sleep and was lucid and free of pain, though very frail.

Others have told me that he continued to be pain free over the weekend, but sedatives made it increasingly difficult for him to converse. At the end his family was with him.
As soon as funeral arrangements are settled I will let you all know.
         
 STEVE

When Norman Harding was admitted to St.James's Hospital in Leeds for that last painful period of his life, he was not far from where he grew up, in Shakespeare Street. His travels in between were eventful, and far from easy. 
 
Norman was born on 25 June 1929, just before the great depression. His dad was an engineer, but because of the slump he had to take part time work on the railways. His mother worked in a mill, and Norman remembered hearing how she secured a wage rise for the mill workers by taking the advice of her father, which was to kick the belt off the pulley which powered the looms

Wikipedia tells us that Norman Harding's father played piano, singing in public houses to supplement the family's income, but also sang at Leeds Town Hall in a production of Handel's Messiah, and with the Huddersfield Choral Society. That helps explain something I discovered when staying in the same flat as Norman from 1976-7, his knowledge and appreciation of music. He knew his Jussi Bjorling from his Count John McCormick, and more beside.

Leaving school aged 14, in 1943, Norman did various jobs before starting as a trimmer at John Barran’s clothing factory.

It was after the war that Norman Harding was called up for National Service, completing his basic training at RAF Padgate, RAF Honiley, Castle Bromwich, and Hereford. Sent to Germany, he served in the RAF's 5352 Wing at Hamburg’s Fuhlsbüttel airport, which was involved with the Berlin Airlift. Although fraternisation was still forbidden he made friends with German families in the area, strengthening his view that ordinary working people of whatever nationality would find more in common with each other than with the officer class.

After being demobbed, Norman went back to the clothing trade in Leeds, becoming a delegate for the Leeds No. 2 branch of the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers, and then a delegate for the Leeds City Labour Party. In 1957 he joined the Cross gates Tenants’ and Householders’ Association, and edited a community newspaper. 

 Having joined the Trotskyist group in the Labour Party known only as 'the Club', comrade Harding participated in its expansion around Peter Fryer's little paper The Newsletter, working with local teacher Jack Gale to win over Communist Party members and YCLers whose views had been shaken by Khruschev's "secret speech" and the invasion of Hungary. Thus was gathered the Socialist Labour League, immediately proscribed by Labour, but proceeding to gain a majority in the youth movement, the Yong Socialists.

Something else which loomed important at this time was the nuclear issue. Britain had exploded its first hydrogen bomb in May 1957, and the first big Aldermaston march took place the following year. If any young readers of Norman Harding's autobiography 'Staying Red' are surprised to find a chapter devoted to nuclear disarmament they may also be surprised to learn from it that militants like Norman formed an organised contingent on that march. As he reminds us, it was the Norwood Labour Party, in which the Trotskyists were influential, that brought the unilateralist, anti-H-bomb call to Labour Party conference, in a resolution moved by Vivienne Mendelson, and opposed by hitherto left-wing hero Aneurin Bevan, who said it would mean him going "naked into the conference chamber".

The Communist Party, and the unions it still influenced, also opposed the unilateralist call, and when they did decide to join the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) they swamped it with their emphasis on summit talks, flag-waving and anti-Americanism, which Norman describes in his book.



In the 1970s, Norman Harding moved to London, where he would spend the next two decades  working for the Socialist Labour League, which later became the Workers Revolutionary Party, and a very different kind of party from the one he had tried to build. One of the stories he tells which illustrates the difference was the time he went canvassing a working class estate with Vanessa Redgrave. When a poor woman with kids clinging told him about the problems in the flats and difficulty getting repairs done, Norman asked if there was a tenants association on the estate. Redgrave interrupted him to tell the woman it was down to capitalism, and that was why she must vote for the revolutionary party candidate. Later the newcomer Redgrave reported the veteran revolutionary Harding for his "reformism"

When I came to London in 1976 to work for News Line, I knew a bit of Norman's past activity and from reading old back issues of the Newsletter that he had written news and articles for it, before the emphasis started being put on "professional" journalists. Norman was kept busy behind the scenes with jobs like despatch and driving, and seemed to work all hours, so even though we lived in the same flat and worked in the same centre (before I was 'exiled' to the Midlands) I can't say I got to know him well.

But one evening I was able to join Norman and my News Line colleague Paul Jennings for a drink in the Plough, and while we were there a bunch of women came into the pub who were the Friends of Fulham football team that practised on the Common. One of them came over to speak to Norman, and thanked him for some music tapes which she said had "worked like a treat". It seemed that this couple whom Norman had got to know had a troubled, autistic child. Norman had put together a selection of classical tapes which soothed and relaxed their youngster, making the family's life much easier. I don't think he ever put a brass plate on his door as a consultant, but a few years ago when a Facebook friend was asking whether anybody knew anything about music and autism I put her in touch with Norman. 

Trivial as this anecdote may seem (I don't think Norman even thought to mention it) it remained in my memory because it was so atypical of the 'hard' attitude the party seemed to encourage, and it may give a clue to the significant role Norman Harding was to play in the downfall of tyrant Gerry Healy. Working so close to the WRP leadership, yet in the background, Norman saw and heard how people were treated, and he was often the one older comrade to whom young members confided their troubles and got a hearing. What's more, he remained in touch with his working class roots and did not sever "ordinary" people and human problems from his socialist aspirations. That meant his loyalty and dedication was to the class, and to socialism, and not to dogma or a leader.

Having learned how far the corruption of the Healy regime went, Norman Harding joined those who drove Healy out, having uncovered, among other things, his systematic abuse over the years of no less than 26. female comrades. If you want to know more, and how such things could happen, you have got to read Norman's book.

Having helped and consolidated that victory, Norman finally did something to improve his own life, by returning to some of his old links in Leeds, and at 58, marrying and acquiring a ready-made family. Before long he was once again leading a tenants movement, and writing about his thoughts and memories. ,

Incidentally, something else I remember about Norman besides his record collection was the book I found on his shelf, a well-worn out of print .'Memoirs of a Bolshevik' by Osip Piatnitsky, who like Norman once had the task of organising the despatch of the party paper, Lenin's clandestine Iskra. Indeed, Piatnitsky had previously worked in the clothing industry, and devised garments into which the papers could be stitched, to be worn by the party's women couriers. 

Already it depicted a different kind of Bolshevism to the version we were sold, and it is still out of print I believe, its author having been dispatched by Stalin's murder machine.I don't know whether it helped inspire Norman, but now his work should help inspire and educate a new generation.
  
http://stayingred.wordpress.com/

http://stayingred.wordpress.com/normans-blog/

Steve Drury has suggested those who knew Norman Harding may wish to write tributes and reminiscences, and one possibility is that they are collated on Norman's blog at http://stayingred.wordpress.com/normans-blog/ and will also be passed on to his family and perhaps read out at the funeral. .

FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS

Lawnswood Crematorium

Otley Road,

Adel,

Leeds

L16 6AH

Date:  Weds Dec 18th     Time: 15.40

Afterwards at the Lawnswood Arms, Otley Rd, Leeds LS16  7PH  0113 2671823     

Please let us know if you planning to attend:

 johngdav@blueyonder.co.uk  OR

07950 870733

Best wishes

John Davies

 

Farewell to Harry Ratner, but his legacy lives on

Harry Ratner, who died recently at his home in Derbyshire, must have been one of the few surviving members of a generation that came to revolutionary politics in the 1930s, and one who never sold out for selfish ambition nor, despite disillusion in dogmas and leaders, lost his faith in human beings or a socialist future.

Born in London in 1919, the son of a Jewish immigrant father who precariously tried his hand in various business ventures, his mother a French officer's daughter, young Harry was good at science and dreamed of serving humanity through medicine, or of what seemed like a new life of genuine communism that he heard about on the kibbutz in Palestine. But already at 16 he set out on the path that would be his for the rest of his life, joining the working class and the fight for socialism.

Though never so far as I can see aspiring to be a leading figure in the movement or possessing the kind of ego that the movement regrettably sometimes fosters and accepts in leadership, Harry had the intellect to think about issues and what we were doing, as well the dedication, honesty and integrity the movement needs if it is to be sustained, let alone to get anywhere.

I first met Harry in Manchester when I was about 16 myself, and though we did not remain in touch for long, he did have a lasting influence.

It was in 1959, the Socialist Labour League had just been formed that year, and already come in for witch-hunting attacks from two national newspapers, as well as denunciation in leaflets from the notorious employer-funded Economic League. The late Empire News, a Sunday paper which we had delivered on Saturday night so my parents could check their football coupons, carried a front-page story about Trotskyists plotting to ruin Britain with strikes and bring about a revolution. It said they had infiltrated the unions and the Labour Party, and had a newspaper called the Newsletter.


I'd heard of Trotsky as a leader of the Russian Revolution. As a matter of fact someone had even mentioned his name in our house several years earlier when the grown-ups were discussing  unpleasant events in the Soviet Union. And Mr.Rosenfelt, a friend of my parents, had said approvingly "Ah, now Trotsky was a real communist."  Which had stuck in my mind as interesting.

But a Trotskyist movement in Britain? Was it true? And could I agree with the nefarious methods it was using in industry - assuming one believed what was said in that Sunday newspaper?

One weekend, a friend at school persuaded me to go with him to a big CND rally. It was really big, the Free Trade Hall was crammed full, I think it was the one where Konni Zilliacus and the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg were speaking. I don't remember what either of them said. But outside the hall as we'd waited to file in I saw a bloke in a cloth cap and raincoat,  selling The Newsletter. Naturally, 1 stepped over to buy a copy. That was my first encounter with Harry Ratner and with Marxism.

Some younger people with him sold me a Keep Left, and gave me a leaflet for a meeting the following week called "Youth Must Organise!". Before long I was actively involved, helping set up a Young Socialists branch, selling papers at the docks, and attending classes which Harry Ratner took on Marx' s Capital.  Harry patiently explained the theory of surplus value, and illustrated the workings of the system from his own experience - he was a shop steward in a textile engineering factory.  

Once, chatting over a coffee, Harry asked me about my background and what had brought me to Trotskyism. It never occurred to me, at 17, to ask about his life. Not till his book Reluctant Revolutionary came out did I learn that, like me, Harry Ratner had been a member of the Zionist youth movement Habonim, before he joined the Labour League of Youth, in Willesden, north west London. By an ironic twist, it was in Willesden, in 1964, that I was expelled from the Labour Party as it purged the Young Socialists.

A few years before I had attended my Labour Party ward meeting in Mandley Park, Salford, when the Party was expelling Harry Ratner, in its purge of Trotskyists. Not allowed into the meeting to defend his self, Harry would probably not have been surprised that the person who spoke against him was a Labour councillor who doubled as a leading Stalinist.

As he recounts in his book, talking about holding street corner meetings in London's East End in the 1930s, "One evening we would be attacked by the fascists as 'dirty Reds' and told to 'Get back to Russia', the next evening we would be attacked by Communist Party members as 'bloody fascists'."

The Labour League of Youth was divided between Stalinists, led by Ted (later Lord) Willis, and a smaller number inclined towards Trotskyism. Joining the latter faction, Harry met and worked with a young man called Gerry Healy, who was to have an important influence on his life and on mine. There is an amusing account in the early pages of Reluctant Revolutionary of their adventures out whitewashing slogans in Paddington at night. Later on, Harry was less amused by Healy's way of handling dissent, even when they were on the same side in some of the Fourth International's factional disputes.

Most telling, perhaps, is Harry's account of what might seem to some a trivial incident in the 1950s, when Healy bawled quite unnecessarily at a cafe waitress, and Harry thought to himself, "If Gerry is like this now what would he be like if we had power?"  Notwithstanding the unlikeliness of that contingency, such insights, if shared and talked about early on might have saved a lot of trouble.

Not that Harry Ratner, for all his mild and modest manner, was any milksop. Having gone to visit his mother in France in 1938, he heard poet Andre Breton, hitch-hiked through the country talking to youth, and witnessed the end of the Popular Front and the Third Republic. Helping the Trotskyists Raymond Molinier and Pierre Frank escape as France fell, he was later arrested himself in London for sheltering Frank in his flat.

  During the Blitz young Ratner was involved in another kind of shelter, and Underground movement, when Londoners took refuge in the tube stations, and he found himself on a shelterers' committee with  a young Communist Party member, of later comedy acting fame, Alfie Bass.

Called up in 1941, Harry was drafted into the Pioneers Corps, with other misfits, including refugees and Spanish Republicans. He was involved in the Sicily and Normandy Landings, and the next time he turned up at his mother's flat in Paris he surprised her by arriving in British uniform, having hitched a lift with a Free French unit. He was able to report the liberation of Paris for the Socialist Appeal. But the defeat of Hitler's fascism was not the end of the struggle, it was a new beginning, as seen in the civil war in Greece, the strikes cum mutiny that were to come in the British forces in India in 1946, or the use of British troops against strikers in Belgium which Harry also reported for Socialist Appeal.

It was while he was on leave in 1942 that a different kind of event affected Harry's life. Going rambling with a pal in Derbyshire, he met Olive, who was to be his lifelong companion. She was bringing up a child and working in a laundry, where she led a strike. Having committed himself to the working class politically, Harry married into it. Olive initiated him into such important cultural matters as saving the best china for visitors. In his book he credits her with anchoring him in
real life and human relations.


Demobbed after the war, Harry found a job in a Manchester engineering works, then went on from pushing a broom to 'semi-skilled' status (to be classed as skilled you had to have served an apprenticeship).  Though his way wasn't always easy, what with blacklisting and hostile bureaucacy, he became shop steward, works convenor, and AEU branch president.

He was involved in the factional disputes which rent the Trotskyist movement, over eastern Europe, Korea and the Labour party, as well as leading industrial struggles. He worked full time for the
Trotskyist movement in 1957, when it won to its side many disillusioned Communist Party members, such as Peter Fryer, who had been the Daily Worker's reporter in Budapest when Russian tanks invaded.

Having had a bellyful of bureaucratic Stalinism -his despatches from Hungary were suppressed and he was expelled from the Communist Party, - Fryer soon found Healy's bullying regime more than he could stomach, and this talented journalist was lost to the paper he started. But he never went over to the Right. After pioneer work on British Black history, Peter Fryer became a columnist for Workers Press after Healy's downfall, and he provided the Introduction to Harry Ratner's book.

Harry Ratner soldiered on, and contributed something to the education of younger comrades such as me, as well as helping the Socialist Labour League (SLL) establish itself for a time as a serious alternative to the Communist Party's leadership among trade union militants. He seems to have become pessimistic at a time when as a newcomer I was excited by the apprentices' and seafarers strikes. Maybe this was due to the difference in our ages, or maybe it was his experience with the SLL's increasingly narrow and repressive leadership, dishonest and sectarian, imposing changes of line.

Besides his disillusion with the gap between the Party's perspective and the real situation and mood in the working class, at a particular time, Harry Ratner makes an important point in Reluctant Revolutionary about a constant tendency for hyperactivity to isolate members from the very working class which they are supposedly trying to influence. Indeed my later experience was that the leadership seemed to want to break members' ties and relationships deliberately, just like a religious cult.

Not only was any kind of cultural or social life frowned upon, but as the WRP deteriorated comrades who became involved in struggles or took their trade union responsibilities seriously could find themselves in conflict with whatever meaningless "party tasks" were supposedly necessitated by the "revolutionary situation". (So "revolutionary" that half the party's members only existed on paper and more than half the branches never met).

 Harry Ratner left the organisation for which he had done so much work, and came to question many of the ideas in which he had believed. But he never abandoned his loyalty to the cause of the oppressed or his honesty. The written work he has left is well worth reading, not just for his account of the past, but because he raises questions and issues which we continue to face. He has passed on the baton.   

• His funeral will take place on Thursday 7th November at Markeaton Crematorium, Main Chapel at 2.00pm.  As was his wish there will be a non-religious celebration of his life. His wife, Olive has asked that in lieu of flowers, a donation can be made, if you choose, to Breast Cancer Awareness. Donations can be made through the undertakers. A.W. Lymn at the Ilkeston office, 01159 444 121 where Scot will take your call. Or at Markeaton on the day.

      
Some writings by Harry Ratner

So long, Kyran

WITH FRIENDS on a Hebridean holiday, above, white-haired KYRAN CONNOLLY (right) was always good company and cheerful even when he became seriously ill.  An erudite, cultured and good-natured Dubliner with a good sense of humour, he was also a thoughtful and principled fighter for all the oppressed - as below speaking at a demonstration across the road from the West London premises of Presss TV,  in solidarity with Iranian students and trade unionists.    

LIKE a lot of people, it seemed, at his funeral the other day, I found it hard to remember when I first met Kyran Connolly. It must have been at least 20 years ago, because that's about when a bunch of us assembled by a mutual friend set off for a holiday on the island of Cana, in the Hebrides.

With no pub, no shops and no  telly, just long walks in changeable weather, and our own company for entertainment around the log fire of an evening, we had a great time, and for much of the congenial atmosphere and good humour that lasted us we must thank Kyran. (and only to a lesser extent the shopkeeper back in Mallaig who sent over a supply of booze when our stock was running low, trusting us to pay him when we returned to the mainland).

But behind his lightheartedness, Kyran Connolly was no lightweight. A man of broad interests and knowledge, his job when I first met him was with an encyclopedia publisher, researching and writing up bespoke notes for international subscribers. A stalwart of the National Union of Journalists' Book branch, he served on the NUJ executive and was elected president of the union for a time, without ever becoming a bureaucrat in either manner or outlook.

At Kyran's funeral last week his twin brother recalled how the young lad had learned to speak fluent Irish and put this to use when taken to court on some cycling offence, by requesting as was his right to have the proceedings conducted in the national language. The judge agreed and asked the garda due to give evidence whether he could do so in Irish. The officer confessed he could not, whereupon the judge ordered the case dismissed.

A Dubliner, proud and knowledgable of his city's literary figures as well as its labour movement, which this year commemorates the heroic sreuggle during the 1913 lockout, Kyran kept touch with his home town in frequent visits, not only to family but to fellow trade unionists. I think it was Kyran that drew my attention to the rediscovery and publication of socialist James Connolly's address to Jewish immigrant workers, in a 1902 council election leaflet, in Yiddish.

  http://comeheretome.com/2010/03/01/james-connolly-yiddish-election-leaflet-1902/.

Never narrow in his love for Ireland and above all, its people, Kyran also became committed to the cause of another island, whether rolling up his sleeves as a volunteer for the sugar harvest, or campaigning for the "Miami Five" jailed by the United States for counter-terrorism, as a speaker from the Cuba Solidarity Campaign reminded us at his funeral. He learned Spanish, well enough to enjoy conversations with the locals on his trips to the island, as well as the poetry especially of Federico Garcia Lorca.

Kyran's concern for human rights was genuine, and with it went the intelligence to cut through prejudice and recognise issues. In a quick search yesterday I came across the following, from a report on an NUJ conference, which I think illustrates this ability:

Finally some controversy and it comes in the familiar form of Judith Miller, the New York Times journalist jailed for 85 days for refusing to reveal a confidential source to a US grand jury about her reporting on Iraq before the US invasion.
Kyran Connolly, a books delegate, speaks in favour of motion 43, which condemns the jailing of Miller.  But the Irish Executive council doesn't like Miller, seeing her reporting as having pushed the US government case for invading Iraq, which caused so many deaths.  "We can't present her as Joan of Arc on this issue," says Rohan Brady of the Industrial Council. "We are not making a hero out of someone for opposing someone," another delegate points out.
An amendment is proposed to strike out Miller's name from the motion.The vote is called on the amendment. Twice delegates vote with a show of hands, but result is unclear. I think those against the amendment have it, but a but a count is needed. Enter the scrutineers!
Time passes.
Those in favour of striking out Miller's name - 51 delegates.
Against striking out her name - 64 delegates.
The motion condemning the jailing of Miller passes.


Good night, and good luck.
Stephen Brook  24 March 2006 11.32 GMT guardian.co.uk  

http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=2816

Since becoming a delegate to the Brent trades union council for my union branch, I got used to seeing Kyran who attended for his NUJ Book branch, when he wasn't otherwise occupied through his duties to his housing co-op in Kilburn. Often as not we'd go over the road for a pint together after the meeting, and we'd enjoy what proved all too short a time discussing all sorts of issues. 

It was the same after weekend meetings of the Southern and Eastern Region Trades Union Congress (SERTUC). I remember the enthusiasm of Kyran just back from a stay in Cuba.

When I went to see him in St.Mary's hospital in Paddington, where he underwent cancer treatment, he managed to convince me by his apparent cheerfulness and optimism that after a period of convalescence he would be back again, if understandably not quite as active as before. Only recently, I was meaning to ask somebody if they had seen Kyran lately, and wondering whether he might make the trades council's AGM, when I heard the sad news that he had died.

Maybe he had known better than he was letting on, not wishing to share his pain or make us miserable. All too often though, we don't make the most of our friendships, and miss the opportunity to tell ourselves, let alone our friends, how much we appreciate them, until it is too late.    

Kyran Connolly 23 June 1946 -16 February 2013..

From the NUJ

Mariner with a Compass

AKIVA ORR 

SAD to hear the news this weekend that Akiva Orr has died. An Israeli ex-mariner, he was one of the founders of the radical left-wing group 'Matzpen', - lit. compass, in the navigational sense, - and he helped many of us find our way out of the befogged sandbanks of "left" Zionism and towards an international socialist perspective, even if he can't be held responsible for our varied subsequent courses. 

'Aki', as he was to become affectionately known, was born in Berlin two years before the Nazis took power, and was three years old when his parents decided to leave Germany, and took him to Palestine. Growing up in Tel Aviv, he became a keen swimmer, winining medals as a teenager, which may be why, after being drafted into the semi-underground Haganah, he was assigned to serve in the Israeli Navy in the 1948 war. He remained in the navy until 1950, and then joined the merchant navy. In 1951 he took part in the Israeli seamen's strike, an event which politicised him, particularly after he was beaten up by Israeli police.

That year he joined the Communist Party.

Then in 1962, dissatisfied with the CP's inadequate analyses and tame tail-ending of the Soviet bureaucracy, Aki and three other members broke with the Party and started the Israeli Socialist Organisation, better known by the name of its publication, 'Matzpen'. One of this group was another ex-seafarer, Moshe Machover, still active in London. Another significant figure who joined them was the veteran Palestinian Trotskyist, Jabra Nicola, who had been editor of the journal al Ittihad.

Though never gaining more than a few dozen members, this group had a pioneering role not only in analysing Zionism and Israeli society, but in recognising Palestinian national rights, supporting the struggle of underprivileged Israelis from Middle Eastern and Maghrebi backgrounds (the Black Panthers) and calling for an end to the post-1967 Occupation. Despite the difficulties, and risks at this time, they made some contacts and exchanged ideas with left-wing Palestinians. Many on the left today in Israel/Palestine would acknowledge a debt to Matzpen. 

But not only there. Towards the end of the 1960s, Akiva Orr moved to London, where he took up scientific studies, but also continued to be politically active. He was one of the founders of the Israeli Revolutionaries' Action Committee abroad (ISRACA), together with Moshe Machover and the cartoonist and humourist Shimon Tzabar. Another person in this circle was Egyptian writer Waguih Ghali, who had briefly been entertained as a "dissident" in Israel until he expressed sympathy with the Palestinians.

At this time, the British Left knew little and perhaps cared less about Israel and Palestine. The old Labour Left, such as Ian Mikardo and Eric Heffer had been staunchly pro-Israel, the new mostly student Left, Maoist and "Third Worldist"-influenced might be equally starry-eyed and blurred in its support for the "Arab revolution", but for most people Palestine was way behind Vietnam and South Africa as deserving attention.

It was together with Aki Orr and his friends that I took part in my first ever demonstration outside the Israeli embassy, supporting the son of one of their comrades in Israel who must have been among the first young people to refuse to serve in the occupation. I also remember Aki speaking in London University, possibly the first time students had heard from an anti-Zionist, left-wing Israeli.When it came to questions some gent in a suit, possibly from one of the embassies, read out a prepared speech which had clearly been written on the assumption that we were to hear a Zionist hasbaranik, and bore no relation to what Aki had actually said. Still, Aki and therefore the audience were very patient about this misundestanding.

(In later years the opposition came from right-wing Zionists who would not attempt speeches, but chant inane slogans, try to intimidate people, and if not put out, start to throw furniture about. Still, this seems to have abated, though it is as well to be on guard).

The Orrs  had settled in a house near Willesden Green, which was not far from where I lived, so that in those pre-internet days I was able to drop in on my way back from the library and discuss with Aki over a cup of tea rather than sitting at a computer exchanging e-mail messages. (Computers were great big things filling a room, Aki and Moshe Machover could feed them programmes and speak their language, but e-mail and blogs had not yet been invented).

Another couple with whom Aki became friends were C.L.R. and Selma James, who lived in the same block if I am not mistaken. Other friends he made included poet Erich Fried, veteran revolutionary Rosa Levine-Meyer (whose book was translated by Waguih Ghali, I believe), and Rudi Dutschke..

When Aki came to London his first port of call, politically, was to see Tony Cliff, founder of the International Socialists who became the Socialist Workers Party, and remembered by left-wing Israelis as Yigael Gluckstein, who had left Palestine before 1948. They had much to discuss, and Aki was able to get Cliff's take on the Left in Britain, though he would check it against his own observations, He eventually decided to join not the SWP or its nearest rivals but Solidarity, a group inspired by the Greek-French thinker Cornelius Castoradis.

 Emphasising rank and file militancy and self-management, Solidarity questioned idealised versions of the Russian Revolution to explain what went wrong. Its members included seasoned working class militants who had been in the Communist Party or the Socialist Labour League, as had neurologist Chris Pallis who wrote as Martin Grainger, and later Maurice Brinton.  Though roughly characterised by opponents as "anarcho-syndicalist", Solidarity was not simply "workerist" or "economist" (in fact it criticised economic determinism). It took part in the Committee of 100 anti-nuclear protests, and may have had a hand in the clandestine "Spies for Peace" publication exposing the location of secret bunkers set up for nuclear war and unelected government.

So perhaps it was not surprising that when Meir Vanunu came to London to try and raise support for his imprisoned nuclear whistleblower brother Modechai, it was Akiva Orr who took him under his wing and rushed around introducing him to people and helping to start protest rolling.

In 1990 Aki returned to Israel. In recent years I heard that he was one of a small group campaigning for a nuclear weapon-free Middle East, something Mordechai Vanunu had also urged. With so much talk of the alleged nuclear weapons plans of Iran, and so little mention of the existing nuclear weapons stockpiled by Israel, which has never signed the non-proliferation treaty, this is a very timely issue to raise.  Of course we would like to see a world free of the nuclear menace, and the huge resources involved put to benefit human needs. But where better to make a start than the volatile Middle East? 

In 2011, Akiva Orr achieved recognition of sorts when he was invited to speak to the young people engaged in the tent protests demanding social justice, on Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv. He spoke about the seamen's strike of 1951, and about direct democracy. 

Akiva Orr did not live to see the aims for which he strove, but he may rest assured that he inspired younger generations to carry on the fight.






http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCVCTKXK_jA

http://vimeo.com/19444809

http://www.akiorrbooks.com/

Cameron's loss, Sparks gains, and an old comrade

NO wonder David Cameron is busying himself abroad this week. When the government can't even face the BMA or the Royal College of Midwives over its plans for the Health Service, it may feel on safer ground talking about Somalia.

One of Cameron's star appointees today stepped down from her role supposedly helping families back to work, as police looking into her firm A4e launched a second fraud inquiry.

'I have asked to step aside from my voluntary role as Family Champion as I do not want the current media environment to distract from the very important work with troubled families,' Emma Harrison said in a statement.

Her resignation also comes as the government's work- for- your- dole scheme is in trouble, with Tesco asking the government to change the rules, and anti-workfare demonstrations outside stores from Lewisham to Glasgow.

Mrs. Harrison's firm received £180 million from state contracts last year, and though it did not meet government targets for getting the unemployed into jobs, she paid herself a dividend of £8.6 million. She lives with her husband, family and friends in a $5 million country mansion. Yesterday it was revealed that Thames Valley police had arrested four former A4e staff on charges of defrauding the taxpayer. And it turns out that A4e itself has been employing people on workfare.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2105486/Back-work-tsar-Emma-Harrison-steps-Government-role-firm-faces-second-fraud-inquiry.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

More on Emma Harrison:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/11/emma-harrison-welfare-firm-bid
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/21/emma-harrison-a4e-nice-work

The other big news today -though with far less coverage in mainstream media - is the ignominous collapse of the eight big contractors who had lined up to bully electricians into accepting a new one-way contract that would lead to de-skilling and a one-third pay cut.

The eight had withdrawn from the long-standing Joint Industry Board (JIB) -itself not considered satisfactory by many sparks - and proposed their own set-up, BESNA. The biggest, Balfour Beatty, which has enjoyed many big lucrative contracts for both private and public sector, wanted electricians to sign up or else. But last week it backed down after militant campaigning and with the threat of an official strike. Then came the news on Wednesday that NG Bailey had followd suit. Today the remaining firms, linked as the Heating and Ventilation Contractors Association, fell back as well. A joint statement was then issued:

"In consultation with the remaining companies and following discussions with Unite, it has been agreed that HVCA will withdraw its proposal for the Building Engineering Services National Agreement (Besna).

“As a result of today’s decision by HVCA, Unite has agreed not to pursue further industrial action or protests against the Besna companies.

“HVCA, supported by its member companies, will now engage in high-level talks with Unite within an agreed timeline, with the aim of creating new proposals and ensuring agreed terms are honoured.”

I think it was Harold Wilson who said a week was a long time in politics. For the sparks at least this past week must have seemed short and sweet.

DAVE FINCH

It is a pity that Dave Finch did not live to see all this. I expect Dave, who died recently would have been delighted by the success of militant rank and file action, but at the same time counselled the sparks to trust in your organised strength and keep your powder dry.

I remember Dave from back in the 1960s when, working in the AEI factory at Willesden I joined the Electrical Trades Union, which meant I could visit several branches, some well-attended and lively in those days, particularly Kilburn and Hendon, and also attend the Socialist Labour League electricians' faction, of which Dave Finch was a leading member. At the time the union and the Left within it was still suffering the effects of the Communist Party ballot-rigging affair and the right-wing witch hunt which followed.

Not that Dave confined himself in any way to narrow trade union, workplace issues. I remember him and other Lambeth Trades Union Council members taking on racism, and holding Saturday outdoor meetings in the street next to Brixton library, thus preventing a fascist group using the pitch, and getting the anti-fascist message across. That was in 1962, I think, and the following year when thousands of workers came down to London for a mass lobby of parliament against unemployment it was Lambeth trades council which somehow managed to lay on breakfasts for people as they arrived. We nearly stormed parliament that day.

In the 1970s I got to know Dave's brother Harry, by then a shop steward at Alfred Herberts(machine tools) in Coventry, though he'd previously worked in Birmingham, and before that, as I learned later, as a young miner at Cannock Chase. it would have been strange if I hadn't, as everybody knew Harry, still a chirpy little cockney, despite his stay in the Midlands, and active both in the union and politically even after a heart bypass should have counselled otherwise.

Had I got to know him better, I might have learned that Dave Finch too had worked in the colliery, though as a scientist in a reserved occupation he needn't have chosen either this or the army. It was a matter of getting among the workers, for left-wing politics.

In later years, Dave went into teaching, and it was from friends in the National Union of Teachers, by no means from the same neck of the left-wing woods nor generation, that I heard favourable comments and respect for his union activity.

More recently he was known as a stalwart of Croydon Trades Union Council, and it is another such veteran who knew Dave well for many years who has written this obituary, which is well worth a read:


http://www.aworldtowin.net/resources/DavidFinch.html

A World to Win | Obituary | DAVID FINCH, 1920 2012 www.aworldtowin.net

Obituary of DAVID FINCH, 1920 – 2012 by Ted Knight

I'd also welcome comments and memories from anyone else who knew this fine comrade.

Alf Filer: loss of a stalwart comrade

SAD news to start this weekend. Alf Filer, a comrade whom I had known since the 1980s, has been killed in a road traffic incident. His car broke down on the A27 and another vehicle drove into it.

I first met Alf in 1982, in the wake of the Israeli bombing and invasion of Lebanon, and the Sabra and Chatila massacres, when I went to a crowded meeting in Brixton Town Hall, to launch the Labour Committee on Palestine. Despite the strong feelings of outrage over Israeli action and solidarity with the Palestinian people, which had brought people there, it became clear there were differences over the PLO, and the Israeli peace movement, and how to tackle Zionism. Worse, these issues were entangled with the interminable divisions in the British Left, and some complicated background intrigue.

Alf made a passionate appeal for unity, reminding us why we were there, and asking what the Palestinians left in the camps would say if they could see us bickering He was heckled and jeered. He proposed a fellow member of Brent Labour Party, Mike Heiser, for the steering committee, and myself, like Mike a member of the Jewish Socialists' Group. He also proposed Tony Greenstein and Andrew Hornung, who had been among the LCP's founders. But they rejected this conciliatory gesture, and took part in a walk-out.

Within a week the LCP was under attack in the capitalist press, which focused on Lambeth council leader Ted Knight and supposed irregularities, and in Socialist Organiser, then being taken over by Sean Matgamna (now elder thinker of the Alliance for Workers Liberty). Alf had explained to me that the odd upheaval in the LCP was related to a manouvre by Matgamna, evolving a pro-Zionist position, against his erstwhile allies who were fiercely "anti-Zionist". It was all a bit complicated, as myself and Mike Heiser found when denounced by Zionists brandishing Socialist Organiser and demanding we answer allegations it made.

The Labour Committee on Palestine survived, although the Palestinian cause within the Labour movement was weakened by the persistent in-fighting and rivalries to which genuine differences and discussion on the Middle East often seemed subordinate. Our leading figure Ken Livingstone, seldom able to attend meetings because he was busy running the Greater London Council, went on to become Labour MP for Brent East, and Alf Filer was a stalwart of the campaign that put him there.

I met Alf again when, with other JSG members, I was asked to help him steward a Labour Party public meeting in Brondesbury with both Livingstone and his predecessor Reg Freeson speaking. When Alf had stood as a council candidate in Cricklewood, the Zionists ran a campaign against him. During this Brondesbury by-election the Tories produced an eve-of-poll leaflet aimed at Jewish voters, saying "A Vote for Labour is a Vote for the PLO!", attacking Alf by name even though he was not the Labour candidate. The election was actually fought on issues like nursery places and Kilburn baths, and Labour increased its majority by eleven per cent. The Palestinian general delegation in London did not take up my suggestion of a press release saying "11% Swing to PLO in Brondesbury!"

At that meeting, Alf had suggested I join the Brent East Labour Party. I found this piquantly amusing, as I'd been expelled in that very constituency, and ward, in 1964, Reg Freeson having been among my antagonists. But as I pointed out to Alf I was no longer living in the area. When I did return to Brent, some years later, I joined the new Socialist Alliance, and found myself working with former Labour Party secretary Alf Filer, and some of his former fellow officers, for the Alliance's candidate in the 2003 Brent East by-election. Alas though there was a lot of feeling against the Blair government because of the Iraq war, a lot of working class Labour voters simply did not vote, and the anti-war vote chiefly went to the Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather, who managed to keep the constituency and is now in the Con Dem government.

It was during that by-ection that Labour's hard man John Reid misguidedly turned up in Alf's road with two of his minders. We were supping tea at the time, but Alf flew out of the house and gave then Health Secretary Reid a mouthful about things happening in local hospitals. After a short exchange, during which Reid evidently mistook us for supporters of Arthur Scargill's party and blamed Scargill for the death of mining communities ("That was Thatcher," I replied. "But I forgot - you've joined her!), the minister and minders climbed back into the ministerial limo and sped off).

Alas, the Socialist Alliance which had seen such promising starts and recruited such serious people as Alf, was not to last. But he did not just drift off. Alf had his family to cope with. He had teenage offspring starting work. He was in hospital for a bit. But it was a brief interruption. As a college lecturer at Harrow he was among the first people to start campaigning against cuts and closures in the area, spurring us on the Brent Trades Union Council to get involved.

When the EDL said they were coming to Harrow to march against a new mosque, Alf played a leading part in mobilising opposition, encouraging his students and fellow teachers to turn out for the big counter-demonstration, at which he spoke, and making sure the fascists were seen off, having got nowhere near the mosque.

After the Israeli assault on the Gaza freedom flotilla and killings on the Mave Marmara, Alf came down to Whitehall with us to join the angry demonstration, and lost no time in joining those speaking from an improvised platform on top of a London bus. "Who is that speaking?" asked a friend. I could not see, but I recognised the voice. "It's Alf". "For what organisation?" "Just Alf". Never mind, it was no time for ceremony.

I was surprised when I heard recently that Alf had moved to the south coast, and sedate Worthing at that, but sure enough he was not going into quiet retirement. Last week I was at a conference in the TUC's Congress House and a man spoke about reviving the Worthing Trades Union Council. I went over to tell him about my friend Alf Filer, and sure enough, the union activist had already been contacted by Alf who was getting active locally about cuts and the NHS.

We have been deprived of a stalwart comrade.


Alf Filer Socialist Resistance - Coalition of the Resistance - Activists Meeting - 02.09.10 www.youtube.com
http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/

Alf Filer for Jews Against Zionism at Gaza Flotilla massacre rally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlLwDbEydO4

Farewell Bill Speirs

I'M sorry to hear today that Bill Speirs, former general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, had died, aged only 57, though he had been ill for some years.

I met Bill about fifteen years ago, when I was involved in Workers Aid for Bosnia. He must have been the most prominent figure in the trade union movement to give support to this campaign, which was a Trotskyist initiative, its support coming largely from ordinary working people and students rather than 'big names' or bureaucrats. After a meeting in union premises on Grays Inn Road a bunch of went over to the pub, and I realised that the man getting the beers in and enjoying his discussion with some young convoy drivers -also Scots as it happens -was the Scottish TUC leader.

Now that I think about it, I was not entirely surprised. Shortly before this, wearing one of my other hats - as a representative of the Jewish Socialists' Group - I'd rushed after work one evening, invited to press the flesh with the pres - Yasser Arafat, - on his first visit to London, at a reception held in the Egyptian embassy. Having joined the queue, and been introduced to the Palestinian leader, shaking hands and exchanging a few words, I made my way through the throng to the drinks table. There was not much left.

I recognised Ken Cameron of the Fire Brigades Union, shook hands with writer Chaim Bermant, and was introduced to a former lord provost of Glasgow. Then I overheard a couple talking to Ken Cameron, the lady - whom I later learned was big in War on Want, and who was with Bill Speirs - was telling Ken "We have just been speaking to these people from Workers Aid for Bosnia. It's a Trot thing of course, but we have got to support it".

What did surprise me though was that Bill Speirs did not just put his name to Workers Aid or offer to speak at meetings, he was not content with helping fundraising, but managed to go out and see for himself by taking a place on one of te convoys. As I can testify these were bumpy rides on mountain roads and tracks, not the safe and easy luxury ride one associates with general-secretaries.

I made another trip to Bosnia a year later when asked to attend a conference in Tuzla. We flew to Split, then boarded a coach which took us via the dramatic scenery of the Neretva river. scene of World War II partisan heroism, and crossed by us on a bailey bridge, through battered Mostar. I got to know Bill and his friend Margaret from War on Want on this trip, and they must have guessed I was short of cash because Bill insisted on paying every time we stopped for refreshments. Later I was proud to join them when we came out of the conference hall in Tuzla to go and meet the Kreka miners.

Bill was keen not just what they needed for immediate relief but how British unions could help them in their plans for post-war reconstruction. He went back to Tuzla a couple of years later for a miners' international conference they organised.

It was on that previous trip via Croatia that our returning bus was held up at the border for several hours while Croat police went through everybody's passports looking for people whom they wanted to detain. It was Bill Speirs, out of the various 'celebs' and communicators on board, who stepped down, and exercising his full authority as representative of millions of Scottish workers, soon persuaded the police that if they knew what was good for them and their government ...well, I don't know what he said, but we were soon on the move again!

I can't claim to have kept in touch with Bill Speirs when he returned to his 'normal' union duties, though I was pleased to see and hear him speak as Scottish TUC leader on anti-war platforms in London, and at meetings on Palestine. I also still have a letter he wrote after I contacted him about an issue I have personally tried to take up, demanding an investigation into the murder in Paris of Egyptian communist Henri Curiel, for which nobody has been brought to justice. Bill expressed his support and asked me to keep him informed if there was anything he could do about it.

Meanwhile he was also challenging the Blair government over its treatment of workers like the firefighters.

Bill Speirs may not have been the most outstanding person in the trade union movement, and I can't recall ever seeing him on TV or hearing his name mentioned often south of the Border. But he was a trade unionist who saw his duties to the working class internationally, took up causes without regard to whether they were fashionable or would endear him to the Establishment, and he was prepared to help in ways which were not all that glamourous. I'm glad I met him, and wish I'd got to know him better. It is a tragedy that ill-health curtailed his active work, and has deprived Scottish workers of such a man.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/bill-speirs-former-stuc-head-dies-1.921679

A fighter to the end

BOB DOYLE. Beatings by Blueshirts
left permanent eye damage, but his
political vision remained clear.

BOB DOYLE died at the end of last week aged 92, in the St.Raphael's area of Brent, North-West London. Born in a poor Dublin tenement, he never left his class, nor forgot his Irish heritage, but he was an internationalist, and a fighter to the end.

Bob joined the Irish Republican Army in the 1930s, after being beaten up in street fights with the right-wing Blueshirts, which left him with a permanent eye injury. Bob was not just a patriot, he was a socialist. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, and the Blueshirts supported Franco, an Irish Republican contingent was raised to fight the fascists, known as the Connolly Column. Bob Doyle's friend, IRA veteran Kit Conway was killed at the battle of Jarama, as was the poet Charles Donnelly. It was Bob Doyle's 21st birthday. He decided to go out to Spain.

His first efforts were unsuccessful. After stowing away on a ship, he was arrested and expelled from Valencia. But later in the year he crossed over the Pyrenees and reported to a battalion at Figueras. Assigned to train new volunteers because of his IRA training, he disobeyed orders and joined a group heading for the front.

After fighting at Belchite, he was captured at Gandesa by Italian fascist troops in 1938, along with the famous IRA commander Frank Ryan, the leader of the Connolly Column, who later died in Germany. Bob was imprisoned for 11 months in a concentration camp near Burgos. There he was once brought out to be shot and he was regularly tortured by Spanish fascist guards and interrogated by the Gestapo before being released in a prisoner exchange.

During the Second World War, Bob Doyle served in the British merchant navy, afterwards settling in London with his Spanish wife, Lola. A Communist Party member, he became active in the Fleet Street print trade unions, and was involved in the 1958 printworkers' strike. He also undertook dangerous missions to Franco Spain to help the underground Left. After Franco went, Bob became a regular visitor to Spain and Ireland for International Brigade commemorations. He published a book about his experiences in Spain, Brigadista: An Irishman’s Fight Against Fascism.

He is survived by his sons Bob and Julian, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

In his old age, Bob Doyle's voice may have weakened, and he still had that damaged eye, but as this speech in Belfast, in 2006, shows http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-X3V05deGU
(text below), he retained the strength of conviction and clarity of vision that career politicians rarely attain.

Hello Everyone, I have prepared something to say to you all, but I’m not as strong as I used to be, so I will read what I can, but please bear with me if I hand over to my comrade Harry Owens, should I need to. I’d like to tell why I’m here. Some of you may wonder why a 90 year old veteran of a war that happened a long time ago in a far off country is here speaking to you today. Some of you who know a little about the Spanish Civil War may see it as a glamorous episode in working class history, when young poets, like Byron in Greece, fought and died in a foreign land for a noble cause. Perhaps you have come to see me, a decrepit romantic relic. But I am not here to indulge in emotional memories, though I have many memories of comrades and events that affect me deeply. I am not here to make you sad with tragic recollections of a heroically fought war, or to make you happy with my survival into old age. I am here to make you boil with anger; the powers that supported Franco in Spain are still active, and today their reach is global. The same US corporations that supplied the fascists with oil in Spain are today pilfering the oil of the Iraqi people. The British government that lied to the people while secretly giving financial credits and hypocritically allowing arms to be smuggled to the Spanish fascists is the same government that lied about weapons of mass destruction and led the British people into a war that they did not want. Those who lie and cheat in order to hold on to power, who exploit child and slave labour in the third world to make yet more profits, who torture, murder and massacre in defence of ‘their interests’ - they are still in control. When I am told that Spain was the last noble cause, I know that I am speaking to someone who doesn’t want to see the obvious truth. In 1936 there were many apologists for racism and oppression who did not want to see fascism for what it was. Today the fight against those who put profit before people is just as intense, and the stakes are higher than ever. We must make common cause with those in the third world who are now in the front line, as Spain once was. No more Kenyan peasants must be forced off their land and into urban slums so that supermarkets can sell cheap roses and out of season strawberries. No more Congolese child soldiers must kill and be killed so that Nokia can sell ever cheaper mobile phones. Those who stand up to corporate global capitalism, like Chavez in Venezuela and Castro in Cuba, must be defended. Those whose greed would destroy our environment, with catastrophic consequences for humanity, must be defeated. It is indeed a noble struggle and it will not be over until the liberation of the entire human race. La lucha continúa.

Speech given by Bob Doyle, September 16th. 2006
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-X3V05deGU

http://theconnollycolumn.org/news1.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0124/1232474679491.html

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/90779

Last year, after hearing about Spanish civil war veteran Howard Andrews from Dave Chapple, Brent Trade Union Council of which I am a member decided that we would try to get something done about commemorating local men who served in Spain. That was when I heard Bob Doyle's name come up as someone we ought to see. The local history museum has shown some interest, and it would be good if we could take this bit of history into the schools. Bob Doyle is no longer here to inspire us, but his memory ought to.

Two good men gone

THE labour and socialist movement has just lost two characters who will be hard to replace.

Of Howard Andrews, who has died in Somerset after a short illness, aged 101, I've written before. Born in Kilburn, North West London, he heard the call for aid to Spain as a young man, and decided to go out there himself, delivering medical supplies and tending the wounded at the front, as Italian 'planes brought death overhead.

After military service in World War II, Howard returned to hospital work, and decided to move to the West Country. He helped his fellow-workers organise in the union, and then after retirement didn't pack it in, but broadened his activity. In recent years Howard, or 'Andy' as he was known to friends, and his buggy, were a familiar sight at peace demonstrations and picket lines. Even after celebrating his century with fellow-trades unionists and socialists (he'd turned down a telegram from the Queen saying he had never got on with that family) he made it to the left stage at Glastonbury, to address the young.

Cyril Smith grew up just up the road from Andy, but in a later generation. Though he attended Communist meetings as a student, he was one of the young socialists in the Labour Party who came into the Trotskyist movement in the 1950s. Opposed to Labour's imperialism and Cold War policies, but equally repelled by Stalinist brutality, many went with Tony Cliff's tendency at the time of the Korean war, becoming what we now know as the Socialist Workers Party.

Cyril was made of more rigorous stuff, in terms of Marxist theory and analysis. His youth branch in Wembley was one of those which launched the youth paper Keep Left, and he became a member of Gerry Healy's Socialist Labour League.

When I met Cyril in 1962 he was leading the SLL's Willesden branch, using his wit and humour to impart his Marxism to a bunch of young building and engineering workers at Sunday evening classes, and occasionally bringing some clever LSE graduate student along to be tested and give us a change.

Listening and discussing with Cyril was always a pleasure, even when I was the butt of his wit. He did not confine himself to theory, or stay aloof from everyday workers' life and struggles. It was during a strike of mainly immigrant workers at a firm called Marriotts in Wembley that Cyril met Sybil, a Jamaican woman shop steward who joined the SLL, and became his partner for many years. They moved to south London, and had two daughters I believe.

It was said that when Cyril had a job working for the National Coal Board their switchboard receptionist would sometimes put callers through to the SLL headquarters in Clapham where he was doing an article for the paper. He wrote on various subjects, both under his own name and as "John Crawford". It might be a coincidence though that the SLL Newsletter and our miner comrades were kept well-informed and up-to-date on the economics of the nationalised coal mining industry, where the money was going (such as to ex-owners), and the impact of mechanisation on health and safety.

A story I heard, possibly from when he was at LSE, was of the BBC interviewing people in the street on Budget day. The interviewer was approaching Cyril with a mike when another person came hurtling out saying "Not him! Not him!" It was Cyril's brother Tony who worked for the Beeb and resembled him in all but politics, being a Fabian. Whatever he feared brother Cyril might say in a brief soundbite, BBC viewers had to be saved from the menace of hearing a Marxist at teatime!

My own lingering memory though is of the evening in 1964 when some of us made a foray to the famous Ace Cafe on the North Circular Road to sell Keep Left and see if we could interest the young bikers and ton-up lads in joining the Young Socialists. Nowadays the clientele who throng the Ace forecourt on a Sunday morning look middle aged or older, and have probably swapped their business suits for weekend leathers, but then they were young guys with a wilder image, and we thought we had to look the part.

Who should join us, saying he had come straight from work, but Cyril, bespectacled and wearing a tie, and if I'm not mistaken carrying a briefcase. Incongruous, I thought, but next time I looked he was chatting away to a bunch of bike lads who were listening intently to his every word.

It was after 1985, when the Workers Revolutionary Party without the disgraced Gerry Healy and his acolytes attracted former members like me to give it another go, that I resumed my acquaintance with Cyril Smith. Together with Cliff Slaughter, Tom Kemp, Geoff Pilling and I think Frank Girling he was one of the "five professors" as they were dubbed by a hostile faction for whom it seemed, being able to read, never mind write a book was evidence of dubious, even dangerous, activity. Oddly enough, the person to whom this breakaway faction owed allegiance while baiting the intellectuals and the "middle class" was an American who took pride in his efforts to challenge Healy on dialectics, dismissed our concern over Healy's treatment of women as "non-political"(and of course "petty bourgeois") and today heads a highly successful international printing business.

But what struck many of us as bitterly ironic was that though the comrades being attacked were academics with books to their name, none were in fact Professors - they had been far too busy doing political work and contributing to the movement intellectually, to attain the kind of career status (and establishment acceptance) to which their abilities might otherwise entitle them.

There were confused and stormy times to come, as the WRP-Workers Press tried to re-examine its ideas, as Cyril insisted we must after our experience with Healy, and to break out of the isolation to which his sectarianism had led us, with regard to the workers movement and to the left internationally. Exasperated by what he began to see as opportunism and shallowness, Cyril clashed with the leadership - and with me, separately -and decided to concentrate on his theoretical work. When I became branch secretary in SW London, not only did he absent himself from meetings, ostensibly on health grounds, but some of the other comrades skipped the meetings because they were attending Marxism classes at Cyril's place. I could not ask what he had that I hadn't, so I made do with grumbling that Cyril (a mathematician by profession) was seeking a "pure" as opposed to applied Marxism.

Perhaps after experiencing the "Marxism" of the Healy party and its results that effort at purification should have been understandable.

The WRP-Workers Press is no more, and I am not sure what was achieved by our efforts. From Cyril's later period came a stream of books, reflecting his discussions in the WRP and more widely, and attracting wide interest. Communist Society and Marxist Theory (1988), Marx at the Millennium(1996), Karl Marx and the Future of the Human (2004), Marx Myth and Legends(2004). Having taken different paths, I haven't kept track of Cyril's development, though I know others swear by some of his books. But I still value the memory of the Cyril Smith who tried to educate me many years ago, and respect the integrity which led him to take the side he did in 1985, and to be an "awkward" voice subsequently. I'm also glad we parted on friendly terms, when we last met, at Peter Fryer's funeral.

On the surface, perhaps, Andy and Cyril were two quite different comrades. Certainly for much of their lives they would have been in different necks of the left-wing political woods. And while Andy was most keen to carry on his activism to the end, Cyril considered his chief duty to
be his theoretical work. Yet each of them entered the movement when young, and committed themselves, whatever the difficulties and disappointments they encountered; and each in their own way showed a stubborn determination to persevere with what they thought right to the end.


Some of Cyril Smith's writings:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/millenni/smith3. htm

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/millenni/smith2.htm

http://www.cix.co.uk/~cyrilsmith/book5.pdf

http://www.cix.co.uk/~cyrilsmith/


A review by Andy Blunden of Marx's Mathematical manuscrips, on which Cyril worked
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/mathematical-manuscripts/review.htm

Communist Society and Marxist Theory, available from Index Books:
http://www.indexbooks.co.uk/socialism.html

Cyril Smith's funeral will be on Thursday, May 22, 11 am at Lambeth Crematorium, Blackshaw Rd., London SW17.

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from Somerset, Dave Chapple writes (extract)_
Andy's funeral, organised by the International Brigade Memorial Trust, will be held at 2.30pm next Thursday the 22nd May, at the Taunton Deane Crematorium in Wellington Rd. I have been asked to pay tribute at the service. He requested no flowers and any donations to the Morning Star/Peoples' Press Printing Society.
If friends would like to E-mail messages they can be read out or displayed at the reception.

Dave Chapple

davechapple@btinternet.com