IT IS with sadness that we record the death of John Chase after a long illness. John was a socialist and Labour Party member of the 1945 generation who fought all his life for peace and against imperialism. He would have been disgusted at the vermin in charge, so intent on recolonising the Middle East.
THE Marxist economist Michael Kidron, who died last week at the age of 72, made an enormous contribution to the Socialist Workers Party's development during the early years of our tradition in the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Cape Town in 1930, Mike emigrated after the Second World War to Palestine, where he became an anti-Zionist socialist. He moved to Britain in the mid-1950s.
IT IS with immense sorrow that we record the death of Norma Wilson, for many years a full-time organiser for CND in Manchester. Norma died after a long, courageous and cheerful battle against cancer. Many readers will have heard Norma speak at Marxism.
COMRADES WILL be very saddened to learn of the death of Nick Hopkins after a short illness. Nick was only 42 and will be missed by his comrades and friends.
TOM DURKIN-longtime chair of Brent Trades Council, notably at the time of the Grunwick's strike in the 1970s-died just before Christmas at the age of 87. Tom was in every sense a big man, with a booming voice sometimes augmented by his home-made sound systems.
"What the fuck do you want?" Those were Joe Strummer's first words to me, backstage at London's ICA in the winter of 1976. I'd been photographing the gig for the New Musical Express, a revelation of the burgeoning punk scene. Born John Mellor in 1952, Joe Strummer, son of a British diplomat, boarding school, art college, cartoonist, artist, busker, musician, lived for a while in Newport.
A MEMORIAL meeting to celebrate the life of Jim Higgins, the former national secretary of the International Socialists, will take place on Saturday 18 January at 2.30pm. The meeting will be held at Caxton House, 129 St John's Way, London (Archway tube). Speakers will include John Palmer and Roger Protz.
FRANK ALLAUN, who died recently, was a principled Labour left winger who never lost his burning desire to make the world a better place. MP for East Salford for nearly 30 years until 1983, Frank declined a peerage and spent the next 19 years in activity outside parliament. Under Harold Wilson Frank was briefly appointed parliamentary private secretary to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
IT IS with deep sadness that present and past members of Portsmouth SWP record the death of Jill Molyneux last week. Jill was a lifelong socialist whose first political involvement was in solidarity with the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. She joined the International Socialists in 1972.
JIM HIGGINS, who has died aged 71, was a leading activist in the socialist and trade union movements between the 1950s and 1970s. He played a major role in building the membership and influence of the International Socialists, the organisation which preceded the Socialist Workers Party.
SOCIALIST Worker readers will be saddened to hear of the recent death of one of the paper's oldest readers. Beatrice Mary Jones was born into a fairly privileged family in August 1901. As a teenager she read about the harsh lives of working class people, and in 1917 her sympathy for the Russian Revolution led her aunty to declare her a "Bolshie".
THE SUDDEN death of Mike Cohen last week at the age of 67 is a sad loss to the labour movement. Mike was a familiar figure whenever ordinary people were fighting back. Rare was the strike or demonstration in London where he was not there, taking photographs for socialist publications, mainly the Morning Star and also for others including Socialist Worker.
