Penny Krantz
Socialists and activists across the movement in Manchester will be saddened by the news that Penny Krantz has died at the age of 83.
Penny was a lifelong activist and revolutionary socialist.
She was a trained shorthand typist, a job that she often had to explain to newer comrades who did not know what a typewriter was! But in the 1960s when Penny joined the workforce it was an essential skill.
Once, in the 1960s working as an office temp, management asked her to type a letter informing staff that they were sacked. She refused to type the letter and walked out.
During the anti-Vietnam War protests she joined a demonstration at the US Embassy in London following the killing of student protesters at Kent State University in 1970. She was a smart dresser and a CIA operative approached her—shrugging him off she went to join the students.
Joining the Socialist Workers Party in 1971 in Kingston, west London, Penny quickly became indispensable to running the SWP’s office at Cotton Gardens, including the demanding role of secretary for the Central Committee.
When the SWP made a “turn to the class” she moved to Blackburn and helped set up a branch there. She typed up the rank and file newspaper Busman’s Platform which was distributed among transport workers.
She got a job at the Manchester Polytechnic (now Manchester Metropolitan University) where she became an activist in Nalgo, a forerunner of the Unison union. There she was known by management as “Red Penny”.
During one student occupation when bosses tried to turn the administration staff against students who had occupied their offices, Penny got affected staff to solidly support the students. Many years later in 2022 she was pleased to join Unison pickets at MMU during their pay strikes.
Penny was a keen anti-racist and anti-fascist activist who was central to the Anti Nazi League in the north-west and later on in Unite Against Fascism and Stand Up to Racism. She was proud to have joined every protest against Tommy Robinson when local activists stopped his election to the European parliament in 2019.
She was at every protest she could join—from the defence of Withington Hospital when the Tory Health Secretary got hit by eggs (Penny brought them) to demonstrations against the Tory Party conference when it came to Manchester.
In later years, when illness took its toll, Penny found medicinal cannabis a big help. In 2001 when an Amsterdam style cannabis cafe called “The Dutch Experience” was founded in Stockport, Penny was arrested and bound over to keep the peace on a protest outside defending the right for people to smoke or use cannabis.
Penny was not just a participant in our movement. She was a chronicler of it—taking photos and keeping leaflets and posters. She also made quilts and sewed a banner for a campaign to save the local swimming baths. Penny was a lifelong activist, and a wonderfully kind and supportive person—she will be missed by everyone who knew her.
Manchester SWP will be organising a memorial event in June.
Our love and solidarity to her partner Mark, her son Rob, and all her family, friends and comrades.
She was no harmless eccentric
