Letter to the Editors from the January 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard
Dear Editors,
I have just come across on your website the (undated) obituary of Wally Preston [it was in the November 2000 issue – Eds]. I had not heard of Wally’s death, and was saddened to learn of it. I met him several times when he was a member of the International Socialists in the 1970s, and he once stayed the night at my home. He was a splendid speaker, a genuine working-class intellectual and a very likeable human being.
However, I must correct your obituarist on one point. He quotes my short history of the IS/SWP and deduces that the comrade who told an IS Conference that a document was so bad it must have been written by a sociologist was Wally. It was not. That speech was made by the late Terry Barrett, a London docker. Barrett was a man of great courage and principle (he publicly opposed the dockers’ march in support of Enoch Powell in 1968), but he was on occasion given to a certain demagogic anti-intellectualism of a sort that I think Wally would not have indulged in.
Ian Birchall,
London, N9
Blogger's Note:
See the comment below for more background about Terry Barrett.
1 comment:
Funnily enough, it appears that Terry Barrett was another IS'er who had a background in the SPGB. Well, that's according to early IS member John Palmer.
According to Palmer:
" “Johnny Duncan” is completely wrong in his account about Terry Barrett and the 1968 dockers strike in support of Enoch Powell. His suggestion that the CP wanted “to bash his brains out” for crossing the dockers picket line is the purest fiction. It is true that the first response of Terry Barrett and his small group of political comrades in the West India docks was to defy the racist strike call. He was an exceptionally principled socialist – especially on the race issue which got his Irish blood boiling – as he used to say. His position led to a long and very heated discussion with the IS leadership. I remember one meeting with Tony Cliff, Duncan Hallas, Geoff Carlsson and myself. Cliff, I must say, argued for hours and finally convinced Terry to respect the picket lines but to organise a group of anti-racist dockers and other socialists to hand out a leaflet an anti-Powell leaflet (written, I think by Paul Foot) to the pickets and marching dockers. This is precisely what happened. Terry was an exceptional militant and socialist – who received his political education by the way NOT in the CP but in the SPGB. He always was a working class auto-didact and intellectual (who used to take GCE O and A levels as a hobby). Although in a small minority at the time of the pro-Powell movement, he was able subsequently to gather a significant number of dockers around him. When he moved to Tilbury the dockers IS branch there used to get very good meetings. I remember one attended by about 30 working dockers. This led to the production of Rank and File Docker in the subsequent period,. Terry is no longer with us and is unable to defend himself. “Johnny Duncan” should apologise for his mistake."
From here: February 7, 2009 at 9:00 pm
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