Party News Briefs (1957)

Party News from the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lewisham Branch has had to alter the date of their propaganda meeting from 10th January. It is now being held at the same place (Davenport Co-op Hall, Davenport Road. Rushey Green), on THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7th, at 7.30 p.m. This alteration is due to the later date of the Parliamentary election which is taking place in Lewisham.

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Head Office Film Lectures. These are being well attended and audiences are taking part in interesting discussions after the film. A list of films for February are given in this issue.

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Glasgow (City) Branch is holding propaganda meetings every Sunday evening at 7.30 p.m. at the Central Halls, Bath Street. The meetings will be of topical interest and will be held weekly (with the exception of 21st April) until the end of April.

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Glasgow (Kelvingrove) Branch is holding a propaganda meeting at St. Andrews Halls (Berkley St. entrance) on Sunday, 17th February. Further details in this issue.

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Bristol Group are planning a debate with the local branch of the Communist Party. Members are also very active in getting letters in the local Press, thus bringing the Party to the notice of readers.

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Ealing Branch. The second series of Branch discussions will start on February 1st and continue fortnightly thereafter. All members are being individually notified and are asked to give their support. In addition there will be a visit to the Geological Museum one Sunday in February, full details of which will be sent to the members later. In line with the E.C.’s request, all the local branches of the Communist Party have been circulated with the Party’s open letter. At the same time, the first letters are bring sent out asking local Trade Union branches to receive one of our speakers.

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Comrade G. R. Jacobs, who died in October last, has been associated with the Party for many years. His work caused him to travel considerably but when he returned to London he was active at meetings, particularly at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Solicitors acting for his Niece have forwarded the sum of £200 which Comrade Jacobs willed to the Party “ for its General Purposes Fund.”

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News from America. Comrades Evans and Henderson, of Los Angeles Local, upon receiving a supply of S.P.G.B. Suez Crisis leaflets, held a good propaganda meeting in Pershing Square and distributed the leaflets to the audience. Leaflets have also been posted to sympathisers.

Phyllis Howard

Blogger's Note:

According to Party records that I have to hand, G, R. Jacobs joined the Ilford Branch of the SPGB in September 1934. He had a previous association with the IWW before party membership. He resigned from the SPGB in January 1943, as he was going abroad. He presumably was going to New Zealand, as he's next recorded as a member of the New Zealand companion party. He rejoined the SPGB in the 1940s after returning to the UK, and remained a member of the Party until his death.

Readers in the United States (1933)

Notice from the April 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Readers of the Socialist Standard in the U.S.A. are invited to get into touch with the Workers' Socialist

Party at the following addresses:—

Headquarters, 138, East 28rd Street, New York City.

Local Bolton, Mass., Fred Jacobs, Secretary, 118c, Warren Street, Roxbury, Mass.

Local Detroit, Mich., Nils Akervall, Secretary, 70, Ferry W., Detroit, Mich.

Local Los Angeles, Calif., Helen Dyer, Secretary, 8011, Tillie Street, Los Angeles, Calif.

Obituary: Fred Neale (1973)

Obituary from issue number 5 (1973) of The Western Socialist

It Is with sadness that we record the passing of another old stalwart.

Fred Neale, for some twenty years a member of the World Socialist Party in Los Angeles and Seattle and previously a member of the Socialist Party of Canada in Winnipeg and Vancouver, has been forced out of the struggle after a lengthy and painful illness.

Fred became a member of the Winnipeg Local shortly after the first world war and never lost interest in the work of spreading Socialism. During the interval between the decline of the old S. P. of C. in the 1920s and its reorganization at the beginning of the 1930s he was a one-man distributor of Socialist literature and for part of this time his name and address appeared regularly in the Socialist Standard as a source of copies and subscriptions to that journal.

Fred was active in the Party's reorganization and its adoption of the Socialist Party of Great Britain's Declaration of Principles and became its first Local and Dominion Executive Committee Secretary, offices he held for several years. Through this period he was also a regular soap boxer.

During the second world war he lived for a time in Vancouver and was active there in the Party’s work. Later he moved to the United States and became a member of the Los Angeles Local of the W.S.P.. sending regular donations to The Western Socialist and helping in its circulation

To his family in Winnipeg and Seattle, our deepest sympathy. His kind are rare.

Jim Milne

Aaron Smith . . . In Memoriam (1973)

Obituary from issue number 3 (1973) of The Western Socialist

Once again it is our sad duty to report the death of a comrade. Aaron H. Smith of Los Angeles, a dedicated member of the World Socialist Movement, if ever there was one, passed away in April of 1973 after a lengthy illness.

"Smitty" first Joined the World Socialist Party in New York City in the Thirties and was a member of the N. Y Local until he settled in Los Angeles in the Mid-Forties. In L. A. he served for a number of years as local secretary and contact member in the directory of The Western Socialist. He was one of those socialists who will be long remembered by his comrades both for his socialist understanding and his wit. He had travelled a bit on the World Socialist trail, having made the scene in Canada. Britain and in Vienna as well as at least two visits to Party Conferences in Boston in his later years.

I first met "Smitty’’ in New York City in 1939 when I was but a fledgling socialist. He was one of the comrades who reinforced my own understanding. He was particularly fond of the taxation question and adept at explaining that it is a capitalist, not a working class problem. Old timers of Boston Local still remember and talk of a lecture he gave on the subject at one of their forums in the Thirties. He broke up his audience as he demolished the theory — prevalent then. too. with radicals — that the poverty-stricken working class pays taxes.

"Smitty" was an upholsterer by trade and when he settled in L. A. he earned his living refurbishing and restoring office chairs, bar stools, etc. He became, as he termed it. a "tacks expert.” I can still see him in my "mind’s eye” (I had settled in L. A. a few years before he arrived) a mouthful of tacks and an upholsterer’s hammer in his hand, plying his trade and joking about his "tacks" expertise.

But it would take much more than a necessarily brief obit to do Justice to Comrade Aaron Smith. All we can do here is bid him a sad farewell in the Journal of his Party.

— A Boston comrade

More on Harry Morrison . . .

As mentioned in the previous post Harry Morrison ('Harmo') was the principal writer of the WSPUS radio show scripts that made up the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist. 

As he is currently in my thoughts, I thought I'd repost an obituary for Harry Morrison that originally appeared on the old World Socialist Party of the United States website. It appears that when the current World Socialist Party of United States website was relaunched or revamped a few years back, many articles and reviews from the old website weren't transferred over. That, sadly, includes this obituary for Comrade Morrison. I only happen to have a copy of the obituary because I posted it on my personal blog at the time.

There is a shorter obituary for him that appeared in the July 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard which can be read here, but I'm sure readers of the blog will appreciate this longer obituary that goes into greater detail on his background, and on his contribution to both the WSPUS and to the wider World Socialist Movement. 

I'll have to see if I can get a copy of his books, in order that I can scan them in and upload them onto the internet.

Harry Morrison (1912 - 2004)

Born in 1912, Harry Morrison became convinced of the case for socialism as a young man, having been influenced by an older brother who had heard the case for socialism in Toronto, Ontario. Morrison first visited Boston around 1937 but soon traveled west to California.

He returned to Boston in 1939 where he met his future wife Sally Kligman at the Boston Local Headquarters. The couple married in the fall of 1939 and lived in Boston for a couple of years. In 1941 they moved to Los Angeles and made contact with the comrades there. They had a daughter, Anita, in 1942. The family moved back to Boston in 1947, and both Harry and Sally were active members of Boston Local from then on.

Morrison wrote voluminously for the organization, sometimes anonymously but usually under the pen name 'Harmo.' He was a very frequent contributor to The Western Socialist, and, as a member of the WS's Editorial Committee, he also edited many articles submitted by others. He had a real gift for articulating the socialist analysis.

He enjoyed debating, and was a frequent member of the WSP group who engaged in debates with various local university debaters. He was a fine outdoor speaker as well. He was a soap box orator on Boston Common during the 1940s and 50s, and even after the WSP stopped soap boxing as an organization, Morrison continued to speak less formally to small groups along the paths near the Tremont Street side of the Common; he continued this into the 1960s, putting the case for socialism tirelessly and articulately.

For about 10 years during the 1960s and 70s, the WSP had a radio program on WCRB Boston. Morrison was among the comrades who wrote scripts for this program, He also was one of the on air readers. When the Party decided, in 1974, to publish a pamphlet in commemoration of the 300th consecutive issue of The Western Socialist, thirty or so of Morrison's radio essays became The Perspective for World Socialism -- a pamphlet which is still being distributed today. Also during this period he was a guest on another AM radio show hosted by the late Haywood Vincent and on the Adam Burak show on an FM station as well.

Morrison served for many years on the NAC, as well as on the Editorial Committee. It would be hard to overestimate his contribution to the socialist movement.

Harry Morrison developed heart problems when he was in late middle age, and, at the suggestion of his doctor, 'retired' from active work in the WSP. After this, he used his time to write three books, The Socialism of Bernard Shaw (published by McFarland & Co. in 1989 and which we still distribute), and two others for which he was unable to find a publisher, one about Jack London and the other about the Soviet Union. Sally Morrison died in 1987. Harry continued to live in his apartment but no longer participated in Party activities during this period, concentrating, instead, on research for his books and on enjoying his family which now included two grandchildren. He would always accept an invitation to a social gathering, however, and liked to visit with comrades visiting the area, most recently with SPGB Comrades Vic Vanni and Tony McNeil who spent some time in Boston in 2002.

After another heart attack in December of 2002 Cde Morrison moved to a nursing home. A socialist to the end, he gave several talks on Marxism to his fellow residents, which Cdes Fenton and Elbert as well as members of Morrison's family also attended. His death on May 13, 2004 is a great loss to the World Socialist Movement.

He will be long remembered and sorely missed.

Obituary: Harry Morrison “Harmo” 1912-2004 (2004)

Obituary from the June 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

Born in 1912, Harry Morrison became convinced of the case for socialism as a young man, having been influenced by an older brother who had heard the case for socialism in Toronto, Ontario. Morrison first visited Boston around 1937 but soon traveled west to California.

He returned to Boston in 1939 where he met his future wife Sally Kligman at the Boston Local Headquarters. The couple married in the fall of 1939 and lived in Boston for a couple of years. In 1941 they moved to Los Angeles and made contact with the comrades there. They had a daughter, Anita, in 1942. The family moved back to Boston in 1947, and both Harry and Sally were active members of Boston Local from then on.

Morrison wrote voluminously for the organization, sometimes anonymously but usually under the pen name ‘Harmo.’ He was a very frequent contributor to The Western Socialist, and, as a member of the WS’s Editorial Committee, he also edited many articles submitted by others. He had a real gift for articulating the socialist analysis.

He enjoyed debating, and was a frequent member of the WSP group who engaged in debates with various local university debaters. He was a fine outdoor speaker as well. He was a soap box orator on Boston Common during the 1940s and 50s, and even after the WSP stopped soap boxing as an organization, Morrison continued to speak less formally to small groups along the paths near the Tremont Street side of the Common; he continued this into the 1960s, putting the case for socialism tirelessly and articulately.

For about 10 years during the 1960s and 70s, the WSP had a radio program on WCRB Boston. Morrison was among the comrades who wrote scripts for this program, He also was one of the on air readers. When the Party decided, in 1974, to publish a pamphlet in commemoration of the 300th consecutive issue of The Western Socialist, thirty or so of Morrison’s radio essays became The Perspective for World Socialism — a pamphlet which is still being distributed today. Also during this period he was a guest on another AM radio show hosted by the late Haywood Vincent and on the Adam Burak show on an FM station as well. Morrison served for many years on the NAC, as well as on the Editorial Committee. It would be hard to overestimate his contribution to the socialist movement.

Harry Morrison developed heart problems when he was in late middle age, and, at the suggestion of his doctor, ‘retired’ from active work in the WSP. After this, he used his time to write three books, The Socialism of Bernard Shaw (published by McFarland & Co. in 1989 and which we still distribute), and two others for which he was unable to find a publisher, one about Jack London and the other about the Soviet Union. Sally Morrison died in 1987. Harry continued to live in his apartment but no longer participated in Party activities during this period, concentrating, instead, on research for his books and on enjoying his family which now included two grandchildren. He would always accept an invitation to a social gathering, however, and liked to visit with comrades visiting the area, most recently with SPGB Comrades Vic Vanni and Tony McNeil who spent some time in Boston in 2002.

The Passing of Comrade Henderson (1957)

Obituary from the Nov-Dec 1957 issue of The Western Socialist

Comrade Walter Henderson was born at Fifeshire, Scotland, one of a family of twelve brothers, and came across to Canada in 1911. He had been raised in a strict religious environment. In about 1913-14 some comrades first contacted him at Brandon, Manitoba, where he was conducting a Sunday school class in St. Paul’s church. In 1914 with the outbreak of World War I work was disrupted and suspended in that part of Canada. Henderson, with thousands of others, lost his job. He drifted into Winnipeg and hung around the Labor Temple where he met some members of the Socialist Party of Canada. He listened to them attentively, and by the time the war was over he had dropped his religion completely and was an enthusiastic member of the Winnipeg Local of the Socialist Party of Canada.

For a time he worked on the Winnipeg Street Railway. During the Winnipeg strike he was a most valiant and militant fighter. Later on he went to work in the Fort Rouge Railroad shops, where workers in the boiler department made him a delegate to the Trades & Labour Council. 

In 1923 Henderson came to Los Angeles. He got a job at the trade he had learned back in Scotland — plastering. With no jobs available in the depression, 1929, he and his wife Bridget, started a small bakery. After about four years of this he found himself back in the plasterer’s game.

From 1923 on he was a member of the Plasterers’ Local No. 2. For thirty years he was their delegate to the Los Angeles Central Labor Council and for about two years he was a business agent.

The present writer knew Com. Henderson for forty years, having worked with him most of the time. We both were charter members of Local Los Angeles WSP back in 1931. It was always a pleasure to be in his company. At all our social gatherings he was the life of the party. He was active in Party work until the very last. I ’phoned him about three hours before he passed away. He was, as always, full of enthusiasm, telling me he had just written four letters to San Francisco comrades making arrangements for them to hear tape recordings heard at recent WSP conference at Boston.

On Sunday, November 10th, two days before he passed away, our local group met at a comrade’s house. He was full of fun, but said he was not feeling up to par. He told us at this time he was much concerned about increasing the sale of our papers on the newsstands. He was also elated that he had collected $18.00 to send to the national office. I do not remember him ever missing a business meeting unless he was out of town.

Our comrade had hundreds of friends in the labor movement, many of whom disagreed with his Socialist principles but respected his sincerity. He was always outspoken and never hesitant in exposing those whom he thought were guilty of deception and hocus pocus in the labor movement.

At his funeral several hundred crowded the two rooms of the funeral parlor, with as many more unable to get inside. A summarized account of his life in the Socialist movement was given by W. A. Pritchard, a friend of his with whom he had worked in the Socialist Party of Canada years before.

He is survived by his widow, who shared with him the same social concepts of life, and two married daughters He is also survived by a brother Dave, with whom many of the comrades are well acquainted. To the entire family we extend our deepest sympathy at their great loss.

His passing is an irretrievable loss to all that knew him as a Socialist. All we can do now is to say farewell to a loyal friend and ardent comrade. We will carry on.

Fred Evans

Obituaries: Fred Evans and Alex Paterson (1961)

Obituaries from the March 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to inform our readers pf the death of two old members of our companion Parties; Fred Evans of Los Angeles and Alex Paterson of Winnipeg.

Fred Evans died in harness. He had just delivered the Western Socialist to a news stand in Los Angeles when he collapsed and died of a heart attack. He was a tower of strength to the W.S.P. on the West Coast; an indefatigable speaker and propagandist. He visited England a few years ago and spoke on our platform in Hyde Park. He also gave considerable assistance and hospitality to two of our comrades who visited Los Angeles during speaking tours recently. He will be sadly missed by our companion Party, which already suffered a serious loss through the death of Gordon Coffin, one of the founders of the W.S.P.. a few months ago.

Alex Paterson was one of the oldest Canadian subscribers to the Socialist Standard. Over the years he gave a great deal of financial help to the S.P. of C. He visited England thirty years ago and met some of our older members. He had been ill for many years and lost both his wife and daughter in the last few years.

A full account of these two old comrades will appear in the Western Socialist, but we wish to add our tribute in this brief note.