Obituary: Jim Flowers (1984)

Obituary from the May 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with great sorrow that we report the death on 10 March of Bristol comrade Jim Flowers following a stroke.

Jim was politically active right up until his death, attending meetings and following up his well known correspondence with the local press. He joined The Socialist Party in 1936 and for several decades was a well known figure on Durdham Downs, where he struggled to keep alive the ideas of socialism.

Jim had a secular upbringing from which he never strayed. His father, who refused a CBE, was a co-founder of the TGWU along with Ernest Bevin. He was a trade unionist the whole of his working life and, when a local newspaper report referred to Jim as the draughtsmen’s leader in a DATA strike at the British Aircraft Corporation, he promptly wrote in to point out that he was merely their representative. Of his early experience in the Labour Party Jim said he always thought there was something wrong because there were so many parsons in it.

A final misrepresentation appeared in an obituary in the Bristol Evening Post, under the heading “Jim Flowers the idealist is dead”. At this, one of our comrades promptly wrote in to correct the “idealist” label—we have to carry on where Jim left off.

BRISTOL GROUP