Jane Kelly SADLY, BOB Pennington died of a stroke in a Brighton hospital in mid-September: he was 69. Although for the last nine years he had not been active, he was involved in revolutionary politics from joining the Young Communist League until the age of 60 when he was still on the editorial board of Socialist Outlook.
Bob left the Communist Party over the reformism of The British Road to Socialism, and was recruited in 1952 by Mary Archer to Socialist Outlook, (which became the Socialist Labour League in 1959, forerunner of the Workers Revolutionary Party). By 1953 he was a full time organiser.
The period he was most proud of was when, from 1954-1957, he was a full time organiser for the "Blue Union", the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers Union, in Merseyside, despite never having worked on the docks. It was a period of explosive militancy, with dock strikes against appalling conditions, over safety and for pay rises even before the war ended. There were seven national unofficial strikes between 1945-1954 and troops were used against the strikers in 1945 and 1949. The TGWU, which organised the majority of the workforce, was increasingly seen by many rank and file dockers as traitorous, selling out strikes, holding down pay and generally doing the bosses' bidding.
Despite the achievement of the National Dock Labour Scheme of 1947 the TGWU refused to take advantage of the dockers favourable position: FORTY years ago this month, on November 4, 1956, Nikita Khruschev ordered Soviet tanks to open fire on the Hungarian working class districts of Budapest.
The bombardment left 20,000 dead and eventually crushed the revolutionary upsurge which had gripped the city: but it also delivered a decisive blow to the prestige and authority of the Kremlin leadership in the eyes of countless thousand members of Communist Parties around the world, who were appalled at the brutality of the repression of a workers' struggle. The British Communist Party alone lost over 10,000 members as a result of its shameless defence of the Confidence in the 'progressive' role of Moscow's Stalinist leadership had already been severely shaken earlier in 1956 by Khruschev's astonishing Secret Speech to the Soviet CP's 20th Congress, in which he had revealed a monumental list of crimes committed by the previously idolised Joseph Stalin. Socialist Outlook welcomes letters. Post them to Feedback, PO Box | 109, London N4 2UU. Those over 300 words in length will be edited. You can E-mail us at: [email protected] We are on the web at: HTTp://www.gn.apc.org/labournet/so "The TGWU... preferred to collaborate win ine government and tne el ployers than to allow scope for a politically militant leadership, and so the advances that could have been made did not take place."
men were oul Bob Pennington: Decades of betrayal that led to the dockers' last stand', Socialist Outlook No.15, May 1989.
A series of betrayals and the undemocratic nature of the TGWU eventually led Hull and a little later Birkenhead, Liverpool and Manchester dockers to leave and join the NASD, the "Blue Socialist Outlook was influential down to the amongst the rank and file leadership of the Birkenhead dockers, having recruited a number of them during a six Tor ine strike. week unofficial strike in 1950. Bob's organisational skills and political acumen was seen by the "Blue" dockers as important in their fight for the recognition of their union.
Among the revelations which rocked the packed assembly of Stalinist bureaucrats (accustomed as they were to uncritical acceptance of Grans leadership and policies) was Khruschev's admission that the traumatic split between the Kremlin and Yugoslavia's Stalinist leader Tito in 1948 could have been avoided.
This caused esnecial embarrassment for Hungarian leader Rakosi, who had executed former Interior Minister Laszlo Rajk in 1949 and jailed other leading Hungarian CPers for alleged collaboration with the "fascist" Tito. I he rollowing mont kakosı was torced to admit that the show trial had been a gigantic frame-up.
As Rakosi faced a growing storm of dissent reaching beyond students and intellectuals into layers of the police and army, and was eventually replaced by the equally objectionable Kremlin stooge Erno Gero, a wave of strikes and demonstrations broke out in Poland. with workers demanding far-reaching TeTonas.
On October 23, 100,000 Hungarian workers and students demonstrated in Budapest in solidarity with the Polish nist Party.
around 3,000 by 1960.
By May 1955, when the recognition strike started, two-thirds of the labour leadership in London. force in the Liverpool docks were in the "Blue", along with the majority in Manchester and Hull. Within a week 12,000 The six week stoppage. without strike pay and with the full force of both the bosses and the TGWU ranged Solidarity Movement. against them, was characterised by rank and file democracy. There were mass meetings of 3-4,000 people, one of 7,000, and mass mobilisations:
"We organised a march through Liverpool.... from the Pier Head to Bootle mansione ock anowe took our collecting tins and we went into every pub and cafe on the way collecting (Interview with Bob Pennington by Dave Baines in 1982)
Although the strike failed, sold out by they had. the National Executive of the NASD, there were still 8,000 out in Liverpool at the end. The Northern members of the "Blue were then excluded from the NASD, and its ex-veneral secrelary, Newman, turned on its leaders, including Bob. Writing in The Empire News on July 3, 1955, he accused him of being rable. solely responsible for the strike and denouncing him as a "Trotskyist troublemaker", even though the same Newman had nominae co as u uner or le important union only seven months earlier. Although forced to readmit the 'Northerners" by the courts the "Blue'"union declined from 16,000 in May 1955 to leftism.
During this process virtually the whole of Birkenhead Port Workers' Committee was recruited to Socialist Outlook - which provided leadership for the unofficial movement on Merseyside. though the CP remained the political Bob worked for the SLL again from leader. 1957 until he left in 1960. He briefly flirted with a libertarian grouping, Solidarity, then in the late 1960s joined the International Marxist Group, then growing fast in the leadership of the Vietnam Strike of 1984-85.
He became a natonal organiser, davelling around the country, speaking at meeungs, nerping recruit new members until an accident made him less mobile. From then on he worked as a journalist importance of the Poll Tax. and ecucator in ine groud.
It is in this latter role that he is perhaps best remembered. The education provided for him by Mary and John Archer was never forgotten and he recognised the importance of theory and education for a revolutionary, just as not be forgotten.
Always accessible in his language, engaging in his style, he taught newer Under this popular pressure, Nagy called for the complete removal of Russian troons from Hungarian soil. and then went on to propose leaving ine Warsaw Pact and declaring Hungary The Kremlin would not tolerate this level of independence. Instead it set up a new stooge government headed by veteran Stalinist Janos Kadar, and sent in heavy reinforcements to the Red AT Army detachments which began their attack by a massive artillery bombardment designed to keep troops out of contact with Hungarian workers.
200,000 Soviet troops were demembers about Stalinism, the history of the unions and the Labour Party. ine achievements and betrayals, the history or ine rourn internanonal and ine rest of the left, in a way which is still memoI remember at my first IMG meeting in South London he explained why CND, despite its pacifism, was such an "Any movement. He said: movemen walen unreatens lo aconve the ruling class of its weapons, is radical" - undermining in one sentence any tendency to sectarianism or ultra He was especially tolerant of newer members, though his line on youth was - they should grow up! Though he didn't suffer fools gladly and could be cutting if you got on the wrong side of him. his experience and "nose" for politics made him a far-sighted and astute political He was one of the first to fight for a reorientation to the Labour Party in the Bennite period, the first to insist on the implications of the defeat of the Miners' In Socialist Outlook, formed by a merger between International and Socialist Viewnoint after a solit in the Pl group Socialist Action (formerly IMG). he was one of the first to recognise the Although in the last years he was alone and no longer politically active, Maas the many years working tor revolunon- of th. ary organisations having taken their toll, his role as political activist and educator early in the revolutionarv movement. as huInesi mane and humorous companion. will assis WOUL ew th ter al