ELLIS HILLMAN, who has recently died, was both a serious political activist and a unashamed eccentric.
A committed Trotskyist Ellis was a supporter of the Fourth International and a sympathiser of Socialist He was a regular visitor to our offices, making suggestions and comments or criticisms, or to request information. He was particularly interested in the work of Trotskyist groups in other parts of the world.
As Mayor of Barnet, Ellis was proud to be known as London's only Trotskyist mayor.
An expert on Lewis Carroll, he persuaded the borough to mount a major exhibition on Carroll's work, with the indisputable argument that, as far as he knew, Carroll had never had any connection with Hendon!
Ellis was also an expert on subterranean archaeology (an interest that could partly have explained his membership of the Flat Earth Society). His book London Under London is the best history of London's underground rivers, sewers, tunnels and services.
Ellis Hillman was due to speak at Socialist Outlook's Ernest Mandel Memorial Rally last October, but had to cancel after suffering the first of the heart attacks that eventually claimed his life. With his death, we have lost one of the most colourtul and original talents of the Trotskyist movement.
Charlie van Gelderen adds a few personal memories I FIRST met Ellis Hillman in the 1950s, when he came to discuss with me about joining the RCP.
He had been, for a time, a student at a Yeshiva, an orthodox Jewish seminary, specialising in the study of the Talmud. He did not find the transition from the sometimes vehement theological discussion to the Marxist dialectic very difficult.
He remained a member of the RCP till it was absorbed by Healy's group inside the Labour Party. Healy recogSubscribe!
Socialist Outlook Is Britain's best-selling socialist fortnightly. For an Internationalist, socialist and working-class outlook on world events, subscribe today.
Annual subscriptions cost C17 for Britain or Ireland, <38 by alt to Ausrlalasia, Japan and China, €50 for multi-reader institutions and solidarity buscribers, and 630 elsewhere. Send your cheque or postal order, payable to Socialist Outlook Fund', to PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU. Add a sum equal to 67 to payments not sent in British pounds.
Name Address Post Coide Telephone nised his talents and he was soon a member of the Central Committee. At that time, the group aimed at capturing positions in the Labour Party. With the group's encouragement, Ellis was elected to the Greater London Council, while 1 and a few others became local councillors.
When Healy decided to come out of the Labour Party and launch the Socialist Labour League (later WRP) as an independent organisation, this move was vigorously. opposed by Ellis and myself. We were of the opinion that there was still work to be done in the Labour Party and that it was both politically and strategically wrong to abandon the positions we had established, especially the control of the Young Socialists.
Ellis was always a bit of a maverick. For the last few years, he belonged to none of the overtly left grouplets, yet he appeared to be everywhere. I remember him trying to act as honest broker when Ernest Mandel cam over to try and avert a split between the Militant group and The Week.
He was also something of an eccentric, a founder and lifelong Chairperson of the Flat Earth Society. He was also, for a time, a collector of golliwogs from jam-jars.
When he became Mayor of Barnet, in Thatcher's former constituency, he removed all photos and relics of her and replaced it with a bust of Lenin.
He once took me to his room at the town hall to show me his book shelf. It was filled with official tomes of one sort or another. When swung around on its hinges it revolved to reveal another side entirely made up of his Marxist book collection.
This was typical of Ellis.
Paul Walker "THE GREENS will become a permanent part of British politics" said Ken Livingstone when the Green Party won 15 per cent of the vote in the 1989 European elections.
"What that means for the left is clear. The Red-Green alliance is no longer simply a matter for West Germany or other European countries. It applies to Britain too."
Livingstone had got it right on the importance of the politics of environmentalism and sustainable economics but got the political form wrong.
This was reflected on February 17 when over 500 people turned up at Westminster Central Hall to the Socialist Environment and Resources Association conference: •Working for a Green Future - sustainabilty, full employment and the quality of life.' The hall was full of labour movement activists, a smattering of Green Party members and significant numbers of youth. Activists from Reclaim the Streets were also there.
The significance of the event was underlined by the political battle between the Blair wing of the labour movement and the old fashioned social democrats who have, it seems, at last started to get to grips with the issue that Livingstone first pointed to while in charge of the GLC.
Joan Ruddock and Chris Smith were on the platform for the front bench of the Labour Party.
What was unnerving about their contributions was that they both made almost the same speech-to the embarrassment of everybody watching. Even down to the same opening line which was to quote Margaret Thatcher who had said during the Malvinas crisis "isn't it nice to have a real crisis when you have to deal with such humdrum matters like the environment".
Throughout Chris and Joan spoke with one voice-that of Tony Blair.
Both speeches were a mixture of Tory bashing and Euro-enthusiasm. Most of it was, of course, intellectually vapid but-if you are desperate enough-believable.
It was left to John Edmonds, wearing his Full Employment Forum hat, to pose a socialist environmental politics as opposed to the liberalism served up by the Blairites.
Edmonds argued that high unemployment had led to a social break down and that this could only be corrected by "a large public sector and a well developed system of public services".
For this "you need planning and regulation" and money spent on health, education and sustaining a quality of Edmonds: which hat is he wearing? life for the older generation.
Full employment, he argued, would come from three sectors of the economy, communications, health and education.
At this point Edmonds was well in his stride announcing that Britain needed "a massive infrastructure investment" including water systems and house building (or an improvement in the built environment, as environmentalists would say). It was left to John Edmonds, wearing his Fuli Employment Forum hat, to pose a socialist environmental politics Also needed was a shift from private to public transport. Edmonds went on to explain how the GLCs fares-fair policy had got him out of his car and on to the bus and what a good idea that this had been. He also put a figure on it - t8 billion worth of investment.
At the end of his speech Joan Ruddock was staring at a fixed point in the distance as the conference clapped its head off to a most unexpected tub thumping speech.
In response to a question from the floor about the transfer of skilled workers from he military to environmental sectors Edmonds completely blew the gaff by saying that 'It will not happen if market forces are allowed to do it for us. This is an area where socialist planning has to take place.' Socialist planning! Ruddock gulped down another glass of water. Conference was left wondering how market forces were going to create the 'large public sector' that Edmonds had called for. Edmonds' speech was only outflanked by that of Jonathon Porrit who, as the last speaker, argued that full employment could only be reached by a cut in the working week, a ban on overtime, a radical redistribution of wealth and a shift of taxation from labour use to resource use. The audience lapped it up Is SERA the plaything of Blair and co? Perhaps not. Only its reaction to a Blair government will make it clear.