Obituary
Eileen Gersh, a revolutionary and supporter of the Fourth International since it was founded in 1938, has died in London aged 85.
Until recently an active supporter of Socialist Outlook, two years ago Eileen joined the small Workers International League. Despite this, she remained politically and personally close to our paper and supporters. She remained alert and vigorous until December, when she was hospitalised after breaking her arm. Several complications, including a heart attack, meant that she never left the hospital.
Eileen’s political life began as a student at Oxford University in the early 1930s, where she joined the Labour Club and read Marx. In an interview for Socialist Outlook in 1978, she recalled the arrivalof a hunger march from Wales in 1934: "We were drafted to help prepare meals for them, peel potatoes and things like that. We went out to meet the marchers and came in with them, shouting slogans. I was given a pail of water, a sponge and some rubbing alcohol to do their feet and treat their blisters! I don’t think they would have dreamt of asking men to peel potatoes - and they didn’t ask any of us women to do the important organisational tasks. But women were quite prominent among the speakers we invited to the Labour Club: I remember listening to Dora Russell, Charlotte Haldane, Naomi Mitchison."
Eileen also took part in anti-fascist mobilisations, in Oxford and later in London, where she joined the Labour League of Youth (LLY). She met the early Trotskyists in London, Arthur Wimbush, Vic Carpenter and Reg Groves, and organised support for the Spanish Republicans in the Civil War.
In 1938, the year of the founding of the Fourth International, Eileen moved to the United States. "We were not talking seriously about the Fourth International when I left Britain - everything seemed up in the air." But once in the United States, she went to see US Trotskyist leader James P Cannon. "Cannon told me about the founding of the Socialist Workers’ Party, coming out of the Socialist Party and about the founding of the Fourth International."
Eileen remained in the United States for forty-seven years, where she taught life sciences at university. But for a period during the war she more or less dropped out of political activity. "I got married, had children and I did not go out of my way at this time to get involved politically. But then in the late forties I began to get involved in the anti-nuclear movement in Chicago which developed since the war."
"When my daughter was seventeen, she went to the University of Pennsylvania and met up with the Young Socialist Alliance [the youth organisation of the Socialist Workers Party]. She brought home The Militant for me to read. I recognised it, of course, and got in touch!" Eileen joined the SWP, working particularly with the Women’s National Abortion Action Committee and the anti-Vietnam War movement.
But the SWP was in internal difficulties by this time. Along with many others, including most of the long standing cadres of the party, she was bureaucratically expelled in 1984. "They instituted new practices for the SWP. They did everything they could to avoid debating with those who opposed them in the party, and then finally expelled us." She fought unsuccessfully for readmission, but following the death of her husband, she returned to England in 1985.
In England, too, supporters of the Fourth International were in turmoil at the time. Eileen worked with Socialist Action in London, but as a result of disputes with supporters of the American SWP, who were moving away from a revolutionary position, in 1988 she and many others left to join the other groups who had recently started to produce Socialist Outlook..
Eileen was an active member of the Labour Party in Hackney, and continued campaigning for abortion rights, international solidarity, and increasingly on environmental issues. She became involved in local campaigns against the construction of further urban motorways, and used her scientific background to expose the health hazards - especially the rise in asthma - resulting from excessive road transport.
As a seller of Socialist Outlook, Eileen had few rivals. A small, frail looking woman, she would hold the paper proudly above her head, and patiently explain the arguments and positions in it. She was always measured and mild in her tone, but there was nothing wishy-washy about her politics. However, she remained confident that reasoned argument would prevail over hostile denunciations.
Socialist Outlook supporters were saddened when she left the Fourth International to join the Workers International League. We remained in contact with her, hoping that the relatively minor disagreements between us could be resolved. On essential issues, we were at one.
Eileen Gersh was a committed revolutionary and a warm and generous friend. Her life and activism were an inspiration to many. We share the sorrow of Eileen’s comrades in the WIL, as well as their pride in having known and worked with her.
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