Obituary - Pat Jordan
Key to linking British Marxists with Vietnam Solidarity Campaign
In the early 1960s there were two organised Trotskyist currents in Britain. The Militant group led by Ted Grant was buried in the Labour Party – in fact so deep it was scarcely visible to the outside world.
By contrast the Socialist Labour League led by Gerry Healy which had left the Labour Party in 1961 had embarked on a sectarian binge.
They proclaimed themselves the only true defenders of the working-class and denounced mass organisations such as CND, which experienced its first big surge then as "petit bourgeois" and "led by middle class intellectuals".
World-wide there was a drive towards reunification of the Fourth International, to which both of these groups proclaimed their allegiance: but neither was likely to be recognised as its British representatives.
Pat Jordan was at the centre of the eventually successful attempt to reform the British section
Based in Nottingham, a weekly duplicated magazine The Week was edited and printed at his tiny bookshop and largely financed by his skill in retailing second-hand books and comics.
A tiny number of older comrades like Charlie van Gelderen, along with Ken Coates, and a lot of younger students from Nottingham University formed the embryo group, which would eventually evolve into the International Marxist Group.
It was recognised as British section of the Fourth International at the 1969 World Congress.
By that time the group had expanded enormously, partly by some of us moving around the country, but critically because under Pat’s guidance we had recognised the central importance of the war in Vietnam, and thrown ourselves into the Solidarity movement, around support for the freedom fighters there.
We were happy to combine our long-standing work in the Labour Party with building an open Solidarity campaign.
I first met Pat and Ernest Mandel at the summer school organised by New Left Review in 1962. But my abiding memory will be of his dedication to getting out The Week – while living on a constant diet of boiled eggs!
I visited Nottingham every weekend until early 1963. In his later years Pat worked full time for the International Marxist Group and then for the Fourth International, when he helped in the work of the Africa Commission.
In 1985 he was struck by a chronically disabling stroke, and removed from active political involvement.
But he should be remembered as a person who played a crucial role in the 1960s revival of Trotskyism .