Charlie van Gelderen memorial
Experiences remembered … with a smile
On January 5 more than 150 people crowded into Conway Hall, to celebrate the life of Charlie van Gelderen, the last surviving participant in the founding conference of the Fourth International in 1938.
The event, organised by the International Socialist Group together with Charlie’s family, was a combination of political rally and an informal opportunity for comrades and friends to share reminiscences.
The first contribution, from Alan Thornett on behalf of the ISG outlined the major political events of Charlie’s life. Here we reproduce part of that speech, which went on to run through the main political experiences of Charlie’s life from the early years in South Africa, his role in the Trotskyist movement in Britain both before and after the war and his contribution to fighting for revolutionary ideas in Italy as a member of the British army in the heady days just after the fall of Mussolini.
Other speakers included Alison Drew, author of a major study of the South African left, Julian and Paul Harber, whose parents Denzil and Mary were Charlie’s comrades in the RCP, and Steve Potter, who talked eloquently about Charlie’s role in Southern Africa work.
Pam Singer’s poem on the experience of sharing a house with Charlie added more than a touch of humour as well as more poignancy to the proceedings. Comrades and friends who hadn’t previously asked to speak spontaneously came forward to join in and build up an even fuller picture of this remarkable individual.
There were also many messages from individuals and organisations that were not able to be present. These included tributes from Harry Ratner and from Margaret Johns who had worked with Charlie in the 1930’s, from Chris Khamis and from Anne Henderson who knew him more recently and from comrades of the Fourth International in France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, the United States, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and of course South Africa. Most of the contributions not only dealt with Charlie’s political work and beliefs but also to how much knowing Charlie had changed their lives.
The meeting concluded with Penny Duggan speaking on behalf of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International said:
"I’ll always remember Charlie’s smile which was a symbol of his infectious enthusiasm which is my most abiding memory of him. Another testament to how he well he communicated his ideas and ideals is that his two daughters also became revolutionary Marxist activists – despite the well-known propensity of young women to rebel against parents.
"Charlie was the last representative of the comrades who made the important and difficult decision to found the FI. Not since the First International had there been a decision to launch an International without a mass party behind it; And the FI had to battle as a minority against powerful and opposing forces unlike the 1st.
"Charlie knew that this created difficulties within the movement and always fought against sectarian splits which dogged the Trotskyist movement.
"One of the occasions on which I heard Charlie speak was the annual camp of European youth organisations in solidarity with the Fourth International in 1998 where we invited him to speak to commemorate of the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Fourth International.
"Our movement has known many difficulties, has rarely been more than a very minority political current, and has known the inevitable splits ands sectarianism that are the result of such a situation. As Charlie said ‘Sectarian splits have been a chronic ailment of our movement. Minorities (… ) split off on the slightest pretext (…) to form tiny sects, impotent and without any future. How different to Trotsky, who persisted in his adherence to the Third International until 1939 and the utter defeat of the German working class’."
Penny recalled Charlie’s participation in the small group of comrades responsible the International’s political work in southern Africa, and brought tribute from another one of those comrades, Claude Gabriel, who said that it was impossible to weigh the value of Charlie’s contribution.
She underlined the fact that when the situation changed in the beginning of the 1980s. Charlie was able to reconsider the traditional positions of South African Trotskyism and turn his attention to the independent trade-union left and the new networks of revolutionary socialists.
"He was one of the few Trotskyists of the old generation who understood how to do this and put his experience at the service of the new groups with which the International started to work from the 1980s. She said:
"The recent strikes against privatisation in South Africa and militant trade union action elsewhere in the continent were examples he was holding up to others in the last years of his life.
"Today Charlie would have seized on the importance of new global justice anti-war movement knowing that the stakes for building the revolutionary movement are immense in a situation that is very unfavourable but there is a new possibility on the horizon.
"Charlie would have understood that this movement is particularly important because it is giving birth to a new radicalisation amongst young people. He consistently emphasised the importance of young people, knowing how important it was that revolutionary organisations draw in the new generations coming into struggle.
"He was always delighted to come to our youth camps. He came to 50th and 60th anniversaries and we looked forward to seeing him at 65th and 70th. But sadly that is not to be.
"In a letter to his brother Herman, who worried about how Charlie was going to convince a young audience of his ideas. Charlie said that he was the one that was learning and being inspired.
"But although he said that they enthused him, it was also very clear that his contribution really gave his audience a sense of history and of continuity between the ideas that motivated them now and those that had motivated Charlie and his comrades at the birth of our movement.
"One testimony of that inspiration comes in the message to this meeting from Andrea Peniche who spoke with Charlie in the 1998 60th anniversary rally. Andrea says: ‘Charlie had a dream and during his whole life he fought for his dream. And we are here to say that his dream is also our dream. We are here to say that we will continue the struggle he started.
The best tribute we can make to Charlie is to struggle for another world, a world without discrimination. A just world, a world of solidarity. A world of violet [for the struggle against women’s oppression] and red [for the workers’ struggle]. Thank you Charlie’."
An appreciation of Charlie’s life appeared in SO No. 50 .