RIP Rick Sumner, ex- miner, founder of the Justice for Mineworkers Campaign

by Dave Chapple

Rick Sumner passed away peacefully at home on Saturday while watching his beloved Manchester City contest the FA Cup semi-final.

THOUGH a proud Lancastrian, Rick was for many years a miner at Shuttle Eye Colliery in West Yorkshire but also worked variously as a trawlerman fishing in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, as a scaffolder and steel erector on some of Manchester’s biggest construction sites, being a key mover behind the Building Workers’ Charter, and, later, as a community and grass roots advice worker in Manchester’s Moss Side.

His life, throughout, was that of a principled working class militant, an active trade unionist and dedicated fighter for socialism and workers’ democracy. He did not disdain politics and, for a period, joined the International Socialists.

Immediately after the end of the Great Strike of 1984/85, he and his lifelong comrade and inseparable partner, Christine, saw the need to work energetically to support the more than a thousand striking miners victimised by the National Coal Board.

In doing so, they established the National Justice For Mineworkers’ Campaign (NJMC) – with the support of the NUM – to sustain the sacked men and their families and to run a relentless campaign for their reinstatement and restoration of their pension and other rights. Parallel with this, they co-sponsored the annual, always well-attended, memorial meeting in Barnsley each March to commemorate David Jones and Joe Green, the two miners killed during the strike.

Rick and Chris – and volunteers from the ranks of the sacked miners like Ken Ambler and Keith “Froggy” Frogson who was murdered by a scab – were a firm feature of every labour movement and trade union gathering, with their mining memorabilia stall raising funds for families in truly desperate need.

From 1986 and until recently, they raised thousands and thousands of pounds for the great cause and earned the support, respect and admiration of the NUM and its activists across the British coalfields. Rick and Chris’s commitment to the miners was absolute, it was unbreakable and it never wavered.

Rick had a peerless reputation in another arena of politics: the battle against racism, antisemitism and fascism. When he and Chris lived in Manchester’s Moss Side, they started tenants’ organisations and worked with the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination to oppose racist slum landlords.

Rick’s personal courage, never flinching from direct physical confrontation with fascists, was a byword and inspiration to many young activists. He also played a key role in anti-fascist intelligence-gathering with the comrades who later launched Searchlight magazine.

Rick and Chris, before her death after a long battle against cancer, left the NJMC in good hands and retired to live by the sea on the Yorkshire coast, close to family members, but never lost contact with comrades and friends, always bidding them a warm welcome. In the circumstances of his retirement, he was able to devote more time to following Manchester City and to working hard to support the local lifeboat service.

He will be sorely missed by all who had the honour of knowing him. He is irreplaceable.

Deepest condolences to son Dan and daughter Suze.

By Graeme Atkinson

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One response on “Obituary for Rick Sumner: A miner, a trade unionist and an anti-fascist Written by Graeme Atkinson” 1. Chris Skidmore28 April 2021 at 13:15

“Selfless,Calm, Dignified and Resolute is how I would describe Rick Sumner and feel proud and privileged to have known and respected him. On behalf of my family and the Yorkshire Area NUM who I represent, I wish to add these condolences and richly deserved tributes, Chris Skidmore (Yorkshire Area NUM Chairman)

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Don Pedelty, socialist and anarcho-syndicalist dies

In loving memory of Don James Donovan Pedelty

7th March 1926 – 12th October 2020

“Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease; Or was it made to preserve all her children?”

— Gerrard Winstanley, 1649 (founder of the True Levellers)

Hay Meadow Burial Ground, Glascwm, 12pm, 24th October 2020

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STUART CHRISTIE DIES! Intro. by Brian Bamford

PART ONE - THE AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION:

Stuart Christie: a Scottish anarchist writer and publisher. Who when aged 18, Christie was arrested in Madrid while carrying explosives to assassinate the Spanish caudillo, General Francisco Franco. He was later alleged to be a member of the Angry Brigade, but was acquitted of related charges.

Born: July 10, 1946, Partick, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Died: August 15, 2020

Movies: The Angry Brigade: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Britain’s First Urban Guerilla Group Organizations founded: Anarchist Black Cross Federation, Cienfuegos Press

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BEYOND an OBITUARY!:

STUART Christie was an anarchist who had quality and consistency as well as quantity and a prolific output. From the early 1960s when he first engaged with Bobby Lynn and the Glasgow anarchists to his death bed listening to 'Pennies from Heaven' Stuart sternly stuck to his beliefs dedicated to a classical version of anarchism.

My last contact with Stuart was an unusually brief e-mail from him last November in which he wrote: 'Bearing up, Brian. Hope you are too. Un abrazo!.'

However I must offer a health warning, as in the 56 years since we first became acquainted in Paris in 1964, our paths have been very different. His commitment was to internationalist view while mine since the 1960s when I lived and worked in Spain has been mostly more parochial. My engagement with the anarchist movement in Spain and later Gibraltar was very different from that of Stuart even though we were functioning in the same organisation: the FIJL (DI). My role was purely one of propaganda and intelligence, and at no time was I involved in the violent activist deeds which were designed to discourage tourism or strike at General Franco.

My task and that of my then wife, Joan, was the much more humdrum; in my case one of working on the tools as an electrician, and delivering Butane Gas to the villages on the Cabo San Antonio in Alicante. Much more boring than 'daring-do' and prison life, but a way of soaking-up Spanish culture and everyday life as it was lived by many young Spaniards at that time who migrated to the coast from places like Albacete and Andalucia: working a six day week and paid 750 pesetas. Meanwhile, our FIJL campaign against Spanish tourism clearly failed, yet fortunately less tragically than Stuart's failed mission to kill Franco.

Among the many obituaries published on Stuart the most perceptive that I have yet seen has been that of the historian Julián Casanova in El País 'El escocés de la FAI que trató de matar a Franco' Casanova argues that Stuart Christie believed that 'a fusion of different forms of resistance such as the workers, the students, the greens into the language of political anarchism. Just as Bakunin, thought it was possible to harmonise individualism with the socialist collectivism.' Casanova writes: 'He [Stuart] liked the men of action, but in reality he [Stuart] and his wife Brenda went on to propagate forms of idelogy with various cultural manifestations, which demonstrated the force of culture with ideas.'

'

Stuart's wife Brenda died last year aged 70 years, from cancer. Casanova writes: 'The obituaries now record that his prime intention was to kill Franco. Yet he was a committed anarchist using his pen and the engaged in cultural aggitation, in times when the revolutionaries with "consciences" have past into history. Anarchist solidarity, that reflects on the concequences of industrial capilalism, nuclear disarmament, and abuses by the State. He was a Scot who would have loved to live in the golden epoch of Spanish anarchism.'

Julián Casanova knew Stuart Christie from when he met him at Queen Mary College, London, in the Autumn of 1985. At that event were other hispanistas like Ronald Fraser, and he speaks warmly of the seminars, dinners and debates over the Spanish Civil War, Franco, the monarchy, Juan Carlos and the transistion.

It strikes me that Casanova understood Stuart better than most of us.

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Liz Willis: An obituary and appreciation

Liz Willis (21.10.47-10.11.19)

Liz Willis (born Elizabeth Ann Smith) has died in hospital in London with family around her, age 72, following diagnosis of pancreatic cancer last year.

Liz was born in Stornoway, daughter of Margaret (Peggy Flett) and Calum ‘Safety’ Smith, joined four years later by sister Alison. Her early childhood is recollected as a time of street games and unsupervised freedom on long summer days and it was this vision of Stornoway that stayed with her in later years. Her parents, large extended family, the wild landscape and stifling social mores of the island provided an ongoing source of inspiration and rebellion. An outstanding and prize-winning student, she developed a facility for languages and history in particular.  The family moved to Dingwall in 1959, where younger sister Marjory arrived just as Liz was preparing to go to Aberdeen University to study history in 1964 at age 16.

It was in Aberdeen that her interest in politics crystallised, as she became an active member of Youth CND and left-wing societies, attending regular meetings and hops. She developed her lifelong internationalist, libertarian socialist outlook, joining Faslane protests, a peace march to Paris, and hitch-hiking across Europe to an anarchist camp in Italy in the summer of 1967. After attaining her MA in History, she chose Belfast to pursue a course in library studies, because it "seemed like an interesting place to be in 1968" and found herself on her second day in the province helping Bernadette Devlin up during a civil rights march. It was in this heady atmosphere that she met her future husband, Roy Willis.  They married in 1969 and Janetta was born in 1970.

As the political situation deteriorated, the young family moved to London, where Mark was born in 1972.  Roy’s social work course took them to Muirhouse housing scheme in Edinburgh, where Liz found time to get involved with tenants’ rights and demos in support of the miners and other causes.  Returning to London in 1974, they settled in the borough of Ealing, where she spent the majority of her life. She found her political home in the shape of Solidarity for Workers’ Power, remaining an active member until its demise in 1992. Amongst her many contributions was the pamphlet ‘Women in the Spanish Revolution’, which remains a key text on the subject.

While looking after young children she stacked shelves in Sainsbury’s before finding a position at the Medical Research Council library at Hammersmith Hospital. Some of her most treasured memories were family holidays in Europe, allowing her to practice her proficiency in several languages and absorb her interest in the history and culture of places that she could still recollect clearly 40 years later. Her thirst for knowledge continued as she collected four diplomas and her activism was undimmed as she took on new causes such as the Polish Solidarnosc movement and provided support to an Iranian refugee friend. In the 90s, divorce and grown-up children allowed her more time to concentrate on her writing, research and book reviews, joining Medact’s Medicine, Conflict and Survival journal editorial board in 1991, which she served on until her final year, and for which she wrote well over 100 items. She also participated in the London Socialist historians’ group,   Anarchist Research Group and other radical history forums.  As grandchildren appeared in the new century, she proved to be a devoted grandmother, from knitting baby clothes to excavating archive materials to help them in their studies.

She started the ‘Smothpubs’ blogspot in 2011, (so named after a mix-up when helping police with their enquiries), with articles on a range of subjects including local and family history and including a mine of material on conscientious objectors.

When diagnosed with cancer last year, she carried on through chemotherapy and a clinical trial, taking it as an opportunity to learn about the latest medical research and the state of the NHS, for which she was always committed but for most of her life never had much cause to use. She was appreciative of the NHS staff’s efforts to treat and support her in this time. Over the past year living in Walthamstow, she showed little sign of slowing down, continuing her trips to the British Library, Housmans bookshop and local libraries. She continued to collect material for her blog and the Radical History Network blogspot, and even found time to do translation work for an anarchist research project and take part in the E17 Art Trail. She managed regular trips to Scotland, including a flying visit to Stornoway to see her uncle Donald Smith’s retrospective exhibition and retrace childhood footsteps. It was only in the last month or so that the disease took hold, but she remained a ‘free rebel spirit’ to the end.

Liz Willis (21.10.47-10.11.19)

As circulated by members of Liz's family

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Past Tense Obituary: Alan Woodward

I am sorry to say that our friend and companero Alan Woodward passed away on Saturday 20th October, 6pm, at the North Middlesex Hospital. 
Alan Woodward was a lifelong working class revolutionary immersed in
support for workplace struggles and other anti-capitalist movements.  He started with the International Socialists (later the Socialist Workers Party). He was then very active in the Haringey Trades Union Council. In recent years he gravitated towards independent libertarian politics, including the Haringey Solidarity Group, believing it was necessary for workers to take direct control of all workplaces and thereby create a new economy and society without capitalism or governments. In his writings he explained he was drawing on what he saw as the best traditions of revolutionary socialism and anarchism.
He actively supported and tried to attend every local workers picket line in Haringey, either as the organiser for the Trades Council or as part of local campaigns. At the same time he helped set up the Radical History Network of NE London and organised dozens of local talks and meetings on a whole range of past disputes and struggles to ensure that the voices of those who took part in them would continue to reverberate and help us all in our struggles and movements today. 
He produced a huge body of agitational, campaigning and radical literature, leaflets, strike bulletins, newsletters, historical snapshots, pamphlets and recently an autobiography. Yet he underplayed his own role as he preferred to promote the collective self-activity of those involved in strikes, disputes and working class movements.
Alan had a fall Tuesday overnight and was admitted to North Middlesex Hospital on Wednesday. At the time he was weak and confused possibly due to sepsis (infection) and also the bang on his head suffered when he slipped / fell. Analysis of the CT scan and investigation by the neurologist indicate that he had had a lacunar stroke. 
In his last day he was able to speak but was very tired. His close family had rallied round during his hospital stay.  Alan is irreplaceable, and will be sorely missed especially In Haringey, but his influence will remain with us all as the struggle for a new society continues unabated. 
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At Past Tense we knew Alan only for a few short years, since the early 2000s, when he started coming to our old South London Radical History Group meetings. But quickly you felt that you'd known him for years and years... He always brought an interesting perspective, consistently positive and optimistic even where us sarf londoners were scowly and grumpy, but always open to a broad range of ideas, experiences and methods. We're proud to have been a part of the inspiration for Alan in the setting up of the North East London Radical History Network [RaHN], and appreciated that while we were always a bit disorganised and irregular, Alan's relentless work ethic saw RaHN outlive us. We shared with him the belief that exploring history, our own and further back, could be crucial in understanding where we are and where we are going. 
We'll miss him. But no-one who has spent their life in the restless search for a freer life is ever truly lost to us... They live IN us. 
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Ps.: In July last year, Alan Woodward organised a talk for me to address the North East London Radical History Network in Haringey on the topic of the Spanish Civil War. It was an excellent event and very well attended with intellegent questions about historical methodology and the situation in Spain. He was a great bloke and trade unionist. His death is a blow to all of us who knew him.
Brian Bamford: Editor of Northern Voices. 

People's Historian, Ronald Fraser, Dies

TODAY's International Herald Tribune announced the death of Ronald Fraser the oral historian whose most influential book was 'Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War' . Tariq Ali, a mate and colleague reported his death but gave no cause of death. He was 81. Fraser used the oral historian's main tool of transcribed interviews to write his books chronicling the life of the working-classes, Spanish village life and even his own life.

Last July, because he was ill, I stood in for him to give a talk on the 75th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War to the Radical History Network of North East London at Haringay Labour Club. I tried at that time to follow the ethnographic approach recommended by Fraser arguing in favour of first-hand accounts and contrasting this with the narratives of professional historians like Paul Preston. But even Paul Preston, who seems to make his living out of writing books on Spain, commenting in The New York Times Book Review has described Fraser's 'Blood of Spain' as 'tak(ing) its place among the dozen or so truly important books about the Spanish conflict.'

Fraser admitted that oral history by itself can't properly explain the broad historical currents, but suggested that it could render a deeper understanding of the social 'atmosphere'. Fraser, who lived in Spain from 1957, did 2 years of interviews for his book on the Spanish War, compiling 2.8 million words and selecting just 10% of them for publication.

Ronald Angus Fraser was born Dec. 9th, 1930, in Hamburg, where his English father worked for a shipping company. In 1933, the family fled Hitler and used Ronald's mother's fortune to buy an estate in the English countryside. He was troubled by what he called his parent's dissolute lifestyle and he found solace in friendships with the family's eight domestic servants.

Death of Salford Class War Veteran - Ken Keating!

THE following obituary for Salford Class War Veteran, Ken Keating, appeared on Ian Bone's blog earlier this week:

Just received sad news from Sean Keating from Salford:

R.I.P KEN KEATING. 24/01/38 - 28/06/11, Legend, Friend, Father, Grandad. My dad Loved by many, hated by authority but respected by all. Safe journey to mum old timer x

Ken was the prime mover in Ordsall Class War in the 1990s and i think it would be safe to say none of us had ever seen the likes of Ordsall Class War! There are others who knew Ken far better than me and I hope to be publishing their thoughts when they are ready. In the meantime best wishes to Sean and family.

See picture of Ken and his ‘Grasswatch’ van here.

What did Ken think about the Lowry Arts Centre:

Oh yeah in an interview with Ken Keating I asked him about Lowry: He gave me a contemptuous look and said “Lowry he was just a f******g rent collector.”

Here’s an account from Practical History of Ordsall Class War in July 1992:

On the Ordsall Estate in Salford (near Manchester), in the space of several days in the first week of July, fires were started at a council neighbourhood office, a housing office, a careers office, a Department of Health office, a MacDonald’s restaurant, and several other buildings. Shots were fired at police vehicles and a petrol bomb thrown at a police station.  Also in Salford, eight people in balaclavas attacked a police car that they had lured into an ambush by setting off an alarm. Local youths complained of police violence, with one saying: “There’s people who can’t pay for electricity. And they’re at home in bed, in the dark, and the door’s kicked in and all they can see is big torches coming up the stairs and the Bill [the police] is saying ‘Stay where you are or you’ll get your heads blown off’”. Another said: “It’s just like Belfast. The police don’t relate to the kids. Why are they dragging them in, beating them up?”

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Andrew (Andy) Wilson - The Northern Voices Poet - An Obituary

It is with sadness that we have to report the death of the Dukinfield poet, Andy Wilson, who died in Tameside Hospital on 2nd March aged 63 years.

A factory worker for many years, Andy, worked for James North in Hyde and was also a union shop steward. He last worked as a supervisor for Boris Buckley`s a textile manufacturer on Whitelands Road, Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire. After working for the company for 20 years, he was made redundant in his late fifties. A former pupil of Crescent Road, secondary modern school, he was a well known figure in Dukinfield and in his local pub the Albion, which stands at the junction of Oxford Road and Birch Lane.

As a writer of poetry, he was also a well known figure among the circle of poets(People`s Performance) who met regularly in the upstairs room of the Q inn in Stalybridge. The group which was set up by Jan Malpas, a poet from Hollingworth, gave recitals and produced an anthology of poems entitled 'Poetry Live' and a CD (People Perform Poetry) of local poets reciting their verses. For a number of years, Andy wrote poems for Northern Voices magazine about themes as varied as Viagra, 'Ode to a Beer Pump', 'Ode to a Flea', 'Dieting on the Dole', and the 'Taproom Q.C'. He was also a great fan of the music and lyrics of Bob Dylan and in particular, the Canadian poet, musician, and songwriter, Leonard Cohen. Cohen is on record as saying that a prominent influence on him, had been the Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca.

About four years ago, Andy, was diagnosed with bowel cancer, which in turn, led to other health complications. Despite his health problems, he could still be seen on occasions walking to the pub for a few pints with his mates. He was a genuine character who will be sadly missed by his many friends and his family. His funeral takes place on Tuesday 15th March at Dukinfield Crematorium, at 2.00 pm.

"Burn in the shadow of the mill,
Put to the loom to brake their will,
They toiled all day from dawn to dusk
And lived on sweat and cotton dust,
But in their country`s hour of need
They left the loom to go and bleed,
And in a field where poppies grew,
They gave their lives for me and you,
No more toiling at the loom
or dancing to the gaffers tune,
They lie with comrade cold and still,
Like empty bobbins in the mill."

Children of the Mill - A poem by Andrew A. Wilson.