Robin Clapp, Socialist Party national committee
An era has come to a close for Socialist Party members in south west England. It is sad news that our longest-standing member, John Ewers, has died, following a lengthy illness.
John often joked that when other youth were ‘dropping out’ during the 1967 ‘summer of love’, he dropped into his lifetime association with Militant, now the Socialist Party, having been persuaded to join after discussions with Peter Taaffe and others.
He was the first Militant supporter on the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) National Committee, fearlessly withstanding and repelling obnoxious personal and political attacks from self-seeking young careerists, who were used to using the LPYS as their stepping stone towards lucrative parliamentary careers.
Over 50 years, hardly a corner of Gloucestershire remained untrodden by John, as he sought to popularise Marxism and offer support to workers in struggle. Never having learned to drive, he went everywhere on foot or by bus, with a bulging bag of Socialist papers, and an endlessly optimistic demeanour. That was not always easy in a county where socialists were sometimes very thin on the ground.
It was well-deserved when local trade unionists, including some who had been political foes, met to toast his retirement, and praise his unstinting activism. As a British Gas employee, he forwarded his share of the privatisation dividend to our party in full every year, saying he would never be a beneficiary of money stolen from the working class.
Beat the council
In 1983, he organised a weekend of action against a plan by Gloucester City Council to sell off an entire council estate to the private sector. Militant supporters from the whole South West region descended on the city, and after hundreds of doorstep discussions, and over 100 sales of the Militant newspaper, we learned that the council had backed down.
Away from politics – he wasn’t absent very often – he was a civil war reenactor, once causing some consternation by arriving in haste to a Socialist Party branch meeting having not had the opportunity to change!
Rock and roll music was another passion. In a raucous Liverpool pub in 1979 – on a weekend away supporting a member contesting the European elections – John entertained the pub with songs, at one point causing the audience to demand “more Elvis.”
In later years, he formed a formidable partnership selling the Socialist with fellow veteran comrade Claude Mickleson. Outside the local supermarket in Lydney, they successfully sold over 20 copies most weeks.
They found it particularly amusing when a rattled manager threatened to call the law on them for intimidating his customers. They were not deterred.
We learned much from John. In our last conversation, he kept repeating that we always have to use the Marxist method to understand what is happening, so we can form perspectives, and determine our tasks.
New generation
Largely unknown to the young generation, who are carrying on his work today, he was a true pioneer in building Militant and the Socialist Party in the south west and beyond. Never wavering, always willing, and a champion of the youth.
Your contemporaries particularly, salute you – rest well, old man.
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