“I am the grandson of a dock worker and was brought up
politically on the Mersey docks, where I learned to debate and to fight
politically among dockers and the dock industry.” Pat Wall, speaking in the
House of Commons, 10th January 1990.
Politically, Pat Wall was a giant of a man and an
outstanding comrade. He cut his teeth in the political battles against the
right wing in Liverpool during the 1950s. He became a leading figure in the
Militant Tendency and was to become Labour MP for Bradford North in 1987.
Today
marks the 20th anniversary of Pat Wall’s death.
Pat was born in his mother’s parent’s house in Manchester on
6th May 1933. After a few weeks, he moved from the Kennedys to a
house in Garston, Liverpool. Pat’s working class parents were politically
progressive, especially his mother, which clearly had a great influence on him
as a youth.
As a teenager, Pat attended the Liverpool Institute. It was
there he decided to join the Labour Party in 1950 at the age of 16 after
standing in a mock school general election and winning the contest for Labour.
He left school in the same year after getting his school certificate and found
a job as a lab assistant in an animal feeding centre. Soon after joining the
Garston Labour Party during the 1950 general election, he was elected
constituency secretary, the youngest in the country, which began a lifetime
career in left-wing politics.
At this time the Liverpool Labour Party was dominated by
Jack and Bessie Braddock, who ruled the movement with an iron hand. The
right-wing machine attempted to crush dissent but there still remained a
vibrant left wing within the rank and file. The Deane family, which had a long
Marxist tradition, represented the tendency in Liverpool party, centred in
Walton. They were the core of the former branch of the Revolutionary Communist
Party which had dissolved in 1949 and became supporters of the Ted Grant group
within the Labour Party around the ‘International Socialist’ and later the
‘Socialist Fight’.
Pat wanted to find out more and eventually contacted the
Deanes. “He was very keen to find out more about economics and the theories of
Marxism, and was told by councillor Bill Sefton (who ended up in the House of
Lords) to go over to Walton and ask the Deanes”, explained his wife Pauline.
“After that he read and read and read. He devoured all the Marxist classics.”
The comrades in Liverpool were producing a youth paper at
the time called ‘Rally’. All the discussion meetings took place at the Deane’s
house at 99 Hurlingham Road.
Along with Brian Deane, Pat became very active in the Labour
League of Youth and was elected to represent Garston LOY at the Merseyside
Federation and its regional conference. Soon he was elected to the League’s
national conference and to its national committee. There they promoted a ‘Youth
Charter’, which took up the problems of young people. Pat also took on the role
of secretary of his USDAW branch. In February 1952, both Brian and Pat went to
London to set up a national editorial board for ‘Rally’, but this proved too
difficult.
In 1954 Ted Grant had visited Liverpool, as he had done on
many occasions, and spoke at a small meeting of party activists. Pat wrote to
Ted soon afterwards explaining that “the women who attended your meeting fully
appreciated us despite the small meeting you had; the effect in the Division
has been tremendous. Everyone has learned about it and the Division is now one
of the most politically conscious in Liverpool.” The letter, as normal, was
signed ‘Paddy’. (13/9/54)
In 1955, due to its left-wing stand, the Labour leadership
closed down the national Labour League of Youth. It was at this time that Pat
was called up to do his National Service, stationed in Norfolk, which tended to
cut across his political activities. Even then, he was in touch with the London
office on a regular basis. In January 1957, he wrote to Ted from Paris. While
he was there he saw Pablo and Pierre Frank and attended the 12th
congress of the French section as a “fraternal delegate”. There were about 50
people present with “several Indo-Chinese and fraternal delegates from Germany
and Greece.”
Pat was nevertheless correctly very critical of Pablo who
was warning of a new world war. “I hope you and the other comrades will not
make any concessions on this issue”, stated Pat. “You will remember they once
said that Korea marked the beginning of World War Three and as far as I know
they still have that position… [This was] Just as false as the policy adopted
between 1945-47 that World War Two had not ended. Not only that, but in the
last analysis the position of Pablo, etc, can only be one of left-Stalinism.”
(Letter to Ted Grant, 2/1/57)
After he finished his National Service, he continued his
political work in helping to build up the tendency on Merseyside. ‘Rally’ was
re-launched with a sale of at least 500 copies in Liverpool, Glasgow,
Nottingham, Manchester, Rochdale, York, Blackpool and London.
He wrote regularly to the national centre about the work in
Liverpool. In January 1958, he wrote a critical letter about the work in
Liverpool to John Fairhead, the acting secretary: “I take the view that the
building of a national group is of vital importance and that the centre has a
right to know the position in Liverpool and indeed must have if we are to get
away from this anarchistic manner of doing things…
“Trotsky once said that politics were so complicated because
of the interaction of both objective and subjective factors – and how true that
is, you know without any historical perspective one could well believe that the
revolution was doomed because of parents, girl friends, […], husbands, night
schools, etc.”
Pat worked hard to improve the situation. However, as a
result of trade union activities, he lost his job. In September 1959, he got
married to Pauline, who had become politically active through the Labour
Party’s youth section. She helped out with the production of ‘Rally’ and soon
joined the work of the tendency. Pauline recalls how much hard work was put in
duplicating the paper, helped by Laura Kirton, secretary of the Walton Labour
Party. “It was typed on stencils, duplicated, collated and then bound down the
spine with red tape”, explained Pauline. They used the Trades Council
duplicator to get it out.
Pauline remembers that they went on the first “Ban the Bomb”
Aldermaston to London march, through the pouring rain. Cannon Collins told them
to take their ‘Rally’ banner to the back of the march. They attended all the
other marches, which attracted thousands of youth.
Both of them attended the Liverpool Trade and Labour
Council, whose meetings were very much to the left and very lively. This labour
movement body served to train up an important layer of younger comrades. It was
eventually closed down and reorganised for this reason and the Trades Council
and the Labour Party were formally separated.
Apart from politics, Pat had other wider interests,
including jazz, climbing, bird watching and Everton football team! He was such
a fan that his ashes are symbolically buried behind the goal at the Everton
ground. His passion for jazz took him to Ronnie Scott’s and elsewhere. I recall
he wrote on one occasion an interesting appreciation of the jazz musician
Charlie Parker for ‘Militant’.
Pat’s work attracted many others, including Terry Harrison,
who was the leader of the Apprentices’ strike on Merseyside in 1960. In 1958,
Terry was thinking of joining the YCL, but picked up a copy of ‘Rally’ at a
ward meeting and wrote off to find out more. It wasn’t long before he was
participating in the work of the tendency. During the Apprentices’ Strike, Gus
MacDonald, a member of the Cliff Group and leader of the Glasgow apprentices,
came to Pat’s house. Now MacDonald is visiting a different “house” – the House
of Lords! It is amazing how some people travel on the way to becoming part of
the Establishment.
Pat and Pauline had three children in the 1960s: Simon,
David and Kate. In this period, Pat got a new job in Littlewoods as a stock
controller. “He loved his job”, said Pauline. This meant that the family had to
move, to Market Harbour, Bradford and Grattan. As a buyer, Pat travelled
widely, visiting comrades and groups of supporters nationally and
internationally. I remember him coming to Swansea on a regular basis, staying
in the Dolphin Hotel, and speaking to meetings of comrades. The last one I
recall was in the Buffs Club in Wind Street (demolished now) on the history of
the tendency.
He became a Labour councillor for Fazakerly ward in Liverpool.
In 1964, the ‘Socialist Fight’, which had come out irregularly, was finally put
to bed and ‘Militant’ was launched. Pat had been put down as a shareholder for
WIR Publications, the publishers of ‘Militant’, without being informed. The
right wing tried to use this fact later on to stop him being endorsed as a
Labour candidate, and forcing him to “sell” his unknown share.
The family moved to Market Harborough in the late 1960s, and
then on to Bingley in Yorkshire for work reasons, where Pat ended up winning a
Labour seat on the council in May 1970. The seat was later reorganised and
absorbed and he concentrated his efforts on the work in Bradford Trades
Council, soon being elected as its President.
By this time, Pat was well-known in Labour Party circles
after his regular speeches at national Labour Party conference. He was an
established figure at the event. Pat was a very articulate speaker, full of
passion and conviction. He could hold an audience and was able to explain
complicated ideas very simply. He was very involved in the battles over
re-selection of MPs and party democracy, which he spoke about at national
Labour conferences. He stood several times, alongside Ray Apps and David
Skinner, for the NEC of the party, achieving over 100,000 votes on one
occasion.
At the 1976 Labour Party conference, Pat intervened in the
major debate on Industrial Democracy as the delegate from Shipley CLP on the
Monday morning, in a speech that is as fresh and relevant today as it was then.
“For 20 years following the war we were told by the theorists of this movement,
by the Fabians and the new Fabian essays, by Jenkins, by Crossman, by John
Strachey, that capitalism was reformed, that there could never be any return to
mass unemployment; there could never be a situation where the Government would
need to slash the social services; that there could never be a situation where
workers’ living standards would fall. When people like me came to the rostrum
at conferences of the Labour Party we were told that we came from Mars; that we
were some sort of madmen, totally out of touch with reality. Well, Comrades,
the reality is here. The reality is in one and a half million unemployed.
(Applause) Reality is in 70,000 odd youngsters who have left school to go on
the dole. The reality is in the reduction of living standards of working people
by eight per cent. The reality is in the cuts in social services and in the
social wage of our people.”
I can remember him now, watching him on the TV, hammering
home his points with the maximum effect in a strong Liverpool accent. “I think many of us are sick and tired
of electing people to positions in the trade union movement and the Labour
Party who come here when we are in Opposition and talk about socialism, talk
about redistribution of incomes in favour of the working people, talk about
nationalisation and public ownership and control of the economy. When they are
in power, when they have the opportunity and when working people in the
desperation of present economic circumstances demand action on their behalf,
every excuse, every device and every policy gimmick is used to avoid the real
question, which is taking over the commanding heights of the economy and
planning it in the interests of the working people. (Applause)”
Later in the week he managed to get in on the pension’s
debate on a resolution moved by Jack Jones. “It is not a question that the
money is not there”, he said, “it is a question of not organising our society
in a way in which that money is available for the real needs of the working
people. (Applause) It is available for the speculators, but it is not available
for a woman who is a cleaner in the Liverpool Corporation in order to retire at
60 and live on a decent pension. And that raises the question that if we really
wanted to face the issue of retirement at 60, then we have to take over banks
and the big companies and we have to organise the financial system for the
benefit of our people, and not for the benefit of a tiny group of capitalists
and speculators. (Applause)”
Pat was selected as the prospective candidate for Bradford
North in early 1982 after beating Hilary Benn and others. He had to cross other
hurdles, including investigations by the NEC of the Labour Party and being
disowned by Michael Foot. The sitting MP, Ben Ford, was hated and ended up
being deselected by the local party. He was known as “Free lunch” Ford and sat
on the Anglo-Portuguese Committee under the dictatorship. During the selection
meeting, Ford placed objections to Pat’s selection on various spurious grounds.
One was that you could hear music in the selection meeting from the rooms
below. He nevertheless prevented Pat winning the seat at the 1983 general
election by standing as an independent and splitting the vote.
The capitalist press also attempted to discredit Pat. In
1982, Pat had agreed reluctantly to debate at the university with the SWP, but
had forgotten all about it. One day, a local comrade Keith Narey came to see
Pauline to say that posters had appeared everywhere advertising a debate the
following day. Pat was away at work and not back until the night. He was
genuinely surprised but decided not to pull out. “If I don’t go I will be
condemned”, he said. It was a debate over the Marxist attitude to socialist
change and the state. In the end a question was raised about the monarchy which
Pat answered, saying the institution would be abolished, along with the
privileged position of judges and generals. However, there was a journalist
(what a coincidence!) from the ‘Sunday Times’ in the audience who wrote up a
massive smear story about “Bloody Revolution” and the like in the following
weekend’s edition. While Pat had explained that the socialist transformation of
society would entail the dismantling of the old state apparatus, he also
explained that the revolution could be carried out entirely peacefully with the
mobilisation of the working class. But that was not reported. Pat had clearly
been set up by a right-winger in Bradford North who had connections with the
newspaper. Everything was used to distort Pat’s views and undermine his
support.
The defeat in the 1983 general election was undoubtedly a
set-back, but Pat managed to take the seat in 1987, with a swing to Labour of
9.9%. This was despite being featured in the Tory election broadcast and the
public call by ‘The Sun’ newspaper for him to be defeated. He finally joined
the other ‘Militant’ MPs in Parliament, Terry Fields and Dave Nellist – as
worker MPs on a workers’ wage. However, heavy pressure was now exerted on those
“lefts” in the party who had supported him. The union bureaucracies aided this
conspiracy. They were told by regional office that “Pat won’t win”. They should
continue as normal and blame the left after the defeat. They were shocked by
the result. Pat had won a stunning victory!
Ronnie Fieldhouse, the chair of the local party, and John
Barker, an official in the print union, instantly distanced themselves from Pat
and attempted to isolate him. “The day after the election, they didn’t want to
know”, explained Pauline. It was almost impossible to get the election expense
accounts, which were being held in the print union offices. When Pat wanted to
get his material distributed each month, they resisted and prevented the
distribution. The witch-hunt against ‘Militant’ was causing problems within the
Bradford North Labour Party. The stress was enormous, commented Pauline. She
believes that Pat’s rare illness, which later claimed his life, could have been
caused by this stress.
Nevertheless, Pat championed the interests of the workers
inside and outside of Parliament. He participated in the support for the miners
and the Liverpool City Council. He came out in favour of non-payment of the
Poll Tax. However, in the local Labour Party, there was continuous guerrilla warfare
against Pat and his political stand.
Pat was lonely in Parliament, divorced from the activity of
the working class. Unlike the careerists, he certainly did not enjoy the job.
In the end, he did not think it worth while. He was not cut out for such an
alien environment, while being attacked and undermined in his local Labour
Party by fair-weather friends.
I remember him ringing me up before Christmas 1989 to see if
I fancied a drink in the Commons. I took a few comrades over and had a few
pints. Even then, I remember the sad expression on Pat’s face. That was when
his illness had begun.
Pat developed polychondritus, a very rare illness that
attacked his immune system. It took months to diagnose but there was no cure.
It attacked his skin, which cleared up, and then it attacked his hair, which
also recovered. Then it affected the cartilage throughout his body, which
eventually affected his windpipe and breathing. He courageously fought the
disease and was hospitalised for long periods. He even attended Parliament when
possible until five months before his death, when he spoke in the debate on the
economy, despite having serious voice difficulties. He retained his sense of
humour, saying the Tories must have been delighted by his vocal difficulties. He
fought the struggle until the bitter end, finding time even in his last weeks
to write letters in support of Scargill and Heathfield in their battle against
the smears of the capitalist press.
Pat was a political giant and an inspiration for all those
who knew him. His death 20 years ago was a great loss to the movement. It now
falls on the new generation to carry on the struggle where Pat left off, to
abolish capitalism and establish a new society free from violence, poverty and
squalor. A new society where the talents of all can be used to the full and
where, for Paddy Wall’s sake, we all can appreciate the benefits of jazz and
Charlie Parker (and possibly Everton).
His speeches in Parliament can be found here:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/people/mr-pat-wall
The following is an extract of a speech he made in the House
of Commons on 5th November 1987:
“The folklore of the American 1929 crash—the popular
picture—is that of millionaires, jobbers, brokers, company presidents and
ex-rich investors throwing themselves from the windows of the stock exchange.
Now they have built that building so that that is impossible. Those deaths
represented a tiny handful of people, but many more people died as a result of
the 1929 crash. In the years of depression that followed 1929 and the massive
unemployment that occurred in Germany, in Britain and throughout the world,
many people in ordinary families committed suicide. Many people died
prematurely because of inadequate diet. Many people died prematurely because of
diseases that could have been cured if they had had the money to seek treatment
at that time. Many infants died in the first weeks and months of life because
they lived in the appalling slums that existed in the cities of the world at
that time. Therefore, nobody on the Labour Benches and no Socialist makes the
prediction of the coming recession with pleasure.“In recent weeks the Conservative party, officially through
the Prime Minister, has said that Socialism is dead. It has been claimed that
Socialism is an outmoded philosophy and that its support among the people of
Britain will soon die. However, with the pressure of the stock exchange
collapse, part of the Socialist ideals has been accepted by the Conservative
Government. It may be argued that the stock exchange is of no relevance to the
real economy and that is true. More than 90 per cent of the transactions that
take place on the world stock exchanges have absolutely nothing to do with
commerce and industry. They are concerned with gambling and speculation in
shares, futures and currencies. They have nothing to do with the creation of
wealth on a world scale. Wealth is created by the labour of working people in
productive industries.“It is on the basis of the wealth created in the productive
sectors of the economy—as the Tory amendment partly recognises—that we can pay
for the civilising parts of our life: health, education, sport, culture, the
arts and all the things that make life richer and more noble. The belief that
that is the role of the stock exchange shows that it is not Socialism that is
old fashioned, but capitalism, which has gone back to the same old process of
the inter-war years.“There have been two old-style recessions since 1975, with
two weak booms in between them. We now stand on the eve of an even more
devastating recession in the world economy. As we have already seen with the BP
farce, much of the gloss has been taken off so-called people’s capitalism.
Socialism stands for collective decisions and ownership of wealth, and the direction
of industrial production to the needs of people and not to a handful of stock
exchange speculators who benefit the most. Such Socialism is needed. It is a
system of society which will become more attractive.“We are moving into an era of people’s Socialism, not
people’s capitalism. It is necessary, and although we have perhaps not said it
very well in recent years, what we are trying to do is to build a plateau—not
for the underwriters of the BP claim, but for millions of ordinary people. I
refer to a plateau of decency and reasonable living standards, on which people
can develop their personal talents, personalities and more satisfactory lives.“Today is 5 November. On this day throughout the world
millions of women will spend four hours collecting water and fuel—an economic
activity that is not recorded anywhere in world statistics. How ironic that
people are forced to that back-breaking labour in a world of yuppies, sunrise
industries, space travel and enormous technological development. What sort of
system are Conservative hon. Members defending when, in times of recession,
only 70 per cent. or less of human productive resources are in use and, in boom
times, it is only 80 per cent.? 19 October marked the end of people’s
capitalism and the beginning of a popular people’s Socialism.”
