[I WONDER if we could borrow a few…]
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-08-18Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 13 →
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I WONDER if we could borrow a few inches of our column space to announce to your readers and his old comrades the sad news of the death of the old revolutionary Bert Atkinson, on July 30, two weeks after his 70th birthsert Atkinson came om i ower middle class/upper work. ing class family, and entered politics in the early thirties when he joined Islington branch of the Communist Party. He witnessed the change from the Party's unemployed demonstrations and its 'Third Period" political line to that of the "Popular Front", and the beginning of its search for respectability.
He broke with Stalinism along with half a dozen other comrades at the time of the Spanish Civil War, when they began to question exactly what sort of class society the "Communists" were fighting for in Spain.
They were purged from the Communist Party at the insistence of the man now known to. have been the Communist International's 'representative' in the British CP, David Springhall, and then joined the Trotskyist movement.
After a brief time in the Revolutionary Workers League of Bill Duncan and Cliff Stanton, they passed over into the Workers' International League and took part in the fusion which created the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1944.
Bert was the first, in an internal bulletin of the RCP to defend Max Schachtman's theory that the Soviet Union was neither a workers' state nor state capitalism, but a new type of exploitative society.
Bert continued to follow the progress of the working class and revolutionary movement long after physical circumstances prevented him from playing a role in it. He was exceptionally well-read, and had none of the narrowness of all too many of today's activists, 'He continued to assist young people to work out their socialist ideas right up to his death, visible proof of the existence of that working class tradition of self education that is the backbone of the revolutionary movement. We are proud to recommend his example to your comrades and supporters.
SAM BORNSTEIN AL RICHARDS Tooting