Larry Stewart: 1921-1984

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The following are major portions of a stategle. ment commemorating the life of Larry Stewart that appears in the December 1984 issue of The Bulletin in Defense of Marxism (BIDOM), a Inside out__ publication of the Fourth Internationalist Tendency. The FIT is a group of expelled members of the Socialist Workers Party.

The editors of Socialist Action join the ediBell of invincibility torial board of BIDOM in saluting the 45-year contribution of Larry Stewart to the SWP and to the labor and Black liberation movements.

We will greatly miss our friend and comrade.— THE EDITORS Former guru to the Beatles, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, has proclaimed Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, the "founding By the editorial board of BIDOM father and mother" of the "age of enlightenment."

At a September meeting at the presidential palace in Manila, the Larry Stewart of Newark, N.J., a member of the editorial board of The Bulletin in Defense of Marxism died of cancer on Nov. 16 at the Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital in New York City. He was 63 years old and had been actively engaged in building the revolu...and "avert typhoons and other natural disasters." tionary Marxist, labor, and Black movements since he was 18.

His death marks a real loss for those moveWhenever peasants gather to swap tales and gossip, says the ments. His sober judgement and advice, his who is leading their country's "rush to prosperity." rich experience under all kinds of conditions, Yu's heroic business sense first came to light while viewing a and his militant example will be sadly missed at La time when the workers and their allies need leadership more than ever before.

A life of struggle Larry Stewart was born to a poor Black "Time means money,' he says. working-class family in Milford, Conn., and spent part of his youth in foster and orphan homes. His formal education had to stop at TV soap operas have become gentrified. No longer need today's high school for economic reasons. In 1939 he joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in New Haven and subsequently moved to Newark because it was easier to find a factory job with the brand name of their favorite TV heartthrobber.

there.

Chuck Ashman, the executive at 20th Century Fox who is in He remained in Newark for the rest of his life except during World War II when he was first a merchant seaman and then was drafted into the army.

Among the jobs he held in the following fantasy as a bonus. An extra bang for the buck." years were steelworker, laborer, electrical worker, and truck driver. He belonged at difWhat's new for Christmas? We hear that the General Services ferent times to CIO, AFL, and independent unions, including the United Steelworkers, the United Electrical Workers, and the Teamsters. back. He also experienced plenty of unemployment SOCIALIST ACTION when the economy turned down after the war and was on strike several times.

In 1941 he was a leading activist in the Newark contingent of the March on Washington Movement, an all-Black group that fought against racism in industry and the armed forces. After the war he was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and local committees against police brutality. He defended the Black community against repression during the "Newark riots" of 1967. He also tried to help the National Black Independent Political Party (NBIPP) in New Jersey when it was organized in 1981.

Opposed SWP's new course Stewart was an enthusiastic supporter of the SWP's decision in 1978 to send most of its members into industry, but he became troubled by the mechanical and schematic way in which it was implemented. By the time of the 1981 SWP convention, he felt that the party leadership was going off-course in its attitude toward the Castroist current in Cuba. He later found himself in sympathy with the positions of the Fourth Internationalist Caucus in the National Committee.

Shortly after retiring from his job with a physical disability he suffered a heart attack in 1983. He was on a leave of absence from the Newark branch, but that did not save him from the axe of the political purge inside the SWP in January 1984. He was expelled without a trial he could attend, on fraudulent charges that he was a "splitter" and "secret factionalStewart then helped to organize the Fourth Internationalist Tendency and became a member of the editorial board of its journal, The Bulletin in Defense of Marxism. BIDOM, no. 5 (April 1984), printed his appeal to the SWP against his expulsion; no. 7 (May) contained his analysis of NBIPP; no. 8 (June) had his "Open Letter to Mel Mason," indignantly protesting his exclusion from a public SWP campaign rally.

We send condolences to Vera Stewart, his wife, and Paul, his son. We will never forget him and the cause to which he devoted most of his life. His example is a source of strength to us who knew him personally.

DECEMBER 1984