Antiwar organizer, Trotskyist leader Fred Halstead: 1927-1988

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On June 2, 1988, Fred Halstead, a lifelong member of the American Trotskyist movement, died of cancer at his home in Los Angeles. He was 61 years old.

In a certain sense, Fred was born into the Trotskyist movement. His father, Frank Halstead, was a member of the initial Trotskyist organization in this country, the Communist League of America (CLA). But this fact had little or no influence on Fred's subsequent political development. His father died when he was a child and he grew up in the care of his mother.

When Fred joined the Angeles branch of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1948, he had reached maturity and experienced first-hand some of the worst evils of capitalism, poverty, and war. He was a U.S. Navy veteran and he witnessed the "Bring the Troops Home" movement organized by American soldiers in the Pacific theatre at the end of World War II.

Fred joined the revolutionary Marxist movement at a time when an anticommunist "witch-hunt" atmosphere pervaded the country. This period, which spanned over a decade, was a difficult time for the SWP. But in spite of this, Fred was able to learn the lessons and skills that Joseph Pyan/Socialist Action would prepare him for the highpoint of his political life as one of the central leaders and organizers of the anti-Vietnam War •Becoming an organizer One of Fred's early assignments as a party member was to help in a United Auto Workers (UAW) organizing drive of a plant in Los Angeles. Ernest Mazey, a leading member of the Trotskyist fraction in the UAW, had been sent by the union to help organize this plant. Working with Mazey, Fred learned some of the methods of industrial organizing and also furthered his understanding and appreciation of working- class politics.

In 1953, he moved to Detroit, Mich., to help reconstitute the SWP branch there after the defection of his friend Mazey and others in the auto industry who had followed Bert Cochran in a split from the party that year.

In 1954, while still in Detroit, he played an important role in organizing strikesupport activities for an embattled United Electrical Workers Union (UE) local at the Square D & Co. electrical-parts plant. At the time, Fred was working as a leather cutter in the upholstery department of a GM Fisher Body plant, and he was a member of the UAW.

This strike took place at the height of the McCarthyite "witch-hunt" period. The UE had earlier been expelled from the CIO because it was allegedly "communistcontrolled," and strike-support activities by the UAW and CIO officialdom were dominated by fears of red-baiting.

Despite this, Fred was active in winning support for the 108-day strike and succeeded in organizing picketline reinforcements from his GM plant when the UE strikers were attacked by the police.

Civil-rights and antiwar activist At the 1954 SWP convention in Chicago, he was nominated-but not elected—to be an alternate to the party's national committee. At the following convention, he was elected to the national committee. Fred was later asked to relocate to New York to strengthen the staff of the SWP's newspaper, The Militant.

When the Black civil-rights movement began to unfold with the continuation of the 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, Fred was The Militant reporter on the spot. He was responsible for analyzing the struggle as it unfolded and became acquainted with many of the Black leaders of the civil-rights movement.

In the 1960s, Fred became an active participant in the anti-Vietnam War movement. He was a central player in the organization of massive demonstrations against the war.

In 1968, he was the SWP's presidential candidate and as part of his campaign he went to Saigon to interview American troops and reported their attitudes on the One the aims of the Halstead (continued next page)