In memory of Phil Lloyd (1934-2007)

The news of the death of Phil Lloyd was a terrible shock to all of us who knew him. Although we knew he had been fighting leukaemia for the last few years the end took us by surprise. He was so resilient and optimistic that it was hard to appreciate the seriousness of his condition. But that was his nature. He was always cheerful and positive about things. When faced with problems he would take it philosophically and with good humour. He never dramatised or exaggerated. His wife Kay says he thought he would live forever. Perhaps we did too.

Phil Lloyd was a great friend, comrade and life-long fighter for the cause of the working class in Britain and internationally. He was the best sort of proletarian militant. All his life he was active in the Labour Movement, where he consistently fought for socialist policies, both in the Labour Party and in the Post Office Engineering Workers' Union (POEU), now part of the CWU. For many years he was secretary of the union in Swansea and had an unassailable position and a great authority among his fellow workers. Even in the last years, when he was battling against leukaemia, he remained active in the union, as part of its pensioners' section.

Phil Lloyd with Alan Woods and Ted Grant

Always a hardworking and conscientious trade unionist, he had a tremendous personal authority with his members. But he was no narrow trade unionist. He was first and foremost a Marxist working in the union field. When he was the secretary of the Swansea POEU branch he proposed the setting up of a library for union members, an idea that was accepted by the branch, which voted to put aside a certain amount of money every month to buy books. Naturally, Phil ensured that the library contained plenty of Marxist literature as well as working class classics like The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. He was always anxious to get workers reading.

My memories of Phil

Phil Lloyd was the first contact I ever had with the political tendency founded by Ted Grant, which is now known as the International Marxist Tendency. I had applied to join the Young Socialists (YS) early in 1960 and received a letter signed by Phil, who was then the secretary of the Swansea YS - one of the very few branches which at that time were controlled by the Tendency. It was the beginning of a friendship and political collaboration that lasted for 47 years and came to a tragic end this week.

I remember the first meeting I attended on a miserable, rainy, cold and windswept night in Townhill Community Centre. We were a tiny band - not more than half a dozen, but we would discuss the ideas of Marxism endlessly and with tremendous enthusiasm. Dave Matthews was the life and soul of the group, but Phil played a vital role. He recruited most of his family: his brothers Alan, Bob and Dave were all active in the Movement at that time.

Alan Lloyd recently told me how Phil, who was two years his elder, became involved in politics in the 1950s. He and Alan were working as cable-jointers with the Post Office telephone engineers. Like most other workers, Phil first became active in his trade union, which was then known as the POEU. But he soon realised that not everyone in the union was fighting for the class. He told his brother he thought the local union secretary was a "bosses' man". Thus began a long and hard battle against the right-wing bureaucracy of the union, which Phil was determined to transform into an instrument fit to defend the interests of the workers.

In the course of this struggle, Phil began to realise the limitations of trade union work. He saw that the day-to-day struggle for advancement under capitalism, important as it was, was insufficient. He saw the need for a change in society and joined the Labour Party to achieve this end. He became a member of Labour's youth organization, and there he met the comrades of the Marxist tendency led by Ted Grant. This changed his whole outlook and shaped the rest of his life.

Phil soon realised the limitations of reformism and parliamentarism, but he did not come to Marxism immediately. Alan recalls long and intense discussions with Dave Mathews and Will Smith in Cascarini's café opposite Swansea railway station. But Phil was soon convinced of the correctness of Marxism and never wavered in his conviction. He became a supporter of the newspaper Socialist Fight edited by Ted Grant in London. "We used to sell the Fight around the pubs on a Saturday night," Alan recalls, adding humorously, "a bit like the Salvation Army."

When Phil joined the Tendency in the dark days of the 1950s, he was part of a very small group with no more than a few dozen members in the whole country. But he and the other comrades in South Wales never despaired. They were supremely confident of the power of Marxist ideas. They discussed in detail works like Capital, Anti-Dühring, State and Revolution and Trotsky's books, The History of the Russian Revolution, The Revolution Betrayed and In Defence of Marxism. Phil was a voracious reader all his life. I remember he was particularly keen on Cannon's little book Socialism on Trial, which he strongly recommended me to read.

An important part of the weekly activities in Swansea was attending the classes of the NCLC (National Council of Labour Colleges). Few people today even remember the name of this workers' education organization, which helped to train generations of worker activists in basic economics, history of the Labour Movement and so on. They even held classes on things like how to chair a meeting and how to speak in public. It was a valuable institution that was later taken over by the TUC and dissolved.

The Swansea NCLC held meetings every Saturday night upstairs in The Old Red Cow, chaired by Albert Jones. He had a hard time steering a course between the Stalinists and Trotskyists, who regularly used these meetings to engage in ferocious polemics about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union. No matter what the subject was supposed to be, the discussion always came back to this. Along with Dave Matthews and Colin Tindley (who had an extraordinary gift for needling the Stalinists - and nearly everybody else), Phil was one of the most regular attenders.

But the main work centred on the Labour Party and above all the youth organization. The bureaucracy had closed down the Labour League of Youth in the 1950s to prevent it falling into the hands of the left wing. But the defeat in the 1959 general election convinced them that they needed a youth organization and so they re-launched it under the name of the Young Socialists in 1960. The Marxist Socialist Fight tendency was very weak at that time, but thanks to the tireless work of the comrades in Swansea, it had a strong position in Wales.

By patient and hard work the comrades got contacts in other areas: Llanelli, Neath, Resolven and Newport. They systematically went to every weekend school and conference, selling the paper, moving resolutions and getting new contacts. They made an important breakthrough in Llanelli, where they won over a young female worker called Muriel Browning. She later became a shop steward in the Llanelli British Leyland car factory. She died tragically young of cancer in the 1980s - a big loss to the Movement.

Phil Lloyd with Alan Woods and Rob Sewell

It was a constant battle. The right wingers in the Swansea Labour Association were led by Peggy England-Jones, a redoubtable lady with blue rinse hair and a mind worthy of Machiavelli. They were naturally hostile to the Young Socialists, who were always moving left-wing resolutions in the Association meetings that were held every fortnight in the old Elysium buildings. The YS was a thorn in their side, and they did everything possible to get rid of Dave Matthews and Phil Lloyd, who they rightly suspected of being the ringleaders.

They regarded them as responsible for "leading the young people astray", although we did not mind being "led astray" in the direction of Marxism in the slightest. They wanted the YS to hold dances and ping-pong tournaments and to do the donkey work at election time, to do as they were told and to stay out of politics at all times. In other words, they wanted the impossible.

Transport House (as we used to call the Labour Party bureaucracy) had passed a rule that put the upper age limit for YS membership at 25. That was intended to get rid of troublesome elements and leave only green kids who, they thought, could be easily led. Phil was already slightly over age when I joined, and Dave was older still. The right wing therefore took the trouble to obtain copies of their birth certificates, which they exultantly waved around one Thursday evening in the midst of an astonished Labour Association.

Marxists and the Labour Movement

Needless to say, all these antics of the right wing did not succeed in their objective. Phil Lloyd and the others remained in the Labour Movement, continuing to educate the youth in Marxism, fight for socialist policies and deny the right wing the pleasure of a quiet life that they so earnestly desired. Phil had read Lenin thoroughly and had absorbed the elementary lessons of Left Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder:

"There can be no doubt that the Gomperses, the Hendersons, the Jonhaux and the Legiens are very grateful to those ‘Left' revolutionaries who, like the German opposition "on principle" (heaven preserve us from such ‘principles'!), or like some of the revolutionaries in the American Industrial Workers of the World advocate quitting the reactionary trade unions and refusing to work in them. These men, the ‘leaders' of opportunism, will no doubt resort to every device of bourgeois diplomacy and to the aid of bourgeois governments, the clergy, the police and the courts, to keep Communists out of the trade unions, oust them by every means, make their work in the trade unions as unpleasant as possible, and insult, bait and persecute them. We must be able to stand up to all this, agree to make any sacrifice, and even - if need be - to resort to various stratagems, artifices and illegal methods, to evasions and subterfuges, as long as we get into the trade unions, remain in them, and carry on communist work within them at all costs."

Phil understood very well the teachings of Lenin, which were the firm foundations upon which Ted Grant built what later became known as the Militant Tendency. Ted taught us that it is not enough to have a theoretical grasp of Marxism (although he always laid stress on the importance of theory). It was necessary to carry these ideas into the workers' movement and not to separate oneself from the mass organizations of the proletariat: in Britain, that means the trade unions and the Labour Party.

From small beginnings in the 1960s, the Tendency grew into a formidable force. Phil was active in the launching of the Militant in 1964 and was a firm supporter until the split in 1991-2. He collaborated with Rob Sewell, the Militant full timer, in building a solid Marxist organization in South Wales. He was elected onto the National Executive Committee of the POEU.

The split in Militant was a very difficult time for him, as for many other comrades. But Phil reacted in his characteristic way. He did not immediately take sides but carefully read every line of the documents of both the Minority led by Ted Grant and the Taaffite Majority. He refused to be railroaded and quietly made up his own mind on the strength of the arguments alone.

It did not take much to convince Phil that the arguments of Ted and the Minority were correct. All his life Phil had fought for these ideas, and experience showed him that they were the right ones. He understood that the ideas of Marxism are impotent abstractions if they are not firmly linked to work in the existing mass organizations of the working class. In Britain that means, essentially, the trade unions and the Labour Party. As Ted said: "Outside the Labour Movement there is nothing."

Passion for theory

Phil became a supporter of Socialist Appeal and a member of the International Marxist Tendency. He regularly followed our website, marxist.com and frequently expressed his great admiration for it. He told me of his boundless enthusiasm for the advances of the tendency on a world scale, particularly in Cuba (he was always interested in the Cuban Revolution) and Venezuela.

His lifelong passion for theory meant that he was extremely enthusiastic about the Trotsky Project that we launched a few years ago with the backing of Trotsky's grandson, Esteban Volkov. Phil was actively involved with the Project and proofread our edition of My Life. He always bought every new title from our bookshop and was really inspired not long ago by 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror by Vadim Rogovin. He was always asking when Rogovin's other volumes would be published in English.

The last time we met, only a few months ago, he came to stay at our house as he was attending a conference of the union. As always he was cheerful and optimistic about life and politics. And as usual he was eager to discuss politics in Britain and internationally, Marxist theory and how it applied to things like the Venezuelan Revolution.

Phil was always an avid reader. He had studied all the Marxist classics and had a deep knowledge of Marxist theory. This was for him an anchor and a compass that enabled him to keep his bearings through all the inevitable vicissitudes of life and the ups and downs of the Movement.

Others became tired and disillusioned and dropped out of activity. Phil Lloyd never did. He remained a loyal stalwart to the end. More than that: he retained right to the end that irrepressible enthusiasm he had always had since I first knew him as a young man. He did not appear to age. He never complained of his illness. That is why his sudden departure was so unexpected and so cruel.

For the IMT, coming so soon after the deaths of Ted Grant and Phil Mitchinson, this is a very hard blow. We mourn for Phil, but we believe that the best way to honour his memory is to continue the fight for socialism to which he dedicated his life. I know he would not have it any other way.

Somebody once asked me: "What is life without a great Enterprise?" Phil Lloyd dedicated all his life to the greatest Enterprise of all - the fight for the emancipation of the working class in Britain and on a world scale. He will live on in the memory of his friends and comrades.

Our heartfelt condolences go to Kay and all the family and friends of this marvellous man.

Alan Woods, London, October 18, 2007