It’s impossible to convey into words how devastating the death of John Molyneux is. On a personal note I have known John since 1985 when I moved to Portsmouth already an active revolutionary and became part of the local SWP branch. I had of course read his weekly column in Socialist Worker, seen him speak at the annual Marxism festival which had been running for a few years and read his first major book “Marxism and the party”. I was 20 yrs old.

I last spoke to John on Friday discussing arrangements for the couple of days he was going to visit between Xmas and new year. He was delighted to hear about a local anti racist “Riot ” in a Bristol school and wanted to know how my son Dylan’s first meeting had gone and how I must be really proud and whether he could get a card to him for his 18th birthday or leave it until he came to stay. We discussed China , Iran and the UK strikes and he outlined his concerns for the recent racist mobilisation in Dublin and how this could be combatted. World cup also featured but not for long This would be a fairly typical conversation with John. We would often start a conversation with a statement like “Will have to be quick” but end up as then speaking for over an hour.

We became very close comrades in Portsmouth and afterwards even closer as friends and have remained so for the following 37 years. I consciously took the decision to take advantage of being in the same branch as him and discuss and debate and pick his brains as much as possible. The recollections of those days sitting in his house after the weekly branch meeting , smoking , drinking whiskey sometimes until the light came up will always remain. He had an amazing ability to do this and then around 5am we would discuss what next weeks “Teach yourself Marxism ” column should be which he would then write up and in those days phone in to the Socialist Worker paper at around 8:30am . Whilst I would head off home to my bed shattered he would go to work in the local FE college ! I think we worked out he wrote about 650 of these columns . He didn’t seem to sleep at all.

Then myself and two other young members Jon Woods and Richard Peacock moved into a house on the same road as John. John would often pop in after work and being utterly skint we would cadge his beloved golden Virginia roll ups which he would then leave and say he’d forgotten them . We built a relatively large branch in Portsmouth and some of us thought John was conservative (John I think got the scale of the miners defeat in a way I simply didn’t) and we had i remember a meeting in Tony Cliff’s chalet at Skegness to iron out the difficulties. John could well have been pissed off with me but was the exact opposite and said young revolutionaries should be inpatient. He lent me book after book, article after article , got me to do meetings in Portsmouth and ringing up other branches to book me and encouraged other young comrades to do likewise . He listened to people and wanted to know what they were thinking and why.

John politically was yes an independent thinker and I think the IS/SWP tradition was encouraging of that and its what he loved about it and for a period I guess in the 90’s felt a bit of despair of our defensiveness sometimes . Debate and questioning everything was John’s way. He was so shaped by 1968 . When we recently discussed what chapters should be in his book we laughingly (Not seriously) discussed one that could be entitled “Articles that have got me in the shit” .

John however was to his core a revolutionary who was totally committed to building revolutionary organisation. He was and totally remained very much someone shaped buy the politics of Tony Cliff even when he disagreed with him! John didn’t do much reminiscing but when he did it was often related to Cliff and his impact. John I think encapsulated the SWP at its best – one of a relatively large number of very serious marxists who wrote and thought and debated even if they weren’t on the central leadership of the organisation which in Johns case was in my view a bad mistake. . He was however I think pretty unique in that he combined this with daily revolutionary activity and had very sharp disdain for academic marxists not engaged in practice. He would be involved in myriad of campaigns both national and local, workplace and community. He was also for a while a NAFTHE branch sec. He booked the speakers for the party branch for about 30 or more years !! He was always talking and thinking about the future and how radical revolutionary politics needed to connect with much wider forces.

Lastly the loss of John will I know be of huge sadness for his children Jack and Sara and his grand children. He was so proud of them all. He was really looking forward to seeing them all at Christmas . When John’s life long partner Jill tragically died this had a terrible impact on John who shortly afterwards said to me he wasn’t going to write about politics anymore but only occasionally about art. John was in a very dark place at that time and I am sure I wasn’t the only person to think this was going to end soon in tragedy.

How come then he was at his most industrious writing large numbers of article and books in the following years? The simple answer it seems to me was for him to meet Mary Smith and decide life was still worth living . Anyone who could get John to go walking, and lose lots of weight, eat healthly must have meant the world to him ! and it was so abundantly clear she did. He had such huge respect for Mary obviously but also politically and the move to Ireland and its new politics opened up for John a new lease of life. He said to me he learned so much from the Irish comrades and that it gave him a new perspective on revolutionary organisation and its relationship to the working class.

So today is an awful day and I am no writer but the thought of not seeing or talking to John ever again is very painful. My son Dylan said to me that John was like family and that was sort of true. However when I was sat at home devastated I thought of John and jumped in the car and went to the postal workers picket line as I know he would have said that’s where we need to be . These workers wouldn’t have known or heard of John but is it too trite to say he was there in spirit? I don’t think so.