Category: Lives in struggle: comrades remembered

First published by Socialist Party of England and Wales on 29th October 2014.

William (Bill) Webster died in August 2014 after a long illness, aged 73.

Bill was a prominent member of the Socialist Party in Ireland from the mid-1970s until the mid-1990s. Originally from Liverpool, Bill joined the Militant Tendency, the Socialist Party’s forerunner in 1971 in south London.

First Published on Militant Left Website, September 30 2023 (with Anton McCabe)

Veteran East Belfast socialist Willie Nevin has died in his 67^th year, after a period of severe illness.

Willie, from a Protestant background, was already a trade union activist when he came across Militant, forerunner of Militant Left, in the 1980s. Soon he was an active member where he joined regular sales of the paper ‘Militant’ outside local factories, including the Harland and Wolff Shipyard, and door to door in the majority Protestant area.

First published October 12th 2019 by Socialist Party

Long standing member of the Socialist Party in Belfast David (Davy) Bell has died at the age of 69. Davy joined Militant, the forerunner of the Socialist Party in 1978 and across more than four decades dedicated himself to selfless activity on behalf of the working class.   

Davy came from a Protestant background and grew up in the Cregagh estate in East Belfast. He liked to say that he once “skinned” George Best, who was also from Cregagh, when playing football as a teenager!   He worked for British Telecom and was an activist in the Communication Workers Union (CWU), attending national conferences of the union, and working with is comrades Bernard Roome and Judy Griffiths and many other genuine lefts to overcome the dead weight of the dominant bureaucratic layer. In his union role he represented literally hundreds of workers over many years. His patient approach to trade union work gave him hard-earned respect and standing and he was well known in his own area as a “union man” who would help out with a benefit claim and countless other tasks.

Image: Benny on picket at Mid-Ulster Hospital Magherafelt, during strike against sectarian killings, March 9th, 1989.

Benjamin (Benny) Adams died after a long illness on October 6th 2014 at the early age of 65. Benny was active in the Militant, the forerunner of Socialist Party in Ireland, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. For most of that time he worked full-time as a political organiser.