{"id":3347,"date":"2012-05-02T11:59:38","date_gmt":"2012-05-02T11:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=3347"},"modified":"2021-03-06T17:53:48","modified_gmt":"2021-03-06T17:53:48","slug":"remembering-dave-spencer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/02\/remembering-dave-spencer\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Dave Spencer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dave Spencer was a longstanding socialist activist based in Coventry. RCN members only came into brief contact with Dave, at a meeting of the Socialist Alliance and later of the commune. Whilst very much a committed activist in his own locality, Dave also contributed a great deal to attempts to being about principled socialist unity, particularly by challenging sectarian organisations and sectarian behaviour. We are pleased to print this brief outline of Dave’s life by Mark Harrison from\u00a0the commune<\/cite>.<\/p>\n

It was with great sadness that we learnt of the death of our comrade Dave Spencer on the night of Tuesday 24th, less than a week short of his 72nd<\/sup>\u00a0birthday. Many shocked friends and comrades have written to us remembering his personal warmth and good humour, even when debating passionate issues, as he did so recently, he did so in a composed and relaxed manner that forced you to think more clearly and raise the level of your own argument. Dave\u2019s life touched many outside traditional left wing circles, as an exponent of radical pedagogy he put his ideas into action in Coventry by running an adult education course, going out in the council estates of Coventry to teach parents in primary schools English, Maths, Psychology, cooking etc.<\/p>\n

In Dave\u2019s own words during a recent debate \u201cMy way of teaching English was to discuss a controversial topic for an hour or so to get everybody thinking. The women would then go home and write down their thoughts or experiences. Grammar could come later. One of the favourite topics was \u201cAll men are bastards. Discuss\u201d. One day the women of my class in Bell Green came in to discuss the proposed closure of their local Primary School. What to do? I seem to remember suggesting in an abstract way occupation and joining the local Labour Party to get rid of their councillors. Three days later, on the front page of the local paper there was an article \u201cParents occupy Bell Green Primary School\u201d and there in the picture were the smiling faces of my students!\u201d<\/p>\n

As Dave would say, truly \u2018communism from below\u2019.<\/p>\n

In later life Dave became chair of his local residents\u2019 group and managed to secure national lottery funding to build a play area for the children in the park. He told a recent aggregate of the commune that this felt like the biggest achievement he was ever a part of in politics and was very moved by the experience.<\/p>\n

Dave was a revolutionary for over 50 years, in which time he was a constant champion of the rank-and-file \u2018from below\u2019 through factory bulletins and organising local discos but was also prepared to stand up to petty bureaucrats.<\/p>\n

One of the final unity campaigns Dave was involved in was the Campaign for a Marxist Party, where he saw that the CPGB wanted to wreck the initiative after they had gained all they could from it, as the SWP did in the Socialist Alliance.<\/p>\n

As one comrade remembers, \u201cAt one conference of the campaign the CPGB brought a hand raising mob, some of whom had joined days before and some who were not even members. Jack Conrad of the CPGB ignored the chair (Dave) and signalled that the verbal abuse and nonsense could begin. Dave raised himself to his full height and stature and put courtesy aside as inappropriate and bellowed \u2018sit down and shut up you silly boy!\u2019 This caused the self-styled hard Bolshevik to look rather upset and one of his supporters called for the chair to show some respect. In response, Dave, in his best headmasterly voice\u2019 explained that first he would have to have respect for others\u2026.<\/p>\n

On another occasion during a national committee meeting, two comrades drank two pints of beer each over four hours. The next issue of the Weekly Worker<\/cite> had a very large pint of Guinness next to an article on the committee that implied the committee were all drunks. I wrote hundreds of words denouncing the CPGB. But Dave simply said, \u2018A cult creates its own reality\u2019. Exactly\u201d<\/p>\n

We in the commune<\/cite> hope to republish some of David\u2019s articles in memory of him. Below is a message from David on the failure of the left.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the SWP\u2019s \u201cLeft Unity\u201d initiative, I don\u2019t see why we can\u2019t afford to ignore it \u2013 the electorate certainly will.\u00a0The main reason for the vacuum on the Left is the behaviour of the SWP and SP. They destroyed both the Socialist Alliance which had over 90 candidates in the 2001 general election and the Scottish Socialist Party which had over 70 candidates in 2001.\u00a0Neither group can stand any rivals or any form of democracy. The SWP could not keep Respect together and the SP were too frightened to launch the Campaign for a New Workers\u2019 Party as a membership organisation in case they got outnumbered. I can\u2019t believe they have changed their approach unless for tactical reasons.<\/p>\n

The only way to beat the BNP is by consistent political work in working class communities \u2013 that is by building from below. In the recent County Council elections 3 comrades in Northampton put up as Save Our Public Services candidates. Dave Green got the best result in New Duston with 950 votes, 39.6% of the vote and 61 votes short of the incumbent Tory councillor. Harry Tuttle in Lumbertubs ward got 277 votes, 16.5% of the vote and Norman Adams in Delapre got 219 votes, 10.2% of the total.\u00a0These are good results compared to the pitiful 0.9% for the NO2EU candidates in the European elections, all of whom must have lost their \u00a35,000 deposits in each region.<\/p>\n

The Northampton votes are the result of week by week campaigning to defend council housing, open public spaces and opposing the PFI building of schools.<\/p>\n

Because of the economic recession there will be attacks on the living standards of the working class and certainly cuts in public services. There will be a need to build more community campaigns. This is where the Left should be. As I understand it the BNP\u2019s tactics are to be visible and active in working class areas. That\u2019s where we should defeat them not in some last minute unity scheme for the general election which will cost a lot of money and get nowhere.”<\/p>\n

Mark Harrison, the commune<\/cite><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dave Spencer was a longstanding socialist activist based in Coventry. RCN members only came into brief contact with Dave, at a meeting of the Socialist Alliance and later of the commune. Whilst very much a committed activist in his own locality, Dave also contributed a great deal to attempts to being about principled socialist unity,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[1100],"class_list":["post-3347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-history","tag-author-mark-harrison"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"views":6558,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3347"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18260,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347\/revisions\/18260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}