09.12.1999

Obituary: Rita Grant

It is with great sadness that we report the death, on November 27, of comrade Rita Grant.

Rita died from a massive and unexpected heart attack, at her home in Rochdale. It appears that she did not suffer, but died instantaneously. Rita was a Communist Party supporter and had been active in socialist politics and in the trade union movement for much of her adult life.

Rita was born in central Manchester on October 26 1940, a birth date that she was subsequently to become very proud of, given its connection with the Russian Revolution. She began work at the age of 15as a GPO telephonist, but was sacked four years later by a disapproving employer, after her elopement to Gretna Green with her Asian fiancé made the pages of the Manchester newspapers.

Returning to employment after a decade as a full time mother and housewife, Rita became active in her union, ASTMS, at Manchester’s ICL factory. This was a famous period of working class industrial militancy and ICL was one of the sites where some highly successful strikes took place. Rita rapidly won election to the position of works convenor, and soon after she became the first woman representative to be elected to the Manchester committee of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions. Rita drew revolutionary political conclusions from her work during these times of heightened class struggle and in the mid-1970s she joined the International Marxist Group.      

Rita’s first marriage had ended and, in 1980, she met her future husband, Peter, a train driver and Aslef activist who was also an IMG comrade from London, when both were involved in the organisation of the Peoples March for Jobs. After ICL closed its two Manchester sites in a blatant union-busting exercise, Rita and Peter set up home in Southall. Around this time the IMG liquidated itself into the Labour Party. Rita and Peter split with their former comrades in a dispute over the entryist tactic and they then embarked upon several years of intense political work as Labour Party members. Rita took on the position of election agent for Sidney Bidwell MP, himself a former Trotskyist. They were also very much involved in anti-fascist work in west London. Rita worked in a number of factories on the Great West Road before she secured a telephonist job with the Independent Broadcasting Authority, only to be immediately sacked after this ‘independent’ employer was advised as to her unsuitability by the state security service. Finally she secured new employment as a telephonist at Ealing hospital, where she became active in the health-workers’ union, Cohse.

Rita was heavily involved in solidarity work during the Aslef strike of 1982 and the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85. The Southall Miner’s Support Group supplied substantial physical and financial solidarity to the Kent miners. Rita was one of many comrades who drew immense encouragement and satisfaction, in particular from the enormous level of support for the miners that was won from the Southall Asian community. This was a very practical demonstration of the unifying potential of class struggle.

In 1986 Rita and Peter moved to Rochdale and Rita trained as a social worker. She worked in residential children’s homes, as well as the juvenile justice field. Although the Nalgo union and its successor Unison were not to Rita’s liking (she referred to them as “wankers’ unions”) in comparison with her former militant organisations, her commitment to the class struggle once again led her to take up a shop steward position.

Politically, Rita and Peter continued at first to work in the Labour Party, and in the Labour left led the Rochdale Strike Support Group. Resolving finally that the scope for revolutionaries to make advances within the Labour Party was negligible, they left to join the Socialist Workers Party. Rita was, however, to become totally dissatisfied with the bureaucratic centralist regime of the SWP and soon resigned. A period out of political work followed, which was broken in 1997 when Rita, together with Peter, joined the CPGB.

In accordance with Rita’s wishes, her funeral on December 3 was a secular and communist celebration of her life, and was attended by a very large number of relatives, comrades and friends, including a group of young people from the children’s home where Rita ended her working days. The coffin was draped in a red flag and prominent amongst the wreaths was a hammer and sickle arrangement, in red and white carnations, from her Communist Party comrades. Three songs pre-recorded by Rita herself were played - The Red Flag, John Lennon’s Imagine and, at the end of the service, The Internationale.

Rita was a committed working class fighter, who will be sadly missed. She will be remembered with great respect and affection by all comrades who knew her. We offer our deepest sympathies to Peter; to Rita’s sons, Simon and David; to her mother, Hilda; and her sister, Norma.

John Pearson