17.01.2002

Lifelong red

Donald Cuckson, whose funeral took place on January 9 in London, was born in January 1924 and died in late December 2001. Don joined the Young Communist League in 1939. In the Halifax branch he worked alongside EP Thompson - a major influence on his thinking. Don was conscripted in 1942. In the Signals Corps, he served in Holland and then in Palestine, where he had close contact with the Palestinian Communist Party. After the war, Don frequently found himself in opposition the CPGB 'line'. He got into a personal row with Harry Pollitt over the party's recognition of Israel in 1949 - which he opposed. But Don continued to work within it until the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, when he, like thousands of others, left the party. Unlike many others, however, Don remained active and held on to his revolutionary beliefs. In the mid-1960s Don was persuaded to rejoin the CP and was employed as a full-timer at the Morning Star, working in the library. Don finally dropped out of the CPGB when it effectively ceased to exist following the collapse of communism in the east. In his later years, Don was a member of the Movement for Socialism and International Socialist Forum. He became a close collaborator of Cyril Smith (author of Marx at the millennium), with whom he worked in organising study groups on philosophy and also as a writer. Don became increasingly critical of Lenin's philosophy after studying Marx's 1844 Philosophic manuscripts. Last year he participated in a study group on Raya Dunayevskaya's book, Marxism and freedom, organised by the London Corresponding Committee. Don will be sadly missed and remembered with great affection by family and friends. London Corresponding Committee