Joan Newbigging 1942-1985
A Central Leader of the RWL
Joan Newbigging Dies
by Joan Campana
Socialist Voice, September 2, 1985
Joan Newbigging, a central leader of the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL)
and former editor of Socialist Voice, died in Montreal on July 31
following a four-year fight with cancer. She was 43 years old. A 20-year
veteran of the workers movement, Newbigging played a leading role in the
building of a pan-Canadian socialist workers party.
Newbigging was also an avid participant in and leader of the new
feminist movement that arose in Canada in the late 1960s. She co-authored
the brief presented by the League for Socialist Action (LSA—a predecessor
organization of the RWL) to a 1968 government commission investigating the
status of women. She participated in the very first Ontario feminist
groups and activities.
Over the years she played a central role in the abortion rights
struggle. She also led in the fight of women to work in jobs traditionally
reserved for men.
Beginning with the 1968 government hearings on women, Newbigging wrote
on most of the central developments and discussions in the women’s
liberation movement in Socialist Voice and its predecessors
Workers Vanguard and Labor Challenge.
But she was not only a leader on issues of particular concern to women.
A member of the LSA Central Committee since the late 1960s, she played a
central role in shaping the party as it evolved from a tiny band of
socialists who had survived the period of reaction and anti-communist
witch-hunt in English Canada in the 1950s into the party that turned
confidently toward winning a broad layer of youth, women, and Quebec
nationalist fighters who emerged in the 1960s. She made a particularly
important contribution in working to forge a team of younger party leaders
through a crucial process of leadership transition in the 1970s.
Unification of revolutionaries
As the radicalization of the working class deepened simultaneously
across English Canada and Quebec in the 1970s, a more firm basis was laid
for building a united, multinational, and pan-Canadian revolutionary
party. Newbigging was at the very center of the team of LSA leaders who
pressed toward unity of the LSA with the young revolutionary leaders who
had formed the Revolutionary Marxist Group in English Canada and the
Groupe marxiste révolutionnaire in Quebec. Along with the Young
Socialists, the three groups fused in 1977 to form the Revolutionary
Workers League.
Newbigging continued as an elected member of the RWL Central Committee
until her death. She also served as a member of the Political Committee
until her illness forced her to withdraw earlier this year.
She was one of the first central RWL leaders to implement the party
decision to place a majority of its members in industrial jobs. She worked
alternately in a meatpacking plant, a sawmill, a plywood mill, and on the
railroad.
As part of the party’s efforts to strengthen its work in Quebec and
accelerate the building of a genuinely pan-Canadian party, Newbigging
moved from Vancouver to Montreal in March, 1981. While learning to speak
French, she became editor of Socialist Voice in May, 1982. In 1983 she
joined the editorial board of New International, the theoretical journal
published jointly by leaders of the RWL and the Socialist Workers Party in
the U.S.
In the last year of her life, Newbigging made one of her most important
contributions in helping lead RWL discussions on strategy for the coming
pan-Canadian revolution. She prepared a number of reports on the deep
crisis facing working farmers and on the alliance needed between them and
the working class in their common fight to replace the exploitative
capitalist system.
Born in Perth, Scotland in 1942, Newbigging lived in Malaysia as a
child. Educated in Britain, she came to Canada in 1964. She joined the
Toronto Young Socialist Forum a few months later and the League for
Socialist Action in 1965. Her earliest political activities included
participation in the anti-Vietnam-War movement and the New Democratic
Party.
International solidarity
Newbigging was a committed internationalist. A trip to revolutionary
Cuba in 1966 established her life-long support for the revolutions in
Central America and the Caribbean. In 1983 she visited revolutionary
Grenada and she was planning a trip to Nicaragua shortly before her death.
She understood fully the importance of carefully studying the lessons of
these revolutions for all those serious about thinking through the key
questions of working-class strategy in their own countries.
Typical of her commitment to the exploited and oppressed
internationally, one of her last major contributions was to organize the
pan-Canadian tour of striking British coal miner Steve Shukla in the fall
of 1984. As a leader of the Fourth International, the world party to which
the RWL belongs, she recognized the importance of solidarity with that
historic battle.
The Fourth International also benefited from Newbigging’s experience
when it prepared its first major document on women’s liberation in the
1970s.
Her unbroken dedication to the struggle for a world free from
exploitation and oppression, her objectivity, and her calm strength were
and remain an inspiration for all her many friends and comrades.
Tributes to life of Joan Newbigging
By Lynda Little
Socialist Voice, Sept. 16, 1985
TORONTO—Eighty friends and comrades gathered here on August 25 to
celebrate the life and work of Joan Newbigging. Newbigging was a central
leader of the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL) and before it of the
League for Socialist Action (LSA). She was also the former editor of
Socialist Voice. After a four-year battle with cancer, Newbigging, 43,
died in Montreal on July 31.
Arthur Young, an RWL Central Committee member who worked with
Newbigging for 20 years, chaired the evening. He quoted Oliver Tambo,
president of the African National Congress: "Our people want freedom now.
They’ve lost all patience with the idea that their freedom can be put off,
even for one instant. They consider that the purpose of life is to devote
it to the struggle for the liberation of our country and they have
therefore abandoned all fear of death. For them today the words ‘to live’
mean exactly the same thing as the words ‘to be free’."
"That is the spirit of the South African struggle today," Young said.
"And that is also the spirit in which Joan lived her very rich and full
life and why tonight is a celebration of her life." The evening before, 40
people held a similar celebration of Newbigging’s life in Montreal.
Young described the "turning point" in Newbigging’s life when she
joined the Toronto Young Socialist Alliance and the LSA in 1965. "She
brought with her a unique combination of energy and determination,
maturity and objectivity."
"Joan did not believe in half measures. She made an unreserved
commitment," said Ernie Tate, a former longtime RWL leader. When she got
involved, he explained, "we were actively building support for the Cuban
revolution. Joan threw herself into this work and in May 1965 visited Cuba
under the sponsorship of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
"It was her ability to be inspired by events in the class struggle that
showed the way forward for humanity that I remember most about Joan.
There was a joy about her that was totally infectious."
A feminist leader
Joan Campana, the current editor of Socialist Voice, recalled
Newbigging as a leader of the Canadian women’s liberation movement. "Joan
participated in the very first feminist groups and activities. She became
a leader of the abortion rights struggle and a pioneer in women’s fight to
work non-traditional jobs.
"Through her experiences and through study, she concluded that our
liberation could only be fully realized in a revolutionary struggle to
overturn the very roots of oppression and exploitation—the capitalist
system itself. That’s why she dedicated herself to building the
Revolutionary Workers League."
Campana also described the leadership Newbigging had shown, "when our
party decided to organize to have a majority of its members get jobs in
industry and participate as revolutionary workers in the industrial
unions. She worked on the railroad, in meatpacking, and in a sawmill."
One of the younger comrades she inspired was Carole Caron, a leader of
the Revolutionary Youth Committee in Montreal. Caron described her
experience working with Newbigging on the initial steps toward launching a
pan-Canadian youth organization in solidarity with the RWL.
"My collaboration with Joan helped me to better understand that the
real divisions within capitalism are not between young people and old,
between Quebec and English Canada, or between women and men, but between
the class of workers and their allies on the one side, and the
class of the bosses on the other.
"Joan helped me to see more clearly what unites us, reinforcing what we
have in common through the struggle against capitalism, rather than
focusing on what divides us. She taught me to be more objective and to
respect our revolutionary continuity."
International messages
Representing the British section of the Fourth International at the
meeting was Connie Harris, a 44-year veteran of the British workers
movement and a leader of the International. She described how impressed
she was by the "enthusiasm, confidence, and ability" of Joan and the
other young leaders she met while living in Canada for a time in the
1960s.
This was the period when the LSA made a transition in leadership from
the veterans who had held the party together during the difficult days of
the 1950s to a new generation of fighters including Newbigging.
Harris was also impressed with Newbigging’s deep commitment to the
international workers’ movement. "Despite the stage of Joan’s illness, she
took on the task of convening the Canadian tour of a striking British coal
miner last year, responding enthusiastically to this big upheaval in the
class struggle in Britain."
Mary-Alice Waters, co-chairperson of the Socialist Workers Party in the
United States and also a leader of the Fourth International, spoke about
Joan’s role as a leader of the Fourth International.
"She also brought something very particular to the process of building
our party in the United States." Describing tasks the RWL and SWP carry
out in common—from educational gatherings to common trade union fractions
in North American-wide unions—Waters stressed "the importance of this work
in the internationalist education of the Socialist Workers Party. We live
inside the United States, inside the belly of the beast.
"Breaking our isolation, cutting through the isolation that our
movement and the working class in the United States face because of the
strength of U.S. imperialism, is absolutely crucial to the capacity to
build a proletarian, internationalist party in the United States.
"The collaboration we have received over the years from the comrades in
English Canada and Quebec in this process has been indispensable in
helping to keep us from drowning in the imperialist arrogance of the
United States, in helping us learn other cultures and other languages,
both literally and figuratively. And it’s in that sense that Joan
contributed enormously over the years.
"Joan had tremendous capacities. But there was nothing unique about
her. What she did as a leader was not something that she was born with.
She learned it, just like everyone else learns it. And that’s exactly what
she tried to do, to encourage everyone to do and learn as she had."
International collaboration
Pat Williams, a leader of the Socialist Action League (SAL) of New
Zealand described how, although they had never met her personally, Joan
became very familiar to the New Zealand comrades. This was especially true
because of a 1983 report Newbigging gave on the struggle for abortion
clinics in Canada. The report was carefully studied by comrades in New
Zealand and other countries.
This was just one example of the collaboration between the SAL and the
RWL, Williams explained. She stressed the importance of these links. "For
us it means being part of and building the international communist
organization, the Fourth International, being able to collaborate
concretely to the best we can, given the distances involved."
Deb Shnookal, representing a group of communists who support the Fourth
International in Australia, remarked on the appropriateness of the
memorial fund being launched in Newbigging’s memory. The fund will be used
to setup a new French-language Marxist bookstore in Montreal.
Shnookal outlined Newbigging’s understanding of the importance of the
revolutionary literature distributed by Pathfinder Press. Explaining how
the Australian comrades are now circulating this literature in the entire
south Pacific, she concluded that, "The most appropriate commemoration of
Joan’s life is to advance these common international projects."
In the Montreal meeting, Ronald Cameron of the Gauche socialiste
(Socialist Left), a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International
in Quebec, paid tribute to "the depth of Joan’s personal commitment. In
reconfirming this commitment in the 1980s, maintaining her activity in
spite of illness, comrade Joan Newbigging stands out very clearly as an
example to political activists both in Quebec and Canada."
Both the Toronto and Montreal meetings also heard messages from people
who knew or had worked with Newbigging in Canada or around the world.
These included a telegram, from Ernest Mandel, a central leader of the
Fourth International.
A life of revolutionary commitment
The final speaker was Michel Prairie, co-editor of New International
and Nouvelle Internationale, two journals of Marxist theory and
politics published jointly by leaders of the RWL and SWP. Prairie is also
editor of Lutte ouvrière, the French-language equivalent of
Socialist Voice.
"Joan Newbigging devoted almost her entire life to building a communist
party in Canada. By far that is her principal contribution, the main
heritage that she left us.
"Her life reads like a veritable history of the principal struggles of
our class over 20 years. Through all these struggles, Joan became
convinced that the only way to put a definitive end to capitalist
oppression and exploitation was for those who truly produce the wealth in
our society to take power from the hands of the big corporations and the
banks."
Joan knew that called for building a revolutionary party. "To her, such
a party had to truly reflect our class as it is. It had to be a
pan-Canadian, multinational party, where young workers, women, and
Quebecois played a central role."
In the mid-1970s, Prairie explained, there were three organizations
that identified with the Fourth International in Canada—the LSA, the
Revolutionary Marxist Group (RMG), and the Groupe marxiste révolutionnaire
in Quebec.
"Joan played an essential rote in the fusion of these groups into the RWL in 1977," Prairie said. "She was delegated by the LSA leadership to
sit on the joint LSA-RMG steering committee that led the fusion process in
English Canada."
When the central office of the RWL moved from Toronto to Montreal in
1980, a move to help deepen the party’s pan-Canadian character, Newbigging
"enthusiastically" accepted an assignment to come to Montreal.
"Comrades who were then living in Vancouver still remember how she
would take advantage of the long traffic lineups leading into the sawmill
where she worked to study French at the wheel of her car.
"Joan’s interest in learning French was political. She was convinced
that it was essential for her and all English-speaking comrades to be able
to communicate with Québecois revolutionaries and workers in their own
language. "
Prairie explained Newbigging’s great satisfaction with the theme chosen
for the first issue of Nouvelle Internationale. This issue contains
a series of articles on the need for workers to forge an alliance with the
other class of exploited producers in our society, the small farmers.
"Despite the illness that weakened her and forced her to retire from
the Political Committee, Joan played an essential role in this discussion
which the RWL Political Committee had opened up inside the party."
In concluding, Prairie quoted Fidel Castro who said that "there is no
more noble task than being a revolutionary and devoting one’s life to the
struggle for the emancipation of humanity." Prairie encouraged all present
who agreed with that to join with the socialist youth committees and the
RWL in building the revolutionary movement.
"That is exactly what Joan did with her life. And she did it totally,
with no after-thoughts. She was thoroughly convinced of what she was
doing. She knew that elsewhere in the world, in the factories of Cuba, in
the shantytowns of South Africa, in the fields of Nicaragua, millions upon
millions of men and women were doing the same thing as she was. They were
making history."
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