SEP Assistant National Secretary Helen Halyard:

Tom's memory will forever live in this party

Tom and myself were part of a generation of young people with a profound belief in the ability of man kind to make the world a better place to live. We opposed the intervention of the United States in Vietnam and the senseless slaughter of American and Vietnamese youth. It was our position that the problems of poverty, pervasive racism, police brutality and unemployment were the products of capitalism.

We found in the Workers League a party based on the principles of proletarian internationalism, a party based on the world scientific outlook of Marxism and the historical perspective of Trotskyism. The Workers League told students, workers and young people the truth: that the conditions of oppression could not be solved by reforming capitalism, but required its overthrow; that the working class, the majority of society and the class whose labor created all wealth, had to reorganize society economically so that production was based on what millions needed to live, not the drive for profit.

When I joined in 1971 there were many organizations active on the college campuses and in working class neighborhoods. The protest movement at that time was politically dominated by middle class radical organizations and Stalinists. These movements worked might and main to keep the working class subordinated to the big business Democratic Party. In the antiwar movement, they sought to keep workers and young people tied politically to the very forces who were responsible for the war. Trade union leaders and liberal Democrats urged the demonstrators to pressure Congress to stop the war, and insisted that they limit themselves to the demand for the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam.

One has only to look at Bill Clinton today, a former anti-war protester who has joined with the Republican Party in a ruthless assault on the social gains of the working class, to understand the very reactionary character of such a perspective. Far from the Democratic Party being pressured to carry out reforms in the interests of society, the demands of globalized production have exposed it for what it is, a big business party working in the interests of the rich.

Where I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, many nationalist organizations, such as the Black Panther Party and the Puerto Rican Liberation Front, were active among the youth. These organizations, aided by the middle class radical groups, sought to block young people from turning to the revolutionary potential of the working class. They supported the election of black Democratic Party mayors, and separated racism from its source in class society. Just as the ruling class today promotes black nationalist demagogues like Louis Farrakhan, so too in the 1970s it used nationalist elements to foment racial and ethnic divisions and prevent the working class-black, white and immigrant-from uniting in struggle against the common ruling class enemy.

The Workers League was the only socialist organization to oppose a nationalist perspective. It did not adapt itself to the nationalist organizations, even though sections of youth supported them. The party recognized that such organizations, whose political programs offered no way forward for any section of the working class, were only temporary phenomena. The Workers League explained the class struggle historically and sought to win the youth to a Marxist perspective.

Tom was looking for a party that could organize the working class politically. He did not stop at an emotional response to the war and oppression, but sought to understand their causes and base his struggle to change the world on a scientific outlook. His commitment to the liberation of the working class and his fighting qualities as a party member were anchored by a materialist understanding of the laws that govern society. He understood that while the US was a major imperialist power, using its military to police the world, its contradictions were greater than its economic and military might.

Tom understood the fighting capacities of the American and international working class, if led by a revolutionary party. That is what attracted him to the Workers League. It was the party of Lenin and Trotsky, the two principal leaders of the October Revolution, who demonstrated for the first time in history the ability of the working class to conquer state power and establish a workers government.

Comrade Tom rejected what is one of the greatest lies of the twentieth century-the false identification of socialism with the Stalinist regime in the former Soviet Union. He fought among workers, students and youth to understand that the first great working class revolution was betrayed. Basing himself on the traditions and history of Trotskyism, he explained that socialism could never be built in one country alone, as the Stalinists claimed, but had to be established on a world scale.

He opposed every manifestation of bourgeois ideology and all those who had a skeptical attitude to the revolutionary capacities of the proletariat. When Tim Wohlforth, who was national secretary of the Workers League when Tom joined, sought to turn the party from its proletarian orientation and liquidate it into the swamp of radical protest, Tom came forward as a political leader to defend our heritage and principles. Where is Tim Wohlforth today? He has joined the camp of imperialism, supporting the US troop presence in the Balkans. Not too long ago he published an article entitled, "Give war a chance."

Educated in the struggle for principles

Tom was forged as an outstanding cadre of the party and political leader in the working class in the struggle against opportunism. He learned and taught others that socialism can be achieved only through a politically conscious struggle of the working class, led by a Trotskyist party. He understood that there were no substitutes for a revolutionary party and independent organs of working class power.

He played a leading role in the party's turn to the industrial working class. From 1974 to 1977 he discussed with thousands of workers. On two separate occasions he made trips to the coal mines in Ohio and West Virginia. When 90,000 miners, led by younger workers, struck the coalfields in 1976, the party had an important presence among the miners. It advanced the only principled and politically conscious alternative to the United Mine Workers bureaucracy.

Hundreds of Brooklyn Navy Yard workers would see Tom in the early morning hours as he fought with them to purchase copies of the Bulletin and consider the political program of our party. In 1975, when Seatrain shipbuilding laid off 1,800 workers, Tom led a demonstration in opposition to the pathetic appeals of the trade union leaders, calling for the occupation of the yard and for workers to organize themselves politically. In one day 250 copies of the Bulletin newspaper were sold to Navy Yard workers. Dozens of workers crowded around Tom, seeking answers to the problems they confronted and wanting to learn more about our party.

Tom's impact on workers

Tom was instrumental in the recruitment of Ed Winn, a New York City transit worker who came to play a leading role in our party and was nominated as the party's candidate in our first nationwide presidential election campaign in 1984. Ed died in 1995 from a heart attack while awaiting a kidney transplant. His tribute at the 1977 memorial meeting in New York summed up quite well Tom's impact on many workers.

Comrade Ed said of Tom, "He fought, he lived and he died a great fighter in the Trotskyist movement. And there can be no greater inspiration for all of us, working class youth and older workers, but to follow his example."

Tom Henehan fought with his entire being for the full material and spiritual liberation of the toiling masses. There are many experiences in my work with Tom that could be related, but there is one in particular that I will never forget. We held an educational to explain how capitalism works. Following the reports, discussion ensued for two hours. After the class Tom was elated by the ability of many of the young people at the class to begin to grasp difficult Marxist conceptions.

The word discouragement did not exist in Tom's vocabulary. No tasks confronting the party, no matter how great, were seen as impossible. He saw the problems facing the party and the working class as a source of knowledge.

He was full of energy and would convey to every youth and worker with whom he spoke the necessity for international socialism as the only way to fight the conditions of injustice, poverty and war. His patience with workers and youth stemmed from an understanding that man's consciousness lags behind the changes that take place in the objective world.

Tom's life, while much too short, was not lived in vain. What Tom contributed in the space of four and a half years to the building of a party in the working class is far more than what most men achieve in a lifetime. His character and indomitable spirit express the finest qualities of the American and international working class. Tom's memory and the struggle he conducted will forever live in this party.