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A life dedicated to the cause of socialism

The remarkable life of GORDON NASH, a peace activist, trade unionist, Morning Star volunteer and devoted Communist

MARXISTS maintain that history is made not by the great and the good but by ordinary — and extraordinary — people joining together in mass movements.

Few people have played a greater and more long-lasting role in local popular movements on Merseyside than Gordon Nash, whose funeral takes place in Wallasey today.

He was born in 1925, growing up in dire poverty in a family with 12 siblings, their mother and their father, who was a docker, on the dole during the Great Depression.

Evacuated to Oswestry after his family home was bombed by the Luftwaffe, Gordon found work on a farm and then as an excavator on airport building sites before joining the Royal Navy in 1943.

He was present at the D-Day landings in northern France and was due to be sent to Australia to take part in the war against Japan before the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced its surrender.

Gordon developed a disgust for atomic weapons, becoming active in Merseyside CND. After the second world war, he served in the police force in Palestine and, returning home to Wallasey, became a Communist Party member in 1948, playing a full role in all its activities, including standing as a parliamentary candidate, until shortly before he died.

He married Marjorie who died in 1984, aged just 60, after they had been together for 30 years, raising three children.

“My Dad roped me into everything he did,” recalls daughter Liz Howard. “Even when he was 90, he took me on a march for peace. I always knew him as a trade unionist, a Communist, who always fought for his beliefs, a better world for our kids. It was always about children.

“He would often baby-sit and he would take the kids over to Liverpool for Chinese New Year or to visit the peace garden or the walled garden — things that don’t cost a penny.

“A cup of tea and a cake, the kids loved it. They had an absolute ball.”

Like many working-class activists denied access to formal schooling, Gordon was self-educated, well-read and he loved poetry, opera, music and ballet to the bemusement of his children.

He joined the Merchant Navy, returning to shore when his mother became ill, before working as a rigger for Octel in Ellesmere Port where he was active in the AEU engineering union, now part of Unite, and remained for the rest of his working life.

“I always remember Dad doing other jobs to make ends meet — as a bouncer and lifeguard at New Brighton baths,” his daughter recalls. “He never really retired. He only gave up his two allotments when he reached 80. He grew everything — vegetables, flowers, fruit trees. When the family left home and he wasn’t cooking as much, he used to ask friends to come down and take stuff away,” she adds.

“I remember writing to him in jail when he was convicted of cutting the fence at Capenhurst in an antinuclear protest and then again for refusing to pay the poll tax.

“He was very passionate about what he believed,” Liz says proudly. That included not only the Communist Party and Morning Star but also the Anti-Apartheid Movement, his union Unite, Merseyside pensioners group, Cuba Solidarity and Merseyside CND.

“After Wallasey CND was set up in the early ’80s, Gordon was there at every demo and march from Faslane to Barrow, Sellafield, Aldermaston and of course our local nuclear site Capenhurst, where he was part of the Snowball campaign and was arrested,” says Barbara Hardcastle.

“The last march he went on was in February this year when he was determined to take part in the Cancel Trident event.

“We insisted on taking a wheelchair in case he got tired or cold, but true to Gordon’s determination he walked the whole way and proud to do it. What made him more proud was that his daughter Liz walked beside him.”

Merseyside Cuba Solidarity Group secretary Penny Anderson remembers meeting Gordon for the first time “on the 1962 Aldermaston march when he sold me my first ever copy of the Daily Worker. I think this became a source of pride to us both.

“I subsequently became a regular reader of the Worker and later the Morning Star and joined the Communist Party. As members of the same branch we sold the Morning Star together.

“He was the most supportive of comrades, unfailingly pleasant and always good-humoured.”

Fellow Cuba Solidarity member Julie Sabin, who used to pick Gordon up for CSC meetings, points to his down-to-earth organisational approach.

“During a discussion on foodbanks at his Merseyside pensioners’ meeting, he proposed that everyone should spend £5 at the supermarket and bring the carrier bags to the next meeting to take to the local foodbank.

“He was always looking out for other people and spurring people to do the right thing, full of energy, wanting to change the world for the better.”

Julie will read her poem dedicated to Gordon’s memory at today’s ceremony. Firefighter Mark Rowe started driving Gordon from his Wallasey home to the Communist Party meeting place in Liverpool when he became a little unstable on his feet.

“I probably shouldn’t say this but I sometimes looked forward to the trips over and back more than I did the meetings because he was such a wonderful colourful character,” he admits.

“Any subject you mentioned, he had this experiential knowledge that he could point to a small story or anecdote and relate it to his career on the ships or his travel round the globe.”

A local radio lunchtime chat show also benefited from Gordon’s input, Mark recalls. “Gordon would be on there regularly. In the workplace we would be shouting at the radio and then Gordon would come on, arguing our point. He was such a wonderfully calm speaker.

“He was devoted to the Morning Star. He always sold it. Gordon was a one-man sales unit for the paper.”

Morning Star management committee chair Carolyn Jones spotlights Gordon selling five copies of the paper at his Unite Community branch meetings. But she also raises his keen sense of humour, noting that, “on his 90th birthday, after we had put up a plaque in the CASA (the club set up by Liverpool dockers) to celebrate the life of Sam Watts, Gordon announced that he wanted one too — but he wanted it while he was still alive so he could enjoy it!

“That was done and then he contributed an extra donation to update the words when he was no longer with us — something we will do with sorrow and pride. “Gordon was a wise old man with political drive and determination. Our branch was all the better for having him as a member.”

  • JOHN HAYLETT
  •  Gordon Nash’s funeral service takes place today at Landican Cemetery (Central Chapel), Arrowe Park Road, Wirral CH49 5LW at 11am, followed by a celebration of his life at The Saddle Club, Roman Road, Prenton, Wirral CH43 3DB. All are welcome.

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