Clare Doyle

Lynn Walsh died on 15 November aged 79. Born and brought up in the south of England, he began studying at Sussex University in 1964. Lynn soon joined our small but growing group of revolutionary Marxists – inside the Brighton Labour Party, in its youth section and in the university’s socialist club. Our newspaper, Militant, was launched in October of that year.

Lynn showed great enthusiasm for our ideas and those of the great teachers – Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. He had considerable talent. This he had shown early on when, via Sussex University, he was voted into the national leadership of the Revolutionary Socialist Student Federation – an organisation that had mushroomed under the impact of the May 1968 revolutionary events in France. The Revolutionary Socialist Student Federation’s existence was short-lived, but it was initially sizeable and, as Bob Labi recalls, Lynn played a prominent role arguing for our views and cut his political teeth in what were sometimes fierce political debates.

After leaving Sussex, Lynn spent time based in London, developing the work of our growing organisation. In the early 1970s he moved to Manchester to work as one of the first regional full-timers for Militant.

When revolution broke out in Portugal in 1974, Lynn was sent by our newly founded organisation – the Committee for a Workers’ International – to build a base there for our ideas, with almost no knowledge of the country’s language!.

Back in London, Lynn became an invaluable writer and editor of Militant’s publications. He was also involved in important legal battles, working closely with friend and solicitor, Mike Fisher. This included the Labour Campaign for the Defence of Brixton, set up in response to the 1981 ‘riots’, and later several others. Lynn lived with his partner, Vivien Seal, and son, Daniel, just at the top of Brixton Hill, in a house often used for local Militant meetings.

Along with the other four of us on Militant’s editorial board – Peter Taaffe, Keith Dickinson, Ted Grant, and myself – Lynn was ‘put on trial’ by Labour Leader, Neil Kinnock, and the party’s National Executive Committee. At the 1983 Labour Party Conference (in Brighton, as it happens), we were expelled from the Labour Party. The following year, 1984, Lynn’s son, Daniel, aged seven, was presented with a prize by Neil Kinnock for a drawing he had done about the health service. Daniel promptly asked him why he had expelled his father from the party!

In the 1980s, our organisation in Britain had grown to beyond 8,000 members and we held a major rally in Alexandra Palace. At this time, Lynn was an important contributor to the major debates we had nationally and internationally. Lynn also provided important advice and a Marxist theoretical grounding for our student members, as Militant grew in strength nationally in that field of activity in the 1980s.  He took a clear position during the split in the CWI in the early 1990s and was the key editor of our theoretical journal – Militant International Review – and then of its successor, Socialism Today.

Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI)

Increasingly involved in the CWI’s activity, Lynn visited a number of countries on its behalf, including South Africa, with Tony Saunois, as well as India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and, many times, the US. He spoke at numerous debates and meetings on behalf of the CWI. I particularly remember when he visited the USSR in its turbulent dying days. He addressed a meeting in the capital, Moscow, and then a gathering of 50 people in Leningrad, in the very same ballerina’s house that the Bolsheviks used in April 1917.

The new period that then opened, as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and other Stalinist states, saw wide-ranging debates amongst Marxists, in which Lynn prominently participated. Lynn also covered the work of the Southern region of the Socialist Party during this period.

Not long into the 21st century, Lynn’s life moved all too rapidly from sheer delight in his partnership with Lorraine Dardis, who had moved to London from the US, into the tragedy that ensued with her terminal illness and untimely death. Lynn suffered increasing serious health problems, including failing eyesight, becoming increasingly dependent on the unstinting help of friends and, in particular, that given by his comrade-neighbours, Roger and Elizabeth Keyse.

During Lynn’s last years, when he was once more in Brighton, where Daniel was living, Lynn was no longer able to be active politically. He had visits from family and close friends, like Nick Chaffey from Southampton, and on one last occasion in 2023, Jagadish Chandra from Bangalore, India.

Those of us who knew Lynn well for many decades – who worked with him, visited the theatre and concerts with him (and very occasionally clashed with him) – will never forget Lynn or his contribution to the building of the forces of Marxism and Trotskyism nationally and internationally.  Many newer members of our party and the CWI who never met Lynn nonetheless gain enormous benefit from his written material.

A vital role over many decades

Hannah Sell, Socialist Party General Secretary

The tributes in this week’s Socialist can only give a very small glimpse of the vital role that Lynn Walsh played over many decades. 

Among his many attributes was his ability to ‘patiently explain’. Personally, I particularly remember when, at 18, as the Young Socialist rep on the Labour Party National Executive Committee, I faced a two-day ‘policy review’ meeting, which shifted the Labour party’s programme decisively to the right. Panic-stricken at the number of betrayals to be argued against, I asked for help. Lynn met me in Waterloo station at 7am and spent hours talking through the main points. He played the same role for me, and many others, countless times over the years.

Especially crucial was Lynn’s contribution, alongside others – Peter Taaffe in particular – in the hard years after the collapse of Stalinism. They were able to clearly explain why socialists were temporarily so isolated, and more importantly why capitalism’s inability to take society forward would inevitably lead to that changing. In the debates of the nineties and noughties against those moving away from Marxism, Lynn’s clarity helped arm us all for the fight. Sadly, he is now gone, but his wealth of written material remains an incredibly valuable resource for the battles ahead.

Outstanding contributions as Socialism Today editor

Clive Heemskerk, Socialist Party Executive Committee

Lynn was appointed by the Socialist Party’s Executive Committee as the editor of our monthly magazine, Socialism Today, from its inaugural edition published in September 1995. He continued in that role until declining health led him to stand down in May 2019.

Lynn was a polymath of the Marxist movement and in future editions Socialism Today will reprint some of his outstanding contributions. This will be an integral part of our celebration in 2025 of thirty years of the magazine he did so much to sustain.

The series will start in the next edition with the founding statement of Socialism Today, written by Lynn for our first issue, arguing that socialism, far from being ‘finished’ – as was the ‘established wisdom’ of the 1990s even among those on the left – will once again become the idea that guides workers and youth in the struggle for a new society.

A passion for knowledge and a dear friend

Manny Thain

It was a privilege to know Lynn, as his secretary/researcher for over 20 years, on the Socialism Today team, and as his friend for 30. Transcribing his articles was always a fascinating journey – Lynn was never linear, each article made up of sections to be ordered and pieced together at a later stage. He cared about his work.

His close collaboration – and friendship – with cartoonist Alan Hardman resulted in some of the most striking covers for the Militant International Review and Socialism Today. And Lynn, one of the leading Marxist theoreticians and practitioners of his time, never talked down to you. He always wanted to hear your opinion, thoughts and ideas.

When Lynn stepped back from full-time work for the party and international, I was charged with archiving his research material. The depth and breadth of his work was breathtaking, including his forensic dissection of the political economy of the Stalinist Soviet Union, his comprehensive analysis of post-second world war capitalism, and his understanding of Marxist economic theory, alongside a colossal range of historical, social and cultural issues.

Lynn had a passion for knowledge, and a love of life, art, music, literature. That made the last few years so hard to witness. We can be comforted, however, by the fact that he was supported by his son, Daniel, and a very close-knit group of friends. Lynn, goodbye, dearest friend.

‘Expert witness on Marxism and Trotskyism’

Glenn Kelly

A key part of the fight to defending the Socialist Party’s four from being witch-hunted in Unison, was our legal battle.

Given that it was clear we were being targeted because we were Socialist Party members, we lodged a discrimination claim based on our political beliefs, a rare legal precedent at the time.

Throughout this period, Lynn and Peter Taaffe were constant supporters and advisors. Lynn even testified as our ‘expert witness on Marxism and Trotskyism’. Despite the union barrister’s attempts to undermine the ideas of socialism and show that the ideas were ‘not worthy of respect in a democratic society’, he could not fluster Lynn, and soon wanted him out of the witness box.

Lynn’s calm, insightful words always commanded attention. His passing is a great loss, but his writings will continue to strengthen Marxist ideas within our party.

Strikingly profound understanding of science and dialectics

Pete Mason

Lynn had a strikingly profound understanding of science and dialectics. Lynn was never a rigid or dogmatic thinker. He excoriated my early naive view that science simply develops according to discovered ‘facts’. No, he told me, the progress of science could only be understood through the Marxist, historical materialist method: that science is a human process of cognition bound by historically developed constructs, even while discovering results that defy our comprehension.

Once, when I mentioned in discussion Engels’s three laws of dialectics, Lynn astonished me: “Lenin described 16 ‘laws’, not three”. They were not laws in the sense of fixed, scientific laws, he explained. They are a guide to understanding. Lenin also states, after enumerating his 16 “laws”, that dialectics can be summed up as the ‘unity of opposites’ but adds: ‘but it requires explanations and development’. Engels called it the “interpenetration of opposites” which is, perhaps, also rather a rather obscure sounding expression.

Lynn explained how science is just such a ‘unity of opposites’ – perhaps ‘disunity’ is a better word in English – of conflicting theories. Eventually the old ‘unity’ bursts asunder in a revolution of new higher level of understanding. Quantity turns to quality. The results of decades of discussion and investigation with Lynn formed the book, ‘Science, Marxism and the Big Bang’, which Lynn not only guided and edited, but even provided the opening paragraph, which, typical of his thinking, warns against dogmatism: “Marxism does not provide a ready-made key for making judgements about scientific ideas. It cannot substitute for a detailed knowledge of the appropriate scientific material.” But what the dialectics of Marxism does do is provide a framework for understanding what science is and how it operates.