Over four decades, from the 1970s until her recent death, Gwenda Beishon was a continuous subscriber to the Militant newspaper and then the Socialist.
Throughout this time she was a left-wing member of Brighton Labour Party, regularly condemning the right-wing leadership of the party. Her father – from a Russian-Jewish family – had emerged from World War One’s front trenches to enthusiastically welcome the 1917 Russian revolution and adopt communist ideas, later recruiting her Polish-Jewish born mother to them too.
Gwenda met her future husband John in the communist society at Birmingham University, but along with many others they came to reject Stalinist ideology and join the Labour Party, which then included many left-wing and Marxist activists.
Gwenda twice served as a Labour councillor in Brighton, but the political activity that she liked most was her unrelenting local activism – leafleting, discussing with people on doorsteps and helping to sort out their problems. She was also an active trade unionist in the NUT teachers’ union.
Gwenda will be remembered as a very avid reader and a lover of classical music, but also as an ardent socialist whose convictions ran very deep.
