A Column for Ted Grant

The renowned left-wing intellectual, theoretician, and leader Ted Grant, died on 20^th July on the outskirts of London. He was to be visited that same day by Alan Woods and Manzoor Ahmed, Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan from Kasur.  The 93 year-old Grant joined the movement in the 1930s at the age of 15, joining the Communist Party of South Africa, and lived all his life fulfilling the tasks of history in an exemplary manner. He has left us a legacy of an intense political struggle full of ordeals, a clear ideological understanding, organizational and creational capabilities.  In this long saga he has left several books and innumerable friends and comrades. But above all, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, he has left behind the largest and most organized International Marxist Tendency comprising the followers of Leon Trotsky.

Very rare are those people, whom after meeting them, one realizes what kind of person they are and the unforgetable imprint of their acts on history - what their movement, social interaction, attitudes and conversation would be like?  I think Ted Grant was one of those people.  A few years ago, I had the opportunity to spend ten days with him at a conference in Barcelona.  At the conference the distance between the auditorium and the dining hal was about two furlongs.  And in this distance there were ups and downs which made the journey quite painful, which the delegates had to cover by foot.

In one of those journeys walking with Ted, I offered to carry his bag for him.  When he accepted the offer I realised the mistake I had made, because that bag weighed 10-15 kilograms.  It looked to have paper, etc. but in reality it was the mobile office of Ted Grant. Alan Woods later told me that this bag contained the manuscripts of his unpublished book, piles of his notes, his clothes, tea, fruit, bread, and other daily use items.  He kept all these things because of his very active and intense schedule.  These utilities are very handy if one is imprisoned for political struggles.  With so much weight, it was so difficult to walk even a furlong, but Ted Grant - carrying a much greater weight of an ideological mission - and great historical tasks, had embarked  on a life-long journey was going in for so many years. In this journey ed had never shown any tiredness or rested at any change.  He also lived a very modest life with a few shirts and trousers.  He used to wash his own clothes and did all his personal jobs himself.  Strolling with Ted on the streets of Barcelona I saw that he use to bow and say hello to every child and almost every child gave him a blissful reply.  The children used to keep looking at Ted while they were in the grasp of their mothers walking away.  Ted used to tell me that the children of our epoch are being neglected.  He was convinced that such is the social oppression of capitalism that parents are short of time to give their children the time they need.  The quest for food and other basic needs consumes all their lives under this barbaric system.  Every person is shackled by the economic dictates of capitalism.

Ted also explained to me about the influence of Islamic rule on the culture of Spain.  This had introduced positive impacts on the then more primitive Spanish society.