Farewell to Cameron Richards

Gwent crematorium was packed on Friday as friends, family, work colleagues and comrades said farewell to South Wales activist Cameron Richards.

The sheer number of mourners and the heartfelt trubutes to Cameron bore witness to the love and respect inspired by this throroughly decent and committed teacher and revolutionary socialist.

The number of young socialists present also bore witness to Cameron’s success in bringing Marxist ideas to a new generation.

Cardiff PR, and previously Cardiff Workers Power, worked alongside Cameron in numerous campaigns, and as we have already written, he was unfailingly courteous and honest. Though we have political differences with Cameron’s organisation, the CPGB, we were all genuinely committed to left unity and a principled way of conducting our political activities.

Cameron was commendably loyal to his own organisation, but open about the differences he sometimes had with the majority line. In the case of these differences we believed Cameron was generally on the right side of the divide: for example, he was against the Respect project once its cross-class nature became evident.

Quite by chance, Cardiff PR comrades bumped into Cameron at Paddington Station on the day of our founding conference. He already had his copy of our magazine and was pleased to hear that PR, in contrast to Workers Power, were redefining democratic centralism to allow the public expression of differences, while maintaining the greatest possible unity in action.

Cameron, like us, knew what it was like to be in the minority, not only within society, but also on the left. Hostility from others did not stop him expressing his views patiently and clearly. He will be sadly missed, but his loss will only inspire his comrades, and us, to fight all the harder to bring about the vision of a fair and equal society we all share.

Sun 13, July 2008 @ 11:11