Taiwan Alec Acheson: Tension increases a convinced Marxist Jun Xing revolutionary
Official unemployment The Internationale closed statistics in May 1996 recor- Alec's funeral in May. Family, ded 218,000 people out of comrades and friends could work (2.5%), an increase of read tributes offered by East 69,000 over the preceding
Knighton Labour Party, year. Some academics es-
Socialist Outlook, members of timate unemployment at 4%. This means 400,000 are the Socialist Labour Party, the without jobs in a system with- Troops Out Movement, and out unemployment relief. the Irish Study's group.
Immigrant labour problems Alec spent the last 60 of his are also serious. In the first 84 years as an active supthree months of 1996, visas porter of the Fourth Interwere issued to 387,000 im- national. He as one of the tiny migrant labourers from over handful of pre-war Trotskyists 746,000 applicants. The who was still in the ranks of government estimates there the International until his are currently 217,000 immigrant labourers in Taiwan, constituting 2.3% of the popu- My earliest memories of lation. But the Taiwan Labour Alec go back to 1937. We Front puts the number of were both in the Islington legal and illegal immigrant branch of the Revolutionary labourers at 450,000. The Socialist League (RSL). In labour movement in Taiwan is those days we used to hold becoming more militant in open air meetings in Highbury struggles to fight the worsen- Fields. One evening, the ing labour conditions and speaker who had to follow me wages due to vicious competition from immigrant workers. failed to turn up. Alec, who was selling our paper The
Women suffer most in this situation. They constitute 80% Militant, but who had never of the unemployed. According addressed a public meeting to the Taiwan Labour Front before, mounted the platform Labour Report 1996, over 4.28 million women were un- He was clearly nervous, but employed last year. The there was a job to be done for Equality Law, passed on 10 the revolution, and he did it. April 1996, does little to pro-
This was typical of Alec -tect women: no penalties are levied on the employers for his never-failing devotion to sex discrimination. In 1995, the fight for socialism, which women's average pay was to him was synonymous with only 67.8% of that of men. the building of the Fourth
The post-election thaw in relations between Taiwan and In 1939, Alec threw himself. mainland China is giving Pre- into the revolutionary opsident Lee Teng-hui some position to the war. boost in his political position, On January 6 1940 he and also causing a rise in the organised a conference of Taiwanese stock market. But this cannot draw attention sixty delegates from the
Labour Party, the Independent problems of labour and inter- Labour Party Guild of Youth, party politics. Opposition the ILP, the Communist Party, forces in the parliament have the National Unemployed united, placing the ruling Kuo- Workers' Movement, Leicester mintang (KMT) of President Lee in a minority in the trades union branches. It was egislature for the first time in addressed by Fenner Brockthe country's history. * way and Starkey Jackson. When he was conscripted Source: October Review into the army he continued his (Vol.23 Issue 3) socialist activities as far as G.P.O.Box 10144, Hong Kong possible. e-mail address: or@iohk.com When he was sent to Egypt
The contacted comrades living there. There was an election 36 International Viewpoint going on, and the Trotskyist group supported the socialist candidates. Alec, in defiance of military discipline, took part in the election campaign, going round to the houses and tenements where the workers were.
### Together with another
British comrade Joe Pawsey, he drafted a leaflet on the developing situation in Greece, which was duplicated by the Egyptian comrades. It called on the soldiers in the British army not to fight against their working class brothers in Greece.
They were nearly caught by the military police.
After the war, Alec became an activist in the Nationa Union of Teachers, eventually becoming honorary President. He was also active in the Labour Party and the antiracist movement. He was a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
He will be remembered as a teacher, a good friend, a secularist and a leading representative of what he once called the "red thread" linking the present revolutionary movement to the experiences of the twenties and thirties.
Alec loved reading, particularly Irish literature and culture. We will all miss his friendship, experience, knowledge and personal warmth.
This was Alec Achesori, a Marxist revolutionary
[CVG, BH]
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