John Rose: an inspiration for revolutionaries
John’s greatest contributions to the struggle were to the fight for a free Palestine
John Rose
By Ken Muller
Saturday 02 November 2024
Saturday 02 November 2024
John Rose’s death this week is a huge and cruel loss to his family, friends, comrades and all who hope and struggle for a better world. But his life—and the outstanding contributions he made to understanding the obstacles to winning such a world and how to overcome them—are an inspiration.
John was born into a Jewish family in Harrogate and grew up as a Zionist. In 1966 he started at the London School of Economics (LSE) and joined the LSE Socialist Society. Shortly afterwards, he met Tony Cliff, the Jewish revolutionary and founder of the International Socialist tradition
After hearing Cliff and the South African revolutionary Ronnie Kasrils speak at a teach-in on Israel’s Six Day War, John learned a profound lesson. “During those six days I learned that Zionism and Jewish humanism were incompatible. I never looked back,” he later recalled.
It took great courage to withstand the pressure of family ideology and break with Zionism. After intense discussions with Cliff, John joined the predecessor of the Socialist Workers Party, the International Socialists (IS).
John played a leading role in the battles fought out at the LSE against the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa and Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia.
Kasrils had recruited John, along with other LSE IS students and some Communist Party worker members, to go to South Africa. He put his life and liberty in jeopardy when he went to South Africa on behalf of the African National Congress (ANC). He carried leaflets against the apartheid regime and explosives which would scatter the leaflets far and wide in public places.
If caught, John would have got ten years in jail. His immense modesty is witnessed by the fact that for decades he never told even his closest friends. Indeed, during the ten years we shared a flat together in Kentish Town in the 1980s, he never once mentioned it to me.
After leaving the LSE, John became west London IS organiser. He was later central to organising against the fascist National Front (NF) following the racist killing of Gurdip Singh Chagger in the summer of 1976 and the police murder of Blair Peach in Southall 1979.
John joined Socialist Worker as a journalist in 1978. Two years later, he succeeded Cliff as editor and was elected to the Central Committee, the national leadership of the SWP. In 1982 he left full-time work for the SWP.
He went on to work for many years at Southwark College organising strikes and on several occasions walkouts against the 2003 Iraq war.
John’s greatest contributions to the struggle were to the fight for a free Palestine and the Jewish question. Sadly, in the last part of his life, he had to follow this from his bed in a care home following a stroke early in 2022.
His 1986 pamphlet, Israel: the Hijack State named Israel a terrorist state and pointed to Egypt’s working class as key to a socialist revolution across the region. His unconditional defence of the Palestinians’ right to resist played a key role in winning a generation of Egyptian activists to socialist politics.
It helped to sow the seeds for the foundation of a new revolutionary socialist movement in Egypt in the 1990s. John’s arguments also reached wider audiences in the Arab world through translations of some of his key works, such as The Myths of Zionism.
John was a pioneer when it came to the issue of Zionism and the Jewish question. Like most post-war Jewish students, he’d been brought up to believe Israel was a necessary haven if Jews were to avoid another Holocaust. But he quickly took on board Cliff’s rejection of Zionism as the remedy for antisemitism.
He was also an innovator when it came to the broader question of identifying who were the Jewish people. Were they a race, a religion, or, in revolutionary Abram Leon’s words, a “people-class”? How could one account for their survival from ancient times to the modern world? Wasn’t socialism the real answer to antisemitism, as the brief heroic experience of workers’ democracy in the Russian Revolution demonstrated?
John remained passionately committed to the struggle for workers’ power throughout his life and continued to break new intellectual ground until a few years before his death. His last major writing was his forthcoming book. It analyses the successes and failures of independent workers’ movements in the struggles to overthrow tyrannies in Poland, South Africa, Iran and Brazil. Like all his work, it was resonant with the voices of ordinary people fighting to change the world.
As Jim Nichol reflected yesterday, “John was his own man. There was no telling him what to do or think. He queried and interrogated political ideas and strategy wherever they came from. He was thoughtful. He would voice his opinions.”
Like all his family and close friends and comrades, I’m going to miss John enormously.
But he will have expected us to continue the struggle—to mourn, maybe, but then to organise. Our love, solidarity and best wishes go to John’s partner and comrade, Elaheh and the rest of their family.
Thank you to other comrades who have contributed to this obituary.
John was born into a Jewish family in Harrogate and grew up as a Zionist. In 1966 he started at the London School of Economics (LSE) and joined the LSE Socialist Society. Shortly afterwards, he met Tony Cliff, the Jewish revolutionary and founder of the International Socialist tradition
After hearing Cliff and the South African revolutionary Ronnie Kasrils speak at a teach-in on Israel’s Six Day War, John learned a profound lesson. “During those six days I learned that Zionism and Jewish humanism were incompatible. I never looked back,” he later recalled.
It took great courage to withstand the pressure of family ideology and break with Zionism. After intense discussions with Cliff, John joined the predecessor of the Socialist Workers Party, the International Socialists (IS).
John played a leading role in the battles fought out at the LSE against the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa and Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia.
Kasrils had recruited John, along with other LSE IS students and some Communist Party worker members, to go to South Africa. He put his life and liberty in jeopardy when he went to South Africa on behalf of the African National Congress (ANC). He carried leaflets against the apartheid regime and explosives which would scatter the leaflets far and wide in public places.
If caught, John would have got ten years in jail. His immense modesty is witnessed by the fact that for decades he never told even his closest friends. Indeed, during the ten years we shared a flat together in Kentish Town in the 1980s, he never once mentioned it to me.
After leaving the LSE, John became west London IS organiser. He was later central to organising against the fascist National Front (NF) following the racist killing of Gurdip Singh Chagger in the summer of 1976 and the police murder of Blair Peach in Southall 1979.
John joined Socialist Worker as a journalist in 1978. Two years later, he succeeded Cliff as editor and was elected to the Central Committee, the national leadership of the SWP. In 1982 he left full-time work for the SWP.
He went on to work for many years at Southwark College organising strikes and on several occasions walkouts against the 2003 Iraq war.
John’s greatest contributions to the struggle were to the fight for a free Palestine and the Jewish question. Sadly, in the last part of his life, he had to follow this from his bed in a care home following a stroke early in 2022.
His 1986 pamphlet, Israel: the Hijack State named Israel a terrorist state and pointed to Egypt’s working class as key to a socialist revolution across the region. His unconditional defence of the Palestinians’ right to resist played a key role in winning a generation of Egyptian activists to socialist politics.
It helped to sow the seeds for the foundation of a new revolutionary socialist movement in Egypt in the 1990s. John’s arguments also reached wider audiences in the Arab world through translations of some of his key works, such as The Myths of Zionism.
John was a pioneer when it came to the issue of Zionism and the Jewish question. Like most post-war Jewish students, he’d been brought up to believe Israel was a necessary haven if Jews were to avoid another Holocaust. But he quickly took on board Cliff’s rejection of Zionism as the remedy for antisemitism.
He was also an innovator when it came to the broader question of identifying who were the Jewish people. Were they a race, a religion, or, in revolutionary Abram Leon’s words, a “people-class”? How could one account for their survival from ancient times to the modern world? Wasn’t socialism the real answer to antisemitism, as the brief heroic experience of workers’ democracy in the Russian Revolution demonstrated?
John remained passionately committed to the struggle for workers’ power throughout his life and continued to break new intellectual ground until a few years before his death. His last major writing was his forthcoming book. It analyses the successes and failures of independent workers’ movements in the struggles to overthrow tyrannies in Poland, South Africa, Iran and Brazil. Like all his work, it was resonant with the voices of ordinary people fighting to change the world.
As Jim Nichol reflected yesterday, “John was his own man. There was no telling him what to do or think. He queried and interrogated political ideas and strategy wherever they came from. He was thoughtful. He would voice his opinions.”
Like all his family and close friends and comrades, I’m going to miss John enormously.
But he will have expected us to continue the struggle—to mourn, maybe, but then to organise. Our love, solidarity and best wishes go to John’s partner and comrade, Elaheh and the rest of their family.
Thank you to other comrades who have contributed to this obituary.
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