GONE, GONE, GONE.

Ben died last week. He was interred in a Jewish cemetery without any religious observations, only the profoundly heartfelt memories expressed by his old friends.

I met Ben at Vaughan Road Collegiate. His name was “Ben” for “son” and his middle name was “Zion.” So – Son of Zion. His parents were labour activists from Poland who had emigrated briefly to British mandated Palestine but returned to Poland and emigrated again – this time in 1934 – to Canada. They were part of the revolutionary movement that was fiercely Communist. They belonged to organizations like the United Jewish People’s Order and sent their son to Camp Neivelt, a Communist summer camp where the “Internationale” was sung in Yiddish. (Interesting sidelight: the uncle of a friend of mine, who belonged to the United Jewish People’s Order, not for its politics, but for social reasons, was barred from entry into the United States, for belong to a subversive organization. He was flying back from Mexico and the plane made an unexpected stop in the U.S. He was hustled off the plane and sent to Ellis Island where his anxious relatives had to bail him out. He was facing possible deportation to his European country of origin! That’s how bad things were for America’s political enemies.)

In the 30’s and 40’s, in spite of government moves to virtually outlaw the Party, it thrived. Toronto had Communist aldermen, there were two Communists in the Ontario Legislature, Joe Salzberg and Alex MacLeod. Because the Party was officially banned, they called themselves the LPP – Labour Progressive Party.

Those were glory days for the Left, as yet untarnished by revelations of the excesses of Stalin (although everyone knew of the 1936 purges and of the assassination of Leon Trotsky.) Incidentally, it was after the savage repression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 that many of our home-grown Communists deserted the cause. I studied drama at the Theatre of Action, a very left-leaning school forum for social theatre. Members of my own family were Communists. Unions like the Canadian Seaman’s Union and the Mine Mill and Smelter Workers Union, and the United Electrical Workers – all Communist run. They fell before the onslaught of the anti-communist forces of the Social Democrats, who were not above malicious union busting.

I am telling you all this because those memories will continue to fade and die as its advocates, like Ben, are gone.

People everywhere, in our fast-becoming conservative society, are impatient and even hostile, to any mention of these bygone days of idealism and fight for the working man.

Perhaps the best eulogy came from Stephen Endicott, son of the famous James Endicott, a Canadian missionary born in China who was a supporter of Mao and of Chinese Communism. Endicott was reviled by the establishment in this country. It is an indication of how profound the suspicions were that Ben was dismissed from his post as a high school teacher for his political views. He later went of to a much larger career as a professor at the University of Toronto.

Steve brought me back to a forgotten reality: the cause of the working man. I do not support the hard-left doctrines but I do support what Steve said about how Ben would have responded to the crushing of the Greek working people in the name of economic recovery. The class warfare of olden days is alive and well. He said that once again the spending cuts fell on the back of the ones least able to survive, and the benefits continued to accrue to the affluent. He didn’t have to mention that the Greek firestorm is a reflection of so much wrong in the world today. Greece is full of income tax evading scofflaws, millionaires who simply don’t pay their share. So when the government announces new “austerity” measures, the austerity falls on the helpless while the wealthy breeze through, virtually unscathed. That it had to come from an unregenerate Communist is sad.

We don’t need to use Greece as an example. In America, they are having a political debate over the question of raising the debt ceiling. At the heart of the problem is that the super-rich individuals and corporations are not appropriately taxed, according to their means that is, while the politicians bicker over the deficit and economic survival. Americans know damn well, just as the do the Greeks, that the fault lies not in unregulated social generosity but in unenforced laws to make the wealthy pay their share.

Ben would have been happy to hear Steve remind us of the gap.