Socialist Action /September 2000
Hayden Perry: Long-Time Socialist Action
Journalist
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER
Hayden Perry, a founder of the Socialist Workers
Party and of Socialist Action-and a long-time contributor to Socialist Action
newspaper-died on Aug. 2. He was 86.
Hayden died in the hospital shortly after he had
collapsed on the lawn of the Oakland, Calif., apartment facility where he
lived.
Until his last moment, Hayden was noted for his
indefatigable energy. He participated in more meetings and rallies, staffed
more literature tables, and wrote more articles and letters to the editor
than almost anyone you could name. His regular mode of transportation was
by bicycle.
One of Hayden's traits was a reluctance to talk
much about himself. Generally, he preferred to discuss politics and events.
He was especially interested in what young people
were doing and saying. He was often critical of what he saw as the younger
generation's relative lack of interest in political involvement-though he
never gave up hope in the youth. He told me he thought that mobilizations
of young people in Seattle and other places were a good sign for the future.
Hayden was born in England in 1914 of working-class
Irish parentage. When he was seven, he moved to the United States, settling
with his family in the New York area.
In Southern California, in 1934, he was introduced
to left-wing political activity through the "Ham and Eggs Party,"
which backed the campaign of Upton Sinclair for governor. He soon met members
of the Trotskyist movement and was convinced by their revolutionary program.
In 1936, the Trotskyists entered the Socialist
Party in order to influence and recruit the many young workers who were
joining the party. Hayden, who was living in San Francisco, also joined
the SP at that time.
Soon afterward, however, the reformist leadership
of the Socialist Party expelled the Trotskyist-led current-who had insisted,
among other "transgressions," on the need to discuss party policy
in regard to the ongoing revolution in Spain. In 1938, the expelled revolutionaries
founded the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Hayden was among them.
During World War II, Hayden was drafted into the
Army and served in the South Pacific. Following the war, he lived for a
time in Chicago and in Akron and Youngstown, Ohio.
During this period he married his wife, Esther,
and he perfected his trade as a printer. In Akron, he printed a series of
pamphlets for the labor party clubs that had sprung up throughout the Midwest
during the post-war working-class upsurge.
In the 1950s, Hayden and Esther returned to San
Francisco. At the end of the decade, however, the SWP asked Hayden to come
to New York City in order to set up a print shop. Together with Bob Chester,
a SWP leader from Philadelphia, Hayden was able to accomplish the task-allowing
the party to print its own books for the first time.
This was a significant aid to the Trotskyist movement
when, in the 1960s, a new generation began to seek out revolutionary literature.
During that period, Hayden and Esther returned to the West Coast.
Despite their activity and commitment, however,
both Hayden and Esther were summarily expelled from the SWP at the end of
1983 in a political purge organized by the clique around Jack Barnes, which
had taken control of the party.
Hayden and Esther soon joined Socialist Action,
which was formed by Socialist Workers Party members who had also been purged
from the party and who adhered to the SWP's historic revolutionary program.
Hayden was involved with many aspects of producing
Socialist Action newspaper; he wrote for the paper, proof-read it, and then
sold it on the streets. As a journalist, Hayden had a knack of being able
to write on current issues in a highly engaging and popular manner.
Ten of Hayden's Socialist Action articles from
the late 1980s are collected in the pamphlet, "Everyday Life in Capitalist
America" (Walnut Publishers, 1996). The articles-concerning health
care, education, homelessness, civil rights, and other topics-show the broad
range of his interests.
In 1985, Hayden and Esther moved to England. Hayden
hoped that, as a British subject who had retired from his job, he might
receive some of the benefits of the country's (admittedly decayed) social
welfare and health care system.
On a trip to England, I visited them in the flat
they had rented far in the outskirts of London. They had just gone through
an unusually cold and dreary winter, which had made it difficult to travel
into the city very often. Hayden felt isolated from political activity-and
Esther had become ill.
After the better part of a year in Britain, they
returned to California. Esther largely recuperated, but dropped out of political
activity. She died in 1994.
Around that time, Hayden also dropped from membership
in Socialist Action, expressing political differences with the majority.
But he was entirely non-sectarian and continued to write articles for Socialist
Action newspaper and to attend our activities as well as those of other
left groups. Three years ago, he joined Solidarity.
The last time I spoke with Hayden, at a Mumia demonstration
in San Francisco, he told me that he was planning to write a letter to Socialist
Action-and I should look out for it. But he evidently didn't have the time.
Hayden was such an active member of the Bay Area
political scene that, for me, it has not quite sunk in yet that he's gone.
He will be deeply missed.
Socialist Action /September 2000 |