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Vol. 81/No. 13 April 3, 2017
Anne Morrow: 20-year cadre of the Socialist
Workers Party
BY ERIC SIMPSON
OAKLAND, Calif. — From the time Anne Morrow joined the Socialist Workers
Party in San Francisco in 1991, she committed herself to doing
everything she could to build the party, Joel Britton, a leader of the
SWP here, told the 41 people who came to celebrate her life and
political contributions March 12. Morrow died Feb. 27 at the age of 93.
“She joined a party of industrial workers determined to build the kind
of party necessary to lead the working class to power,” Britton said.
“Anne’s road to her two decades of active participation in revolutionary
party building was a long one, with numerous obstacles to overcome along
the way.”
In 1946 Anne and her husband Bill joined the Communist Party, a
Stalinist party that claimed continuity with the 1917 Russian
Revolution, but in fact subordinated the interests of workers to the
needs of the Soviet rulers in Moscow.
During her time in the CP, Anne Morrow worked for a year on a General
Electric assembly line. This was during what’s come to be known as the
McCarthyite witch-hunt, when the CP, SWP and other working-class groups
came under government attack.
After years of assignments to work in various liberal causes and facing
harassment from the FBI, Anne and Bill Morrow decided to break ties with
the CP.
In 1960 the Morrows were inspired by the courageous example of young
people in Greensboro, North Carolina, sitting in to desegregate
Woolworth’s lunch counters. They teamed up with a Black neighboring
family in Fulton, Missouri, and with their children desegregated
Woolworth’s lunch counter.
Anne and Bill were introduced to the Socialist Workers Party in the
early 1970s by their children Dave and Sally, who were being won to the
Young Socialist Alliance, the youth organization of the SWP.
Anne and Bill had kept their past affiliation with the CP a secret from
their children. Over time, the parents were won over and Bill Morrow
joined the SWP in Milwaukee shortly before his death in 1983. Anne
Morrow became a supporter of the SWP and then joined at the age of 67 in
San Francisco.
During the 1990s she threw herself into the work of the SWP which
included building opposition to U.S. imperialism’s brutal war in Iraq,
supporting the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and helping to
organize speaking tours for young leaders of the Cuban Revolution. She
was a regular participant in plant gate sales of the Militant, including
at the Chevron refinery in Richmond.
Deborah Liatos, organizer of the SWP branch in Los Angeles, explained
that Morrow was part of the party’s efforts to build support for miners
on strike at the Co-Op mine near Huntington, Utah, when four of them
came on tour to the Bay Area in 2004.
The miners, almost all originally from Mexico, were fired by Co-Op’s
bosses for protesting unsafe working conditions and organizing to join
the United Mine Workers of America. They spoke to hundreds of unionists
in the Bay Area and raised thousands of dollars to help keep the strike
going.
“A key lesson of this fight is that divisions the bosses try to create
between the mostly native-born coal miners in Utah and Mexican-born coal
miners quickly dissolved during the fight,” Liatos said.
“This fight also helped us see more clearly why the fight for amnesty
for undocumented workers, and against raids and deportations, is key for
today,” Liatos said. “Why it’s central to overcoming the divisions the
bosses and their government try to create and strengthening the workers’
movement.”
“I found Anne to be disciplined, professional, competent in any
responsibility she assumed,” said Barbara Bowman, who worked with Morrow
in the San Francisco branch of the party and chaired the meeting, as she
welcomed participants, including Morrow’s family members. “Anne was
tough, she was no push over. She was hard on herself and expected the
same proletarian functioning of her comrades.”
“I came to understand that Anne’s attention to detail was a tribute to
the respect she had for the serious work of the party and its cadre,”
she said.
Bowman read from some of the messages sent to the meeting by those who
had worked with Morrow.
“Anne understood that an organized campaign office was a reflection on
the party and its political seriousness, and Anne was very convinced
about the necessity of building a revolutionary party,” wrote Dennis
Richter, a leader of the party in Los Angeles and its recent candidate
for mayor. “A socialist revolution will not occur in the U.S. without a
party built of many more cadre like Anne, for whom the party is the
‘apple of their eye.’”
Although Morrow relinquished her membership in 2011 for health
considerations, she remained a loyal party supporter, making regular
financial contributions. She continued to follow the party’s activity
closely and greeted with enthusiasm the publication of new Pathfinder
books.
Before and after the meeting, participants pored over a photo display
highlighting Morrow’s political activity and that of the SWP. And they
contributed more than $1,500 to further the work of the party.
Betsey Stone contributed to this article.
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