Frank Allaun pays tribute to a man of the highest principles.
As a socialist put it long ago: "Man's dearest possession is life, and since it is given to man to live but once, he must so live that dying he can say: I gave all my strength for the greatest cause in the world - the liberation of mankind."
That can truly be said about Ron Huzzard who died on 30th December at the age of 78 after a year-long illness.
Ron was the most effective leader that Labour Action for Peace has ever had. He helped build up the organisation to a powerful movement with thousands of supporters through the affiliation of Constituency Labour Parties and trade unions as well as individual members.
Ron was definitely Old Labour (or Real Labour as some of us would prefer to call it). He felt especially strongly about the American-UK bombing of Iraq. "It made me sick," he said, "that it was a Labour government which joined with Washington in these raids, contrary to the views of the United Nations." He charged that the raids strengthened rather than weakened support for Saddam in his own country.
Leaving school at 15, Ron Huzzard became an engineering draughtsman and, after night study, a chartered engineer. He was declared redundant by his employers when he was 59. For six years he held the position of Peace Secretary to the Society of Friends (the Quakers). During the Second World War he had joined the Labour Pacifist Fellowship, which later broadened its outlook and became Labour Action for Peace.
Ron played a lively part in the Association of Engineering and Shipbuilding Draughtsmen (now part of MSF). He was elected branch chairman of AESD and was sent regularly as their delegate to the union's annual conference. He is remembered by many members for the way he often managed to speak due to his persistence in standing up to catch the chair's eye. There he met Jim Mortimer, a national union official who became his lifelong friend and comrade. Mortimer, later appointed General Secretary of the Labour Party, told me that Ron played a bigger part than any other individual member in helping that union pursue a good peace policy.
The union put him on its panel of parliamentary candidates. He was selected by his Constituency Labour Party to stand in two seats, both Tory strongholds at that time. He was defeated in both contests, but in one of them only by 1,500 votes. Ron was also active in local government. For two periods covering 18 years he was a councillor on Bromley Borough Council and for some years leader of its education group.
This is the passing of a man who had the highest principles about peace and socialism and helping working people - which he lived up to throughout the years.
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