Comrade Richard Mason has passed away after a lifetime in the communist movement. Richard joined the CPGB-ML in December 2007 after leaving the CPB, which he had joined following the collapse of the CPGB in 1991.
Richard had joined the old communist party back in the 1950s after attending a lecture given by the then General Secretary of the party Harry Pollitt in south-east England, where Richard had moved following the end of the second world war.
After spending much of his life in the south and later years in Yeovil, Somerset, Richard moved to the West Midlands – first to Stratford-Upon-Avon and later to a retirement home in Shipston-on-Stour in south Warwickshire.
But Richard hadn’t been in Shipston five minutes when, in 2007, workers at pressure gauge makers Norgren voted overwhelmingly for strike action in the face of the plant closure. Some 164 workers came out on strike, led by their union Amicus, and Richard was busy in Shipston promoting the cause of the workers and fighting the closure.
Like all good communists, Richard was a true internationalist. Saddened though he was by the treachery of the revisionist leadership of the CPSU(B) and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, he continued to see the revolutionary potential latent in the national-liberation struggle of the Palestinians, and was a declared enemy of the racist zionist state of Israel.
When Hizbollah inflicted their crushing defeat upon the Israeli fascists, Richard was elated. He was also a firm supporter of the DPR Korea and of socialist Cuba.
Comrade Richard was a firm supporter of Proletarian, and he was happy to see the growth and success of the CPGB-ML in his final years.
