BY HAL GRIFFIN

raipsing around the gravel paths

of an old, heavily overgrown ceme-

tery would seem to have little appeal as
a family outing on a Sunday afternoon. Yet
London’s Highgate Cemetery when I visited
it was thronged by people. Young parents
pushed infants in strollers and tourists clut-
ching maps sought out the graves of the
famous — John Galsworthy, the novelist;
Sir Edwin Landseer, the painter, Sir
Rowland Hill, who established the universal
penny post; Gabrielle Rossetti, the poet, and
members of her family; George Eliot, the
novelist; and Robert Kemp Philp, the Char-
tist leader, buried in an unmarked grave.

Most of the people, however, were headed
for the most famous grave of all, that of Karl
Marx. More than halfa century ago, asacub
reporter on the Finchley Press, I occasional-
ly ate my lunch by the original grave, little
knowing who Marx was and yet impelled to
find out because so many people came to the
out-of-the-way spot.

The original grave is still there, marked by
a worn marble slab, and it is stillan out of the
way spot accessible by a narrow plank path
through the bushes. The new grave, with its
massive bronze head by Laurence Bradshaw
atop a granite plinth, is on a main path.
There the remains of Karl Marx, his wife
Jenny, his grandson Harry Longuet, Helen
Demuth, ‘‘the faithful Lenchen,”’ as well as
the ashes of his daughter Eleanor, were
reburied in 1954.

In his reminiscences of Karl . Marx,
published in 1896, William Liebknecht, one
of the founders of German Social
Democracy, wrote that ‘‘millions think with
thankfulness and veneration of the man who
rests in this cemetery in the north of
London.”

The hundreds of people who came and
went during the time I was there talking to
Bill Fairman, founder of the Friends of
Highgate Cemetery, attested to what in
Liebknecht’s time was already a fact. One
after another, various groups of tourists
solemnly arranged themselves before the
memorial to be photographed — a large
group from Japan, others from India and
Nigeria, a small group from Liechtenstein —
while individuals patiently waited for an op-
portunity to photograph the memorial itself.

Across from the memorial and a little far-
ther down the path was a new grave heaped
with flowers. Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, chairman
of the central committee of the Communist
Party of South Africa, who died in exile at
the age of 74, had been buried the previous
day, and it was while I was examining the
tributes to him from all parts of the world
that I met Fairman.

““Dr. Dadoo always wanted to be buried
close to Marx,’’ he explained, ‘‘and it was a
right he had earned.”’

Then he was relating the circumstances
that led to formation of the Friends of
Highgate Cemetery, which now has
members in 28 countries.

There are two cemeteries, the older
Western Cemetery and the Eastern
Cemetery or New Ground in which Marx is
buried, and both are privately owned.

“In 1969 I found out that the company
had laid off its workers and planned to close
the cemetery to the public, claiming that it
couldn’t justify the maintenance,”’ he said.

“I got busy immediately because there
was So little time. The upshot of our cam-
paign was that we reached agreement with
the company for continuing maintenance
and restoration for which we would raise the
money. The Western Cemetery is only open-
ed three or four times a year — today is one
of those openings — but the Eastern
Cemetery is open the year round. Most peo-
ple want to see Marx’ grave and we insisted
that it be accessible.

An energetic little man who continually
interrupted his story to give people direc-
tions, Fairman observed philosophically, ‘I
undertook this because it was an emergency.
That was 14 years ago. I’m 79 now and I
keep telling them they should find a younger
person. But as you see, I’m still here.”’

As we parted, he handed mea folder, Karl
Marx in Camden, published by the London
Borough of Camden to mark the centenary
of Marx’ death on March 14, 1883.

A century later, while millions acclaim
him in the socialist countries that are the liv-

FEATURES

The monument to Karl Marxwhich marks his grave in Highgate Cemetery, London.

Memories of Karl
Marx live on as
British glory fades

ing embodiment of his theories, the

idelogical successors to the political oppor-

tunists and bourgeois economists he com-
batted in his own day deny the relevance of
his theories to our time and invent new
slanders against socialism.

As Marx himself wrote in his report to the
Hague Congress of the International Work-
ingmen’s Association in 1872, referring to
the slander campaign launched against the
International:

“This campaign of calumny does not
possess its match in history, so truly interna-
tional is the scene on which it is enacted, and
so complete is the agreement with which the
most various party organs of the ruling
classes conduct it.

‘After the great fire in Chicago, the news
was sent round the world by telegram that
the fire was the hellish act of the Interna-
tional, and indeed it is to be wondered at that
the hurricane which devastated the West In-
dies was not likewise attributed to this same
satanic influence.”’

The course of events in Britain, where
Marx spent the last half of his life in exile,
bears out the validity of his theories. During
his lifetime, Britain was nearing the zenith of
its imperial power. London is still a great
financial and commercial centre, but all that
remains of the imperial power are the trap-
pings of past greatness, honored by tradition
and maintained as a tourist attraction, and
the emotional appeal of history.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher evok-
ed this appeal, raising jingoism and
chauvinism to a shrill crescendo to win a
costly victory in the Falkland Islands. And
though she exploited this victory to win re-
election, it still was not enough to prevent the
decline of the Conservative popular vote.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—DECEMBER 21, 1983—Page 10

Now the bills for securing British
sovereignty over the islands, an estimated $2
billion a year, are being presented to tax-
payers and the real cost of Britain’s last im-
perial gesture is apparent.

If recapture of the Falklands fleetingly
restored faded glories for Tory voters, the
Reagan administration’s invasion of
Grenada has destroyed them. Grenada was a
former British colony and still part of the
Commonwealth. The U.S. military action,
“theroic’’ as it may be to Reagan, trampled
on the pride of middle class Tories and
outraged many in government circles whose
contempt for U.S. diplomacy is never far
from the surface.

Overshadowing all this is the stationing of
U.S. nuclear missiles in Britain under sole
U.S.. control which is arousing even more
determined demonstrations against them.
Whether the bases are U.S. or British,
awareness of the consequences of nuclear
war is as great in Britain as in West Ger-
many.

At Lossiemouth in northeast Scotland,

the jet fighters come in low over the surroun-
ding fields where the cows continue grazing
unperturbed. But if the cows have become
accustomed to the jets, the people have not,
and a gallant little band from the Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament keeps vigil at the
gate of the base to remind them that the
ultimate purpose of nuclear weapons is
nuclear war.

“‘We’ve become an occupied country,”
and old friend of mine, a lifelong Tory,
observed when I visited him. ‘‘Thatcher can

~ say what she will about consultation with

allies. The fact is that the Americans hold the
key and we don’t have the power to stop
them from using it.’’

, imposed on British Columbia by the Social |
Credit government and the real objective of ~

Brian Mulroney and his Conservatives
should ‘they form the next federal govern- 7

as

" around 3.5 million, is generally estimated to j

quences of the restraint policies now being

ment.

In his monumental work Capital, Marx —
bared the causes of the cyclical crisis of the ~
capitalist system and their consequences in ©
mass unemployment and reduced living

standards.

Restraint is the coy term coined by right ~
wing politicians who prefer to call the

depression a recession in their attempt to win
acceptance of big business’ classical

response to economic crisis — plant closures |
and layoffs to create mass unemployment, ~

cuts in social services, attacks on trade union
rights and demands for wage cuts and
rollbacks, the better to facilitate the payment
of huge subsidies to monopoly corporations

and handing over public enterprises through

privatization. -
Unemployment in Britain, officially

be well over four million. Education has

been severely cut, except for theelitist private
schools — 23,000 teaching posts have been |
eliminated in the past three years and 38,000 —
qualified teachers are unemployed. While |

the Thatcher government claims that its

latest cut of 8,000 National Health Service |

workers, including doctors and nurses, con-

stitutes only one percent of those employed, 4
the ensuing public outcry illustrates alarm 7.

over deteriorating health services.
Yet in London nurses’ salaries are so low

and rents so high that many arecompelledto |
spend half their earnings for a single room 4

with a hot plate.

At the same time that the Thatcher
government was announcing its latest health —
cuts, the Reagan administration was repor- |
ting its intention to sell Britain $600:million —
worth of rocket launchers and conventional —

rockets.

All this makes people wonder whose 4

security is being defended.

In the deteriorating inner cities where 7 |
blacks constitute a disproportionate number ~~
of the unemployed, and in the seemingly |

prosperous: countryside where more and

more of the farmland is passing under cor- ~ | ‘
porate ownership, political changes, decades

in the making, are becoming evident.
Thatcher’s popularity is waning. The
Liberals, who gained while their Social

Democratic allies lost seats in the last elec- —

tions, sense their opportunities to win disaf-
fected Conservative voters. But while they
reaffirmed their electoral alliance with the
Social Democrats at their recent convention,

there was strong opposition to any merger
from traditionalists who see their greatest —

Strength in some 2,000 municipal : seats

throughout the country held by Liberals.
The Labor Party is in ferment. It has lost

some of its right wing MPs to the Social

Democrats, particularly those who did not

expect to win renomination to their consti-
tuencies, but the right wing is still dominant.
Now, however, as the depression deepens
and the prospect of any real recovery re-
mains dim, there is growing challenge from

diverse left wing forces demanding new ‘

policies.

The same demand for new policies and

militant action faces the so-called moderate
unions leaders.

Thatcher is on record as voicing her
dismay that Britain has not shed its image as
a strike-prone country. But her
government’s new legislation allowing only
direct picketing under penalty of heavy fines

designed to drain union funds is not likely to —

improve that image.
Although the employment and organiza-

tion committee of the Trades Union Con-
gress voted 9-7 to support the National

Graphical Association’s call for a national
printer’s strike, opposition from TUC

secretary Len Murray forced them to sus-

pend the stoppage.

Murray contended that unions must stay
within the law because an illegal stoppage
might jeopardize the TUC.

If British labor refers to its own history, it

will show that had the London Times —

printers had gone to jail for their right to
strike in 1810, the printers would never have

been in the forefront of the mass movement a ‘
to abolish the notorious anti-combination

laws a century and a half ago.

Britain today demonstrates the conse--

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