"Proud to Be Called a Marxist"

When the Young Socialists recommended their chairman, Andrew Bevan, then age 24, as the Labor Party's National Youth Officer back in 1976, the hue and cry was immediate. London's Daily Mirror was quick to call him "Red Andy" and "a dangerous representative of Trotskyist infiltration." The Times editorialized that Bevan was a "subversive element" and likened his appointment to "soldiers under siege being asked suddenly to accept the command of one of the enemy." An array of Labor stalwarts, including Michael Foot and then Prime Minister James Callaghan, objected to Bevan's selection.

Despite the protests, the young activist won the job by a 15-to-12 vote of the Labor Party national executive committee. Backing him were three mainstays of the party's radical wing: Tony Benn, Eric Heffer, and Labor M.P. Frank Allaun, a pacifist often suspected of pro-Moscow views. Bevan thus became chief Marxist proselytizer among the nation's youth. Says he: "I'm trying to convince young people to fight for real socialist policies where it counts. We have to transform the Labor Party."

A slender, dark-haired Welshman of considerable charm and directness, Bevan makes no secret of his ideological allegiances. "I'm proud to be called a Marxist," he says. "I do not consider being called a Communist an insult. Most people misunderstand Communism to most people Communism means Stalinism, and I reject that." He scornfully dismisses alarmed charges that he is some sort of subversive. I'm no infiltrator," he says. "We want to bring about an end to the mess that the capitalist system is in."

Bevan (no relation to postwar left-wing Laborite Aneurin Bevan) says his activism was partly inherited from a grandfather, who was a union official, and his father, who was an active Laborite. As a schoolboy, he learned that during economic slumps Wales seemed to be "the dumping ground of British capitalism." He says he simply "questioned" the way society was organized" and found an alternative in socialism.

Bevan zealously believes a democratic form of radical Marxism is possible in Britain. The '80s, he thinks, will be the "decade of the Big Option," meaning that Britons will have to decide "between Thatcherism and the radical socialist alternative." Indeed, if the Andy Bevans get their way, Britain's polarization may be just beginning.

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