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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine,   Ross Dowson - Obituary﻿</title>﻿

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﻿<center﻿>﻿

﻿<b﻿>﻿  Ross Dowson

﻿<br﻿>﻿</b>﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿


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by Ken Hiebert﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, April - May 2002﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿</center>﻿


  The name of Ross Dowson will be known to few readers of New 

Socialist.

In 1988, after

  more than fifty years of political activity, he was immobilised by a

stroke. But to an earlier

  generation he loomed large.  And the stories I can tell about him I

got second-hand from

  others who had been influenced by him.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

  I have a picture of Ross at the age of eighteen, in 1936, in High

Park, Toronto, with a group

  of young Trotskyists. Within a few years he had emerged as a central

activist in the group,

  determined to overcome whatever obstacles he met. For example, during

World War II,

  when the group was prevented from publishing a newspaper, Ross would

print leaflets, go

  to the top of a high building, and fling them into the street.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

  In 1956 the Communist Party was thrown into turmoil by the

denunciation of the late Joseph

  Stalin by Khrushchev, the premier of the Soviet Union. Ross went to a

large CP meeting and

  challenged the CP leader, Tim Buck, to a public debate.  Buck 

accepted

the challenge, but

  later backed out.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

  It would take an act of imagination, maybe a novel or a movie, to

recreate a time when those

  who opposed capitalism were regarded by many as dangerous and evil.

Among those who

  opposed capitalism, the minority who rejected Stalinism were reviled

as "Trotskyites."

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

  Ross's confidence in his ideas and his willingness to boldly proclaim

them made him the

  ideal person to keep a small isolated group turned outward, not

retreating into a comfortable

  circle.  In my experience it sometimes made conversations with him

seem like a dialogue

  with a steamroller.  And I remember with a smile convoluted sentences

he wrote as he

  struggled to fit the full Trotskyist analysis into a small newspaper.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

  I believe the anti-capitalist movement of today would be weaker and

smaller without the

  decades of work that Ross contributed. Those who remember Ross fondly

must thank his

  sister, Lois Bedard, for her years of care.


﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿


﻿<font﻿ ﻿size="1"﻿>﻿  Ken Hiebert is a member of the New Socialist Group in Vancouver.﻿</font>﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿


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