Death of Joe Fitzgerald

The Newsletter, vol. 6 no. 243, 7 April 1962 · scan page 1

Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.

no Policy OE FITZGERALD, aged 35, Brodsworth miner, member of the National Committee of the Socialist Labour League, and editor of the rank-and-file paper 'The Miner', died in Doncaster Royal Infirmary on Friday, March 30.

He had been knocked down by a bus while on the way to work early that morning and he died from severe head injuries some four hours later. He leaves a widow, Mary, and a 16-year-old daughter, Kitty.

I first met Joe Fitzgerald four years ago at a political meeting in Doncaster. Joe was the first to arrive. Some time later, we asked him if he had been waiting for us long.

Joe replied: 'I've been waiting for you people to come along for ten years. This is the sort of movement for me.' And so Joe joined the Socialist Labour League and became our comrade. The word 'comrade' is bandied about too loosely in the Labour Party and the Communist Party. It should only really be used about a man who is 100 per cent with you, all the way.

That's how it was with Joe Fitzgerald. On the day he died, he was to have spoken to a group of young workers in Leeds about the 1926 General Strike and the struggles in the mines.

He had prepared for that as thoroughly as he did everything else. He chased around getting books and the day before his death he spent several hours, after doing his shift down the pit, in reading and making notes.

That was what struck all of us about Joe. Just as nothing was too big for him to tackle —like editing a national miners' paper—so nothing was too small for him to take seriously and to (Cont. page 3, col. 1)