Alan Hardman was the first printer of the Militant (the Socialist’s predecessor) and produced hundreds of political cartoons for publication in our party publications. Sadly, Alan passed away in January (see ‘Obituary: Alan Hardman 1936-2024 Militant cartoonist and printer’). A book, ‘Need Not Greed’, has been published of his cartoons and artwork and is available at 1854.photo/SocParty. Linda Taaffe, representing the Socialist Party, spoke at the book launch in London on 17 October. We print an edited extract of her speech:
I am pleased to be here as the representative of the Socialist Party, formerly the Militant, and in a venue that is not far from Cambridge Heath Road [where Militant had offices] where Alan not only installed the printing press, but actually helped to organise and carry out the building work.
The main point I want to emphasise in my contribution is that Alan was with the Socialist Party and its forerunner the Militant, heart-and-soul, from the very beginning of his political life. He was as strong in more recent times as he was earlier.
His cartoons were an outstanding feature of the [Socialist] newspaper. They were part and parcel of the paper, they added a powerful visual impact not only to the arguments and policies against greedy capitalism that we waged, but also against the mistaken ideas of the right wing, who are still with us today, and even some on the left where we have occasional arguments.
But each cartoon was not drawn up by an artist, in an artist’s attic, on his own. Alan was in the midst of campaigning at every level. Whatever was going on, Alan was part of that too.
The most important thing, which I want to emphasise, is that he yearned, he sought out political discussion about everything. If he had an idea for a cartoon, he wanted to discuss.
Alan points out in the foreword that one of the three things needed to be a good cartoonist is a strong political idea, which was Marxism and Trotskyism. He was ours down to his bootlaces and we were very proud of him, and he was very proud of us.
The chapter in the book on the miners’ strike shows Alan’s family connection with mining. Hundreds of miners were buying the Militant during the strike and beyond. Hundreds and hundreds were buying our paper and Alan’s cartoons.
There’s a saying “You only live once but you die twice, firstly when your body physically passes away, shuffles off the moral coil, but secondly when the last person utters your name for the very last time”. We’re confident that Alan’s name will be uttered by many thousands of young working-class fighters coming into struggle and his name and his socialist ideas will live on through this book of his drawings for a very long time.
The Socialist Party recommends ‘Need not Greed’, and will continue to work energetically in every way possible to turn society upside down. And to the workers, so graphically depicted in these drawings as downtrodden, oppressed, exploited and slaughtered in wars, we say: “We’ve got some scores to settle”, and that can only be done through the socialist revolution, Alan’s ultimate aim.