OUR FRIEND SHERRY, OUR COMRADE PATRICE.
Almost ane year from the date of publication of this magazine, Sherry Mangan (Patrice), former editor of the Fourth International, We publish below a tribute to his memory by Michel Pablo, written while in the Amsterdam
Sherry Mangan, whom we have known and loved in movement under his party-name of Patrice, has just passed away.
I received the neus as a heart-felt blow at the saddest hour, at sunset, in my cell, by a short letter from a comrade of the I.S. in which he wrote. "The conditions of his death were painful enough, even is he did not suffer, ПНП for it is most probable that he died in his sleep. A group of our Roman comrades and friends, including myself, accompanied him on the 3rd July to the English cemetery, here in Rome, where we laid him on his grave a wreath of red flowers in the name of all the comrades and triends of our movement".
I shall wait to hear what were those "painful conditions". Revolutionaries who like Sherry Mangan abandon at the time of their fullest success, their class and privileges, to devote themselves entirely to the workers' move. ment, often know, among others, the painful conditions which precede their end.
In the implacable struggle which particularly we revolutionary marxist militants, we Trotskyists fight against the capitalist regime and the bureaucracy which has usurped workers' power, our position is often amongst the most painful.
22223
The State and bureaucratic apparatuses are hunting us, and from everywhere pressures are put upon us, to make our independence of judgement submit and oblige us to fall into line with the "reasonable revolutionaries". ·262
The most handicapped among are the militants of For this reason, a number of them succumb under the pressure of the enemy, and either are broken or reintegrate with the fold they had momentarily deserted, abandoning any ideas of any new revolt.
But those who persevered until the end, as did Sherry found intelligence, which saves them from succumbing.
Sherry Mangan came from a bourgeois family in Boston. An anly and favourite son, particularly of his father, listinguished doctor in this aristocratic, puritan and intel lectual town, he received a refined education, which he followed through to the university level.
Very soon Sherry Mangan devoted himself with success to literature and big journalism.
I am not competent to speak of his literary work as a youth. I know however that he wrote some were judged remarkable and that he possessed a very vast knowledge of language and literary and general culture. Sherry Mangan came to our movement on the eve of the last war, when he was a well-known journalist contributing to publications as important as the periodical "Fortune" in the United States.
He was in Paris when it was taken by Nasi troops in 1940.
Of these events of the first period of the Nazi Occupa tion of Paris he gave a vivid description in his articles published in the press of the SWP, the American Trotsky. ist organisation of which he was a member. war he remained a long time in Latin America still as a journalist, helping to his utmost the Trotskyist movement in these countries.
He was one of the first comrades from outside Europe with whom the European Secretariat made contact with after the entry of allied troops into Paris in August, 1944. Sherry Mangan wore the uniform of an officer of the American Army and was correspondent of "Fortune" for the whole of Europe.
In this double role he possessed important means which he put at the disposal of our movement. It was for instance thus that I personally could carry out with him a memorable voyage to Greece in 1945, solidly installed the ferocious dictatorial regime which that
The aim was to attend the Unification Congress of Greek Trotskyists. We travelled with Sherry Mangan, accompanied by his wife, in a little Greek boat which, for days and days, cautiously felt its way through the waters of the Mediterranean which were sown with mines, before reaching Piraeus after having rounded the Pelopponese.
I accompanied Sherry as his secretary, so as to avoid possible difficulties with the Greek police.
The Congress of Unification was held there on a barren mountain near Athens. Adequate guards were placed to watch the approaches for we feared the incursions of the police, who were already on the hunt for "communists". 1 remember the admirable endurance of Sherry, little used to this strenous mountain -climbing and hard walking in full summer to the Conference, and to the very uncomfort. able conditions in which it was held.
Then we left Greece together, in a military plane put at his disposal and which stopped in Rome. Thanks to the protection of his American officer's uniform and to his position as Fortune's correspondent, our revolutionary work benefited by unusual facilities, and we often laughed toge ther about them. I profited greatly by it in Italy where I was able to make contact at that time with our militants in that country.
Many of us remember the attitude of Sherry when the French Police arrested all the participants of our first International Congress after the war, in Paris in April, 1946. For fear of having any dealings with the French Stalinists who were at that time very. powerful, and who had influential men among the police looking for collaborators, we held this conference in a clandestine manner, in a firstfloor room in a café near the Porte de St. Denis.
The Conference, which was attended by a good number of English, Irish, American, Belgian, Dutch, French, man, Italian, Spanish, Swiss, Greek and Vietnamese delegates ind others, had just started when armed police and sol diers burst in. I rushed over to Patrice, pseudonym thai Sherry had already adopted for his new career as militant in our European and International movement, and had just time to whisper in his ear that he should put all the documents spread over the tables into his brief-case and should refuse by all means to give them to the police, no matter what pressure was put on him, using thoroughly his position as an American and as a journalist.
Patrice, with great calm and application, followed this advice. When the police took us to the police station, before taking us to the Palais de Justice. the documents of the Congress were well guarded in Patrice's brief-case which he held firmly to himself.
To the Commissaire de police who demanded that the brief-case should be examined, Patrice replied calmly that he should not forget his position as an American and as a journalist and asked that he be put in contact immediot.
with his Ambassador. The effect of this attitude, as I had thought, was like a clap of thunder. Monsieur le
Commissaire began a rapid retreat and spoke no more of the briefcase. No one at this period could touch the impunity of an American without fear of the consequences, even in Paris, dominated by the unnatural alliance of the Gaullist and Stalinist Resistance.
At the Palais de Justice we were locked up in a room on the ground-floor guarded by armed gendarmes. We passed there a memorable night, during which, following my proposal, we continued our conference, finishing it in the early hours of the morning by singing the Interna. tionale. Our guards had played cards continuously, having understood absolutely nothing of the whisperings between he members of this strange band of "meteques (outland. ers). They only expressed some surprise at our morning song and at (according to them) the strange fervour which at this moment appeared on our faces.
Patrice had already been liberated during the night and had gone with his precious brief-case which was victoriously kept from examination by the police at the Palais de Justice. We were liberated early in the morning of the next day, the police having at last discovered that it was a Trotskyist Conference and not a gang of mysterious plotters.
It is to comrade Patrice that we owe the Statutes of our International, voted at the Second World Congress in 1948.
This cosmopolitan man, who travelled over a great part of the world, who knew at first hand the stupidity of any national particularism in the field of culture and of any feeling of superiority; who knew how to discover and love in each country the mark of civilization in whatever domain, from art to gastronomy; this man had the passion of the International.
He began and ended his militant life in the workers' movement, the Trotskyist movement in particular as a devoted and faithful adherant of the International.
From his social origin and education, he had early acquired habits of order, of extreme seriousness in the accomplishment of his work. In our movement he knew how to maintain and develop these qualities and set an almost unique example in the scrupulous execution of practical tasks, which one would easily tend to call sometimes unpleasant. He hated organically negligence, the attitude of "letting things go", and irresponsibility in executing tasks.
His punctuality in appointments, his extreme interest and seriousness in the work of translation, correction, editing of texts and publications of the International; his perseverence in carrying out in due time and in the best possible way any practical task he undertook; his strict observance of organisational rules had made him an example in the leading bodies of our movement in which he early took his place.
It is to comrade Patrice that we owe excellent oral translations at several of our Congresses, IEC and IS meetings, and also the English written translations of a large number of documents of the International.
This man who since his childhood had known great material comfort and who, if he had remained loyal to his class, would have continued to the end in a career full of all sorts of facilities and privileges, had calmly subordinated everything to his life as a militant, accepting will. ngly all the adversities and all the sacrifices which foll. wed his choice.
From the beginning of the intensification of the Cold War and the rise in the United States of the Macarthy spirit of witch-hunting and anti-communist persecution, the journalistic career or Sherry Mangan began to fatally decline.
Known for his non-conformist opinions, he saw himself more and more put aside, to the extent that he was oblig. ed to safeguard his dignity and independence by living for some years in Bolivia and since 1954 again in Europe, lio. ing by translating literary works for American periodicals and publishing houses.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
His last years were, in more ways than one, painful ones.
In addition to the sudden deterioration of his material situation, he lost his wife, and suffered from the con sequences of his own heart illness, which grew more and more acute.
Remaining practically alone, ill, without resources, he found renewed comfort and supreme meaning to life, devoting himself still more totally to the movement.
From this point of view, the last years of Sherry Mar. gun were equally, in more than one respect, full of heroism and nobility. He knew how to organise on the basis of his new restricted precarious means of living a disciplined and dignified life devoted to the service of the movement.
Let me give some examples: it was our comrade who ensured alone over a long period the roneoed editions in several thousand copies of one of the main clandestine pub lications of the FLN in France.
Living quietly in a country. house, he waited for the night, so as to avoid the indiscretion of inopportune visitors by day, to operate his electric roneoing machine, roneoing, collecting, stapling this publication alone, loading it into the car put at his disposal, and delivering it into the middle of Paris.
He worked in these conditions without interruption, sev eral nights consecutively in an ill-heated place, damp and cold, in winter, always keeping the very strict timetable for this work, always present the day, the hour, the minute fixed for his appointments in Paris.
It was our comrade Patrice who assured, practically alone, the publication of our theoretical review in English, in Amsterdam.
He translated alone, almost totally its content, from French ei Spanish. He corrected the proofs with extreme care and watched the work in the print-shop until the moment of the issue of the last page.
He waited still to see the copy bound, complete, before going back to Paris, where he lived until Autumn 1960.
He devoted to this work, of which he was one of the first to understand its extreme importance for our move ment, innumerable hours, without caring for his health, which did not cease to deteriorate seriously.
In reality, he only lived by his will, stretched to the extreme. I remember the last trip we made together from Amsterdam to Paris in his car. He had just finished one more number of the review and was both infinitely tired and infinitely pleased.
Without waiting to rest, he decided to go back to Paris without stopping, driving as well in the night, in order not to miss an important appointment which he had the day aom Brussels, after nightfall, a dense fog slowed our progress and made it extremely dangerous to drive on.
Patrice was obliged to drive with his head out of the window, to be able to see sufficiently the turning of the road, but never thought of giving up. So we painfully drove on for hours and hours into the night, but at dawn the appointment in Paris was assured.
In his own way this good-living bourgeois of old, who was a man who had achieved success, and went happily, welcomed in all the capitals of the Americas, of Europe and in many cities throughout the entire world, evolved through his own strength of will and conscierce into a true Bolshevik.
It pleases me to know that he rests in the English cemetery in Rome. Sherry certainly would have loved this hot, pleasant and mild earth which charmed Shelley and in which Keats sleeps his last sleep.
These poets were very familiar and dear to him.
The young militants of our Italian movement will not fail to attend each year the grave of Patrice, as we will not fail to perpetuate his memory in our International Movement.
MICHEL PABLO