Mary Lou Montauk, 78 years a builder, supporter of the SWP

OAKLAND, Calif. — More than 50 people gathered here Jan. 21 to celebrate the life and political contributions of Mary Lou Montauk, a member and supporter of the Socialist Workers Party for 78 years. She died Jan. 5.

"Mary Lou stayed the course," SWP leader Betsey Stone told the gathering. "She was a cadre of the Socialist Workers Party, ready to do whatever was needed to strengthen the revolutionary party and the working class."

Born in 1930 in Minnesota, Montauk grew up during a time of labor battles and approaching war. Her father, Farrell Dobbs, was the central organizer of the Teamsters' 11-state over-the-road campaign in the Midwest and later served as national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party.

"We got a feeling of the solidarity, the power, the potential strength of the union movement" at large Teamster rallies, Montauk recalled about her childhood. 

During a buffet reception organized by party supporters, participants studied a panel display depicting her life, and read 18 messages to the meeting, including from the Communist Leagues in Australia and Canada. 

"Mary Lou had a serious approach to every party task, small or large, based on her understanding of the stakes in what the party is dedicated to — organizing the working class to take power out of the hands of the capitalists," Stone said.

Montauk lived through several internal struggles in the party, Sandler said.

In the mid-1950s, she was part of an important fight in the party. Under the pressures of the Cold War witch hunt that targeted union militants, and the retreat of the labor movement, Bert Cochran in Detroit and a layer around him recoiled from revolutionary activity. They aligned themselves with an international current that was convinced that the capitalist expansion would last for a long time. They lost confidence in the working class.

Montauk and other party members did the opposite, continuing to carry out revolutionary activity, taking part in union struggles, standing up to the witch hunters, joining the battle for Black rights and running SWP candidates. Just a few years later, Fidel Castro led workers and farmers in Cuba to make the first socialist revolution in the Americas.

Turn to the industrial unions

She was part of a second battle in the party in the early 1980s over the party's turn to the industrial unions. Developments in the class struggle, including the 1974-75 recession, the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, the Boston school desegregation fight and the Steelworkers Fight Back campaign for union democracy, marked a shift in consciousness of the working class that convinced the SWP it was now possible to carry out union-building work on a wide-ranging scale and organized to get a big majority of party members into the industrial unions. 

A layer of party members opposed this. Montauk defended the party and its turn to the industrial unions when some of her generation in the party abandoned them, Sandler said. During the early '80s she took part in the party-wide classes to systematically study the writings of V.I. Lenin, the central leader of the 1917 Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution. 

At the same time, revolutionary upsurges led to workers and farmers governments coming to power in Nicaragua and Grenada. Party members who recoiled from the turn also refused to recognize the importance of the revolutionary advances in Central America and the Caribbean. They split from the party in 1983. 

Montauk was deeply involved in the party's work to fight extradition of the H-Block 4, Irish freedom fighters who had escaped from prison in Northern Ireland and made their way to the Bay Area where they were arrested by the FBI. "Montauk had real standing among those fighters," Sandler said. "Their extradition order was dropped with the signing of the 1998 Good Friday accords.

"And the party helped link up fighters from different labor and social struggles," he said. "The party arranged for touring Puerto Rican independence fighters Rafael Cancel Miranda and Luis Rosa to meet Terry Kirby, one of the H-Block defendants fighting extradition." Sandler noted to applause the presence of Puerto Rican independence fighter Willie Rivera at the meeting. 

In 2003, as age and health challenges increased, Mary Lou Montauk settled in North Carolina, where her daughter, Juliette, resided. She decided to become a party supporter, helping to produce books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries. 

Over 30 copies of the just-released book, The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by SWP leaders Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark were bought by meeting participants. Sandler pointed to party members in the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union and in the rail unions who are part of struggles with fellow workers to push back against the employers' attacks on wages and working conditions and a growing willingness of workers to extend solidarity to other union fights. 

"Cadres like Mary Lou are essential to the continuity and stability of the communist movement," Sandler concluded. "She appreciated the different generations of the party and knew the human material that makes up the party consists of ordinary people who work at it over a lifetime."

A collection raised more than $4,000 for the SWP in honor of Montauk.

Source: https://themilitant.com/2023/02/04/mary-lou-montauk-78-years-a-builder-supporter-of-the-swp/