My friend Gwyn Jones, who has died aged 75, lived and breathed revolutionary politics, and was always restless for change.
Any news of an uprising somewhere in the world sent him into raptures, and he would be itching to become involved in any way he could. He went to live in Spain in the mid-1970s after the end of the Franco regime, supporting socialist causes there, and spent a number of years in post-Soviet Romania and Hungary on a similar mission.
Though his efforts were often unsuccessful, he developed around him a small band of people who felt the same way that he did. He was a sweet man and a flawed genius, but definitely a genius: he could gain complete mastery of any topic he chose to delve into, and his understanding of history and Marxism was a wonder to behold.
Gwyn was born in Llandudno, north Wales, to Berwyn Jones, a bank clerk, and his wife, Buddug (nee Willliams). He spent his early childhood in Conwy, north Wales, before moving with his family to Ellesmere in Shropshire, where he passed the 11-plus at nine and started his secondary education at Oswestry boys’ high school with pupils who were two years older.
Returning to Wales, he completed his schooling at Ysgol Friars, Bangor, and in 1968 began studying law at King’s College London. There he was quickly radicalised, joining a small revolutionary party, the International Marxist Group (IMG). After his degree he started an MA in industrial relations law at the University of Warwick in 1973, before dropping out to work as a labourer in the building trade, where he was active in the UCATT trade union and helped to build socialist politics among his fellow workers.
After Franco’s death in 1975, Gwyn became an English teacher at the Berlitz International School in València, forging links with trade unionists and students to try to promote a more leftwing transition from dictatorship. By 1978 he was in Turin, Italy, which at the time was a hotbed of labour struggles, once again teaching English while campaigning with socialist groups and unions.
Back in London in the 80s, and now a member of the Socialist Workers Party, he trained to be a computer programmer, working in that role for Trafalgar House group. In 1989, with revolutions taking place across eastern Europe, he resigned from his job and flew to Bucharest to join the street protests in Romania – at one stage climbing on top of a box in Palace Square to urge the people (with the help of a translator) to rely on their own power, resisting those who were trying to hijack their revolution.
He spent the next few years teaching English in Romania while carrying out political campaigning financed by friends in the UK. Later he adopted a similar model in Hungary, travelling back and forth to fundraise among SWP members.
By 1997 he was back full-time in the UK, working itinerantly in south-east London while still regarding himself as a full-time revolutionary. In his later years, having left the SWP, he became rather an isolated figure, but his enthusiasm for revolution and working-class politics never dimmed.
He is survived by his siblings, Ieuan and Lis.
