Helen Keller. symbol of courage -and socialism

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Speakers from the WSL, and TILC sections "onway Hall, Red Lion Squarę, London, WC1 World War I: American troops leave for Europe "I am no worshipper of cloth of any colour but I love the red flag and what it symbolises to me and other Socialists. I have a red flag hanging in my study"

Many people know that Helen Keller overcame the terrible experience of being both blind and deaf (and therefore dumb) and in doing so became a symbol of human courage and determination.

What most do not know, however, is that for an impor tant part of her life she was an active socialist. We are taking advantage of the 100th anniversary of her birth, June 27 1880, to redress this balance and at the same time to pay tribute to a life which has been an inspiration to many millions of people-whether handicapped or not.

After only 19 months of normal life Helen Keller fell ill and never heard or saw anything again.

Cut off

For the next five years she grew totally cut off from people around her, unable to make any intelligent contact.

Luckily for Helen her family was not poor and acting on the advice of Alexander Graham Bell-the inventor of the telephone-her parents wrote to the Perkins Institute, the famous training school for the blind in Boston, asking about the possibility of a teacher for their daughter.

The story of how Anne Sullivan turned Helen from little more than a savage into a highly educated, cultured woman has been shown britliantly in the film The Miracle Worker' The most memorable scene shows Anne Sullivan pouring water over Helen's hands and then using the manual alphabet spelling out the word water into her palm. This process carried out over and over again made the initial breakthrough.

Graduated

From there Helen went on to learn to read and write and then after further special education to speak.

All this was accomplished by the age of 10 and this remarkable woman went on to learn German, Latin, Greek and French becoming a world celebrity in the process and at the age of 24 graduated with honours Helen Keller from Radcliffe College.

It was in 1908 that Helen TILLU read H.G. Wells' 'New Worlds for Old' and turned her attention towards socialism. She joined the Socialist Party in 1909.

Her struggle against personal blindness and deatness had brought her endless flattering remarks and tributes in the capitalist press. Here, after all, was a good example of how the spirit of the individual could conquer all, how the ethic of individualism so beloved of the capitalists could be shown to be the dynamic, vital force in life.

When, however, Helen Tickèts attacked what she called 'industrial blindness and social deafness' the capitalist press howled in dismay. They accused Anne Sullivan's husband John Macy of manipulating Helen and the socialist movement of cynically using her for its own ends. Helen herself was, of course, 'confused' and 'easily led' Devastating She was able to reply devastating manner:

"I like newspapermen. I have known many, and two or three editors have been among my most intimate friends.

•. newspapers have of great assistance in the which we have been trying for the blind. It costs nothing to give their aid to been work to do them work for the blind and to other superficial charities. But socialism, ah, that is a different matter. That goes to the root of all poverty and all charity. The money power behind the newspapers is against socialism and the editors, obedient to the hand that feeds them will go to any length to put down socialism and undermine the influence of socialists.

The Brooklyn Eagle says • .. that Helen Keller's "mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development" . Some years ago I met. ... (the) editor of the Brooklyn Eagle... At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that 1 am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must (Why I Became a Socialist)

Because of her own handicaps she was able to bring out more sharply the social causes of blindness and deafness. In articles and speeches she denounced the profit hungry system which condemned millions to lives of poverty and disease:

Wobblies Helen Keller was no milk and water socialist. She opposed the First World War and in the battles between the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World and the reformist wing of the Socialist Party she sided with the former, saying, in 1916, that "I became an IWW because I found that the Socialist Party was too slow. It is sinking in the political bog"

Russian Revolution She was an enthusiastic supporter of the Russian Revolution and involved herself in the battles against the blockade of the young workers' state.

With the decline of the IW in the early 1920s Helen Keller's socialist writing becomes much less sharp and increasingly mixed in with religion. She was, of course, well into her forties by that time.

A recent radio programme about her life managed to spend only 30 to 60 seconds of its 50 minutes referring to her socialist views which, it simply said, she retained for the rest of her life.

Indeed she was one of those who did not collapse before McCarthyism and in 1957 sent a message of encouragement to veteran CP member Elizabeth Gurley Flynn who was in jail for her political views.

Helen Keller died in 1968 aged 88. Readers of Socialist Press who wish to look further into this side of her life should read "Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years"-writings and speeches edited by Philip S. Foner and published by International Publishers, New York from which the material for this article has been drawn.

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Wednesday

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have shrunk in intelligence ... Surely it is his turn to blush":'