John Percy, a central figure in the development of the Australian revolutionary socialist movement over the past half century, died on Wednesday 19 August in Sydney, after suffering a severe stroke on 20 July and another on 13 August.

Throughout his political life, John was a revolutionary party builder. “Party builder” was the highest praise he could bestow on another political activist.

Dot Tumney, a long-term member of the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), passed away on December 25. She had been diagnosed with terminal cancer a few weeks earlier.

We’re all here because we’re fed up with the rottenness of this capitalist society, fed up with the exploitation and inequality, the discrimination, the lies, the hypocrisy and the crassness. Young people here and around the world are the ones most likely to rebel: against the racism rampant in Australia under the Coalition’s Hansonite regime, against sexism, especially the aggressive push to get women back into the home as mothers and housewives; against war and militarism (John Howard wants to throw away $110 billion more in military spending), and against capitalism’s corporate tyranny.

Nick Origlass, a central figure in the history of the Trotskyist movement in Australia, died on May 17 at the age of 88 with more than 60 years of political activity on the side of the working class behind him.