Ernie Tate

Ernie Tate (24 May 1934 – 5 February 2021) was a long-standing supporter and leading member of Trotskyist groups in Canada and the United Kingdom, and a founder in the 1960s of the International Marxist Group and Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in Britain.

Born on Shankill Road, in Belfast, Northern Ireland to an Ulster Protestant family, he received little formal education, leaving school at 14 to work at the Belfast Flour Mills as an apprentice machine attendant.

Though Protestant, he became sympathetic to Irish Republicanism after befriending a Catholic co-worker and began thinking of himself as a communist after being on holiday in Paris and encountering and being inspired by left-wing demonstrations celebrating the French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.

He worked in the mill until 1955, when he emigrated to Canada at the age of 21.

In 1960, he was charged with public vandalism after spraypainting "Ban the Bomb" on the side of a plywood and cement fallout shelter at Queen's Park. Unrepentant, he was fined $50. Healy's Socialist Labour League filed lawsuits against Peace News and Socialist Leader for repeating the allegations, threatening them with bankruptcy, prompting the two publications to issue retractions and a public apology. The incident resulted in Isaac Deutscher, who had previously been a contributor to Healy's publications, summoning both Healy and Tate to his home where he "upbraided" Healy for his alleged thuggery and broke off relations with him.

Tate was one of two members of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign organising committee for the demonstration against the Vietnam war in London in October 1968 who successfully opposed a proposal to halt the march in Whitehall, which would have caused unnecessary confrontation with the police and a degeneration into violence. He was thus instrumental in ensuring that the 200,000 participants passed through London peacefully, despite dire prognostications in the press and on television (who reported the march but also gave coverage to a simultaneous 5,000-strong violent counter-protest by Maoists attacking the United States Embassy). As a result, opposition to the war grew enormously in Britain at the same time as in the United States.

Tate was a founder of the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency in 1973. He returned to Canada in 1969.

Tate's first job in Canada was at Eaton's department store in Toronto which he quit after receiving his first paycheque for only $60. He went on to do factory work at Maple Leaf Milling, Radio Valve, and Amalgamated Electric. Returning to Canada, he was passed over for a paid position with the LSA, and instead found work as a stationary engineer with Canada Packers and became a union steward for the Packinghouse Workers Union. After reading the book, David Horowitz, who had known Tate in the 1960s when both men were anti-war activists, struck up a dialogue with him, but noted that their strong political differences barred any friendship.

He died from pancreatic cancer on 5 February 2021.