John Rety 1930-2010

2008 interview with John talking about his early life and political development;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkcgwbzacIc&feature=related

yeah, he was a very nice bloke, this is sad news... I remember the Free Dom thing as well, I think we were both in the office that day.

Hi

John was always a source of incredible inspiration, full of fascinating stories...the day he tried to teach me the rudiments of Chinese Chess will long be remembered!
I work at the CNJ and want tow rite a fitting tribute - can you let any one who knew John to get in touch with me at [email protected]?

Thanks.

dan

I'm very saddened by John's death. I first met him outside a support meeting in Brighton for the activists who had disrupted Harold Wilson's reading of the lesson at a Brighton Methodist church in 1966 in protest against the Labour government's backing of American intervention in Vietnam( Nicolas Walter and Jim Radford got 2 months imprisonment for that). Later encounters were at the anarchist conference in Liverpool and outside premises occupied by Brighton squatters both in 1969 . More recently I regularly bumped into him in Kentish Town where he lived and I worked.
As another tribute says John always wore his heart on his sleeve. He could sometimes be exasperating but I think what he will finally be remembered for is the unconditional support (it's what's called solidarity) that he gave to so many in so many ways. One example of this was when Stuart Christie was arrested in connection with the bombing of the Bank of Bilbao in London ( no charges were ever brought against him) in 1969. John walked miles from Camden Town to Bow Street "on hearing of our arrest to help. With friends like that you can't go far wrong".( Edward Heath Made Me Angry, Stuart Christie).
Shit, I'll miss you you crazy old Magyar!

very brief obit. on my blog after receiving this sad news: www.omoopart5.blogspot.com. with deep sympathy to his family and friends. i'll miss you, man.

Obituary from the Telegraph

JH

Obituary from the Telegraph

When his widowed mother came to London in 1956 they had little contact after a while because she said she wanted to marry again and could not do so with a bearded son. After meeting Susan Johns, with whom he was to have a son and a daughter, Rety opened a furniture shop in Camden High Street, where he sold an Edwardian writing desk to an American who asked him to re-cover it in blue leather. She kept asking when it would be ready, explaining that she was writing on her knees in the meantime. But when he took it to her house, a man told him to "f--- off" and that the woman was dead. On returning home, Susan told him that the lady was the poet Sylvia Plath, and he had just met her husband Ted Hughes.

So now we know why Plath offed herself.

Has anyone read anything by Rety? Anything to recommend?

John Rety:

I remember John blowing up and popping brown paper bags on Whitehall, to protest the sonic booms of the Concorde airliner!