Obituary: 'A shining star' 'Am Taha (12 February 1916 - 24 November 2004): Trade unionist, political activist and writer , known to his friends as 'Am Taha, died on Wednesday, 24 November. He was buried in his home town of Beni Sueif. A private memorial service was held at 'Am Taha's home on Thursday, in Izbet Othman, Shubra Al-Khayma. On Friday, the Helwan-based Centre for Trade Union Services sponsored a public memorial at Omar Makram Mosque in downtown Cairo. More than 1000 people attended to pay tribute to 'Am Taha, among them distinguished lawyer Nabil Al-Hilali, secretary- general of the leftist Tagammu Party Hussein Abdel-Razeq, People's Assembly MP Mohamed Abdel-Aziz Shaaban, Shura Council MP Abdel-Rahman Khair, researcher with the Arabic Studies Centre Helmi Shaarawi, feminist researcher Nawla Darwish, trade unionist Abdel-Hamid Hilali from the Helwan Iron and Steel Plant, and Mohamed Fouad from the Railways' Trade Union Committee. "To Egyptian workers was like a shining star, guiding the way. And though he has died, his work and his struggle live on in our minds and our hearts," said 'Attia El- Serafi, a member of the leftist Tagammu Party's Political Secretariat and Othman's long-time comrade in the Egyptian communist movement. "Othman's solidarity with the workers was remarkable," labour lawyer Youssef Darwish told Al-Ahram Weekly. "I first met him in 1942 when I became legal counsel for the General Union of Mechanised Textile Workers in Shubra Al-Khayma. At the time he was the union's president. Although he was not a labourer -- he had a high school diploma in applied arts, and worked as a foreman and manager in various textile mills -- he chose to join the textile workers' union, instead of the managers' union. He defined himself as a worker, never as a boss." Othman's activism and leadership position in the union cost him dearly. In 1940, he was fired from his managerial job at the Modern Fabric Mill for organising protests against mill closures and consequent job losses in the textile industry. In 1943, he was sacked from his position as technical manager of Newman and Klines' mill in Shubra following political police pressure. In 1945, he was again fired from his job as manager of the silk department in the Sebahi textile mill in Shubra Al-Khayma after a new wave of police intervention. Despite the repression, the textile workers' union did not cave in and continued to strike against plant closures and lay-offs. The government therefore decided to clamp down in style. Since hounding the union president from job to job had proved ineffective, they decided to go to the root of the problem, and dissolved the union as of 30 April, 1945. Fearing a backlash from the workers, the authorities pre- emptively arrested Othman and Mahmoud El-Askari, the union's general secretary, along with other labour leaders, detaining them for several months. Meanwhile, the Union of Egyptian Industries had blacklisted Othman as a "dangerous agitator" and barred him from working in the textile industry. Indomitable, Othman found a job as a teacher in the Ismailia Elementary School in Shubra, and pursued his political work. He became secretary of the editorial board of Al-Damir ("The Conscience"), the paper of the Workers' Committee for National Liberation (WCNL) -- an organisation affiliated to Youssef Darwish's communist tendency Al-Fajr Al-Jadid, New Dawn. " Al-Damir was widely distributed among the Shubra textile workers and this naturally alarmed the authorities," Darwish told the Weekly. "Following a wave of strikes in Shubra Al- Khayma in December 1945, which the government blamed on the communists, Othman, El-Askari and prominent communist activist and WCNL member, Youssef El-Mudarrik, were arrested in January 1946. Othman served a three-months jail sentence for writing a "subversive poem", published in Al-Damir. He was charged with "inciting class insubordination among workers and peasants". Upon his release in May 1948, Othman joined the Workers' Vanguard for National Liberation (WVNL), a communist organisation established by Darwish and the New Dawn group. "Othman, El-Askari and El-Mudarrik were all very active. We sponsored and organised major strikes and marches until the following wave of arrests," Darwish told the Weekly. In November 1948, Othman and Darwish were arrested and slapped with "communist agitation" charges. Othman was not released from prison until February 1950. Unrepentant, he got back to business and continued organising. In 1957, he became a member of the Party of Egyptian Workers and Peasants. In 1958, when the various tendencies merged, he joined the Communist Party of Egypt. As the communists had united and were beginning to gain ground, the time was ripe for yet another clamp down -- the harshest to date. "Nasser was afraid of the workers, because the movement was very strong throughout the 1940s. He was especially afraid of the communists, since we knew how to organise. In January 1959, he decided to destroy the movement and arrested about 1000 leading activists, most of whom were locked up until April 1964," El-Serafi told the Weekly. But it was Nasser's jails that turned Othman into a recorder of labour history. "Othman's contribution is remarkable, because he was a worker as well as an activist and a writer," El-Serafi explained. A prolific writer and poet, with 28 publications to his credit, Othman was one of the few chroniclers of Egypt's tortuous labour history. His vision is by definition unique as both a participant and a witness, noted El-Serafi. "Unlike scholarly studies which are always 'written from the outside', Othman's writings offer a rare insider's perspective -- his testimony can in this sense be likened to history-in-the-making." A chronicle of President Gamal Abdel-Nasser's wholesale and brutal repression of the communist movement, Othman's last work A Living Hell: 1959-1964 -- published earlier this year -- testifies to the inhuman treatment of political prisoners inside the regime's various detention centres. The book bears two dedications: the first to his children, whose "dreams were shattered and future ruined" when he was jailed and they found themselves destitute; the second, to the Egyptian working class. By Faiza Rady
