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IN MEMORIAM ALEX. HEPPLE 1904-1983 Photo: Eli Weinberg And we, shall we too, crouch and quail, Ashamed, afraid o f strife, And lest our lives untimely fail Embrace the death in life? Nay; cry aloud, and have no fear, We few against the world; Awake, arise! the hope we bear Against the curse is hurled. William Morris, No Master ALEX. HEPPLE 1904-1983 Alex. Hepple died peacefully in Canterbury on 16 November 1983, aged 79. He was leader o f the South African Labour Party (1953—58), founder and chairman o f the Treason Trial Defence Fund (1956—61), and o f the South African Defence and Aid Fund (1960—64). With his wife, Girlie, who was his close comrade in all his activities, he established the International Defence and Aid Fund’s Information Service in 1967 in London, and together they managed the Service until their retirement at the end o f 1972. He was the author o f Verwoerd (Pelican, 1967) and South Africa: a political and economic history (Pall Mall, 1966) as well as numerous pamphlets and articles on political and trade union affairs in South Africa. Alex. Hepple was born in Johannesburg on 28 August 1904. His father, an immigrant from Sunderland, was a militant member and branch secretary o f the Amalgamated Society o f Engineers, and his mother was a strong supporter o f the suffragettes. They were founding members o f the Labour Party, o f which Alex, became a lifelong member in South Africa and later, Britain. Among the formative experiences o f his youth were the victimisation o f his father for his part in the 1913 and 1914 Rand strikes, and the sight o f workers being fired on by Smuts’ troops during the general strike in 1922.
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