Henri Nereaux 1928-2007

Henri Nereaux, 79, a member of Workers World Party and a regular staff volunteer with the International Action Center, died on March 8.

Henri Nereaux (left) at Montreal dock where supplies were being loaded for Cuba.

Nereaux had been a merchant seaman, a union official, and in his retirement a relentless opponent of U.S. imperialist aggressions around the world. He took part in solidarity delegations to Cuba, Iraq, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Nereaux came from Louisiana and his ancestors were Cajun—a French-speaking culture descended from farmers who had been brutally expelled from eastern Canada by the British in the 18th century. He had a deep hatred of colonial domination and was proud of his French heritage, refusing to answer when called “Henry.”

Nereaux began a lifetime career as a merchant seaman during World War II, when he was only 15. There was such a shortage of mariners in those dangerous days that the tall youngster was accepted with no questions asked.

Nereaux in his office when vice president of the MM&P.

As a deckhand, he joined the National Maritime Union, which had been built by communists and offered classes in labor history and international workers’ solidarity. He never forgot what he learned in the NMU, even after the McCarthyite purge of leftists from the unions they had founded.

Nereaux traveled all over the world as a seaman, but his most frequent destinations were Havana, Cuba, and the working-class ports of Liverpool and Manchester in Britain. He happily recalled those carefree days when the seamen would collect their pay and head for the bars as soon as their ships docked to spend a few rollicking days ashore before returning to work and another voyage.

He also remembered the times when jobs were few. Once he spent a week living in the New York subway system, sleeping on benches, washing in public restrooms and buying hotdogs inside the stations.

Even though he was still at sea most of the time, Nereaux took part in the turbulent struggles of the 1960s. He climbed a tree to better see and hear Fidel Castro when the Cuban revolutionary leader came to New York in 1960. He was among the audience at the Audubon Ballroom when the Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965.

Around that time he let his hair grow long—a no-no for a uniformed ship’s mate. But his reputation was so fierce that the captain gave up trying to make him get a haircut.

After many years at sea, Nereaux began moving “up the hawsepipe,” as seafarers put it, studying and obtaining licenses to become second mate, first mate and eventually master, or captain. These ships’ officers are considered “nonstatutory employees” and are in a separate union—the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots.

Nereaux became active in the MM&P and was elected a patrolman—a union official who met the ships as they arrived in port and found out if the mariners had any grievances.

Sometimes he would hold a ship in port until the grievances were resolved.

His militant defense of the workers and his meticulous knowledge of the union contract led to his election as a vice president of the MM&P. His support came mainly from mariners who, like himself, had worked their way up.

Nereaux never succumbed to “business unionism.” He had scorn for union officials like Lane Kirkland, who went directly from the King’s Point Merchant Marine Academy to a mate’s position, then studied international relations at Georgetown University in Washington where he was groomed to become a conservative labor leader in a time of cold war reaction. Kirkland went to work for George “I never walked a picket line” Meany and became his hand-picked successor as president of the AFL-CIO.

After retirement, he entered a new phase of his life, one of more intense political activity.

In the early 1990s, Nereaux attended a large mobilization in Washington called by the AFL-CIO. As he was leaving, he saw a leaflet on the ground explaining why givebacks and takebacks were a problem for all workers, not just those having their contracts torn up, and that it required a broad response from labor—a one-day work stoppage. He called the number on the leaflet and thus began his relationship with the Center for United Labor Action and eventually with Workers World Party.

In the party Nereaux found a blend of internationalism and struggle around workers’ issues. He had experienced the strength of international workers’ solidarity in his maritime work. He especially admired the Longshore Workers union on the West Coast, which not only fought for its members but also took a strong stand against South African apartheid and the blockade of Cuba.

Nereaux had been to Cuba often during the days of the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. He had seen the poverty and repression firsthand. When the revolution came, he supported it wholeheartedly. He went to Cuba on several solidarity delegations and helped organize party participation in the Pastors for Peace Friendshipment caravans, taking material aid to the socialist island in defiance of the U.S.-imposed blockade.

On one memorable trip in 1994, he drove a van filled with medicines and computers from Buffalo, N.Y., to Canada. The vehicles were given a sendoff by supporters but then were stopped on the Peace Bridge by U.S. authorities, who demanded their surrender. Nereaux instead locked the doors and windows from the inside while the supporters chanted outside. With traffic backing up between the two countries, the caravan was finally allowed to pass after several hours’ standoff.

It was with a strong sense of victory that they finally arrived in Montreal, where all the donated supplies were loaded onto a Cuban freighter.

Nereaux also was a co-founder of the U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange, which brought together unionists from both countries. Ignacio Meneses of the Labor Exchange describes him as “a strong supporter and defender of the Cuban Revolution and what it represented to the Latin American people.”

In December 1998 Nereaux took part in the Iraq Sanctions Challenge, which brought $250,000 worth of life-saving medicines to that beleaguered country where hundreds of thousands were dying because of U.S.-U.N. imposed economic sanctions.

Kadouri Al Kaysi, one of the organizers of the trip, says, “When Henri came into the office, I would ask him how he was and he always answered ‘Fantastic!’ But in Iraq he felt the agony of the Iraqi people like no one I ever saw. He felt depressed for what was happening to them. He said to me, ‘Kadouri, one day Iraqis will win.’ I miss him. He was a good friend.”

Despite worsening health problems, Nereaux remained politically active until his final hospitalization. He often reminisced about how being a union member had done so much for him, providing him good health benefits and a generous pension. He was for socialism so that all workers could enjoy such security.

One of his favorite sayings, usually as he savored a glass of wine, was: “Nothing’s too good for the workers.”

E-mail: dgriswold@workers.org