Obituary – Carol Taylor

It was with sadness that we learned in mid-October of the death of Carol Taylor, and at a relatively young age. Carol will be best remembered for her work on the now popular socialist film Capitalism and Other Kids Stuff, on which she worked as director and editor.

Though no longer formally a member, she had no actual disagreement with the Party case. She was always a fervent defender of the socialist cause and an ardent critic of capitalism, always keen to expose the insanity of the profit system in whatever way she could. On the discussion forum she attached to the initial Socialist TV website she created specifically to promote Kids Stuff she spent hours a day articulately defending the socialist case against our detractors who left messages, and there was a fair few.

Carol can be heard introducing the first ever film we did together here, a short film introducing the Socialist Party and actually put together within an hour.

I worked with her on a few films, including one on the “G8” meeting filmed up in Scotland a few years ago, and we spent a lot of time together collecting stock footage we felt we could use on future socialist films. I fondly remember the many encounters we had with the police who tried to stop us filming around London, often under threat of arrest, particularly the day we tried to get footage of HRH and entourage during the State opening of Parliament and the angry argument Carol gave to the police who came to escort us away from the area and, indeed, the way she cleverly managed to blag us media passes to get on to the press wagon at Teeside Airport when George Bush came for his £1 million fish supper in Tony Blair’s north eastern constituency.

I’m please to have known Carol closely and will remember her as quite a magnanimous person, warm and affectionate, loathing injustice, deceit and fraud and ever ready to speak out against it.

John Bissett