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November 3, 2009 (LPAC)—On November 1, the National Chairman of LaRouche's movement in Australia, Brian McCarthy, passed away from cancer, at age 70. Brian was a 17-year collaborator of Lyndon LaRouche, first subscribing to EIR and joining the CEC in 1993. Over the years he took an ever-increasing leadership responsibility in the LaRouche-associated Australian political party, the Citizens Electoral Council, first in his home state of Western Australia, and then nationally. Despite a several-year struggle with cancer, he was still organizing, still functioning as the CEC's National Chairman, and still inspiring the Australian LaRouche organization right up until his death.

Before joining LaRouche, Brian was a labour activist in Western Australia, a union shop steward at the massive Alcoa plant in Pinjarra, W.A. He was true-blue old Labor—totally committed to the principle of the Common Good which animated the early leaders of the great Australian Labor Party, founded in the 1890s as part of the worldwide upsurge unleashed by the Lincoln-led defeat of the British-backed Confederacy. Inspired by the American Revolution, the ALP founders slapped the British in the face by taking the American spelling, "Labor", for the name of their new party, instead of the "Labour" one would expect from a Commonwealth nation. After the Queen sacked the popularly-elected Whitlam ALP government in 1975, old Labor was destroyed, to be replaced by Tony Blair-style, free trade-loving "new Labor". Disgusted with the continued degeneration of the ALP, Brian joined LaRouche. Fittingly enough, American organizers who were in Australia in 1993 to help set up the LaRouche movement on that continent first called Brian, along with thousands of other Australians, in the context of setting up a phone team there, and played a key role in recruiting him.

In 1999-2000, Brian was instrumental in organising a revolution among his union associates in Western Australia, which saw key union leaders in the state (and nationally) publicly align with the CEC in a new political party, the Curtin Labor Alliance (CLA), named after Australia's greatest leader, the wartime Prime Minister John Curtin who broke with Winston Churchill to ally with FDR, and provided the base from which the General MacArthur-led forces won the war in the Pacific. The oligarchy absolutely freaked at the CLA, a public outbreak of the LaRouche presence inside the British Empire, and took every measure to crush it. Although most of the union leaders eventually wilted under the attack, Brian stayed strong, and went on to chair both the state branch of the CEC, and the national organisation.

Over four years ago, Brian was diagnosed with bone cancer, but he fought valiantly against it, and continued to lead field deployments all over his vast state of Western Australia, right up until this year. He is survived by his wife Sue, four children, and grandchildren. His funeral will be on Friday, Nov. 6. Messages to Sue, and to Brian's colleagues in the Australian LaRouche movement, may be sent in care of Gabrielle Peut, mobile@cecaust.com.au.