Bob Gould and Ed Lewis
The Sydney Morning Herald on February 1 carries a lengthy obituary for Artyom Sergeyev, son of Artem Sergeyev, a Russian exile from Tsarist repression after the 1905 revolution who was a working class militant in Brisbane before returning to Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, where he became a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee.
Being an energetic bookseller, the holiday period is one of my better ones for business, but I get a bit of time on public holidays to do a bit of reading rather than the routine marking that I do at the till.
Trade unions, war on the waterfront, a pretty good time for dialectics
Bob Gould
Green Left discussion list, May 16, 2007
In their desperation at their failure to make any headway in the opinion polls, the ideologues of the Liberal-National Coalition are getting wackier by the second, as are the hysterical pundits of the ruling class in the media. Peter Costello even redbaited Kevin Rudd the other day in an extremely eccentric way, asserting that Rudd’s use of the word dialectic had a Marxist flavour.
Green Left Weekly discussion list, October 6, 2006
I’ve just noticed NSW Socialist Alliance convenor Duroyan Fertl’s post,without comment, of a media report celebrating the death of the Tree of Knowledge at Barcaldine.
The washup of Howard’s History Summit
The following was written for the Sydney Morning Herald, with my usual lack of success. The further outcome of the History Summit, which was reflected in The Australian and the NCC journal Newsweekly, puts an even more interesting twist on events.
The Tory war on objective narrative history
On August 17-18 in Canberra there will be a much ballyhooed history summit organised by the Tory federal government. This event is being presented as an attempt to exert pressure on Labor state governments to reinstate narrative history in secondary school curricula in place of the confusing, rather postmodern curricula that absorb history as part of a kind of social studies in seven of the eight states and territories governed by Labor.
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By Bob Gould
Workers Online, June 2006
A list of the 100 most influential Australians was launched by Peter Costello at Machiavelli’s Restaurant in Sydney on June 27 with predictable razzmatazz. Surprise, surprise, global citizen or global buccaneer, depending on your point of view, Rupert Murdoch, was nominated by The Bulletin at the top of the list.
Bob Gould
As a man of the left with an interest in history, on April 19 I read the Sydney Morning Herald‘s 175th anniversary supplement with great interest.
On John Percy’s memoir of the DSP and Resistance
Green Left Weekly discussion list, June 16, 2005
Sol Salbe’s critique of John Percy’s book has some value, as far as it goes. He details a number of obvious errors.
A critical review of A History of the DSP and Resistance
Sol Salbe
Let me start by putting my cards down. I regard myself as a personal friend of both John Percy and his strongest critics like Bob Gould. I’m also a former member of the political current described in John Percy’s book. Uncommon as it may sound I drifted gradually away from the then SWP never needing major political differences or a personal conflict with any of the other participants. I was even consulted briefly during the writing process. These days I have some political differences but they are not of a factional nature, if anything Green Left Weekly supporters have backed me on the two-states for Palestine issue against some other members of the Socialist Alliance.
Helen Palmer
Introduction
Bob Gould
In his History of the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance, John Percy crudely portrays the socialist magazine, Outlook, as being isolated from the antiwar movement of the 1960s.
Nancy Mills
The 30th October, 1920, in Sydney, was a clear, cool Spring day. In a small hall above Fay’s bookshop, at the corner of Pitt and Liverpool Streets, twenty-six people gathered together. They represented the two main socialist groups, and their purpose was to amalgamate to establish the Australian Communist party.
Bob Gould
1. John Percy’s weird autobiography, and memoir of Jim Percy, masquerading as a history of the DSP
2. John Percy’s invincible ignorance of Australian labour history
3. Crudifying details of the 1956 upheaval in the Communist movement
4. John Percy’s industrial philosopher’s stone
A history of the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance, 1965-72, John Percy, Resistance Books, Sydney, 2005
John Percy’s book, A History of the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance, is a boring, self-interested curiosity. It is extremely derivative of other, better written, more objective and interesting books. It bears a striking resemblance to Denis Freney’s equally self-serving autobiography, A Map of Days. Like Denis Freney’s book, in this one the two heroes rarely make major mistakes and all the left opponents and enemies of John Percy and his brother, Jim Percy, emerge in the narrative as knaves, fools or both.
The DSP school of history
The Origins of the Australian Labor Party, by Jim McIlroy, Resistance Publications, 2004
Bob Gould
The genial Jim McIlroy gives the obligatory historical lecture at DSP Christmas-New Year gatherings. This pamphlet is the lecture he gave last year. I don’t like being too hard on McIlroy, as he’s a pleasant enough bloke, unlike some others in the DSP leadership, but his historical lectures and pamphlets have become doggedly and predictably routine. They contain only a certain amount of history and the real point of these historical pamphlets is to reassert DSP dogma about the Labor Party.
