Everything Must Go

The From Despair To Where? team have posted the first part of their promised series on the political journey that they have undertaken in recent years. As the post indicates, more to follow.

A cleverer blogger than myself could have signposted their journey in MSP song titles but for the moment I'll just settle with Everything Must Go. It could have been worse; the original thought in my head was Archives of Pain.

How Do I Know This Crap?

From today's Observer 'This Much I Know' column:

"My grandfather Tommy Douglas was the first socialist to come to power in North America. He introduced a provincial healthcare system in Saskatchewan, which was ultimately adopted as the federal healthcare system. Having grown up as part of that legacy, my choice to become an actor is quite selfish, really." Kiefer Sutherland, actor.

That, and the alcohol intake, got me to thinking about other examples of Hollywood and the left. Not the obvious ones, John Howard Lawson, Vanessa Redgrave and the rest can stay in the Green Room. I'm talking about the really obscure stuff. The ones that get you the "You sad bastard" looks when you try and crowbar these gems of useless information into conversations to show how well read and well rounded you are.

Off hand, I can think of another four - biscuit tin roll please:

• Elsa Lanchester - Brilliant comic actress. Best known for her starring role in James Whales' Bride of Frankenstein, but also appeared in such other brilliant films as The Private Life of Henry VIII, Lassie Come Home and even had a bit part in one of my favourite films of all time - sorry Lassie - Sullivan's Travels. Why am I rambling on about her? 'Cos she was the daughter of Edith Lanchester, Social Democratic Federation Executive Committee member in the 1890s.*
• Angela Lansbury - Star of such brilliant films as Gaslight, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Manchurian Candidate, she is best know for twee afternoon crime mystery drama, Murder She Wrote. The double mystery was how the show lasted so long on the schedules and how someone as decent as her Grandfather ever became leader of the Labour Party in the 1930s. (Cue the Ernest Bevin quote.)
• Gordon Warnecke - My Beautiful Laundrette star who wasn't Daniel Day Lewis, was the son of SPGB member Harry Warnecke. (Always said that the Party had the best critique of the phenomenon that was Thatcherism.) Just a shame that Gordon couldn't have done his old Dad a favour with a bit of product placement. A couple of back issues of the Socialist Standard on the table in the Laundrette would have done nicely. They would have looked nice on the big screen. He has since done his penance by going to that Actor's Hell, otherwise known as guest starring in The Bill.
• Saffron Burrows - Aye, I choked on my cornflakes one Sunday morning when I discovered from reading the paper that she was the daughter of a couple of SWP members, and that she herself was a supporter of the Respect Coalition. I kind of like that preconceived notions of lefties being disarmed by this information, though I still wouldn't give the SWP the steam off my tea.

How do I know this crap? To paraphrase Billy Bragg: "If you've got a Pub Quiz list, I want to be on it."

* From Ken Weller's brilliant 'Don't Be A Soldier: The Radical Anti-War Movement in North London 1914-1918' (Journeymen Press 1985): "Elsa Lanchester came from a radical background. Her mother Elsa Lanchester was a member of the Executive of the SDF in the 1890s, and became a cause celebre when she lived in a free union; her family committed her to a lunatic asylum in consequence. In 1918 Elsa had founded the Children's Theatre in Soho, which seems to have had strong radical connections. Elsa Lanchester was a member of the ILP after the War."

I Wonder Why*

Christ, what's going on? I'm scrambling around for scraps and willo the wisp blog links to post on here to give the illusion of industry and deep thought when pushing the 'publish' button on blogger, but it's hampered by the fact that I can't be arsed to knuckle down to the industry and research that will ensure that a post goes beyond a half-chewed paragraph and a "Ooh, fancy that" from the Greek Chorus looking over my shoulder whilst I'm typing this.

Then what happens, I bump into Keith - pronounced "Keef" in a piss poor imitation of Phil Cornwell doing Mick Jagger - and I do my obligatory verse from Oliver's Army and/or Alison 'cos he's the dead spit of Elvis Costello (what's a joke if it can't be hackneyed and well worn?), and we launch into a conversation on British Labour History which encompasses such subjects as the Weekly and Sunday Worker papers of the 1920s; William Rust's editorship of the Daily Worker; Grey Lynn's war novella 'The Return of Karl Marx' and my unproven contention that Lynn sought to portraythe Marx of wartime London as a Poum'ist in Palmers Green or a Trotskyist from Turnpike Lane; AE Reade, the Balham Group and early British Trotskyism; Harry Pollitt's biog, 'Serving My Time', which I discover he wrote far earlier than I had previously presumed ("Keef" reckons he wrote it after going on a wee holiday in '39 from the leadership of the CPGB for opposing the Nazi-Soviet Pact, but for some reason I presumed it was published in '55 but now that I think about it I may have confused it with John Mahon's biog of "Harry Pollute" (as the SPGB speakers used to call him) though I've only read Kevin Morgan's biog of Harry from Manchester University Press's Lives of the Left Series from a few years ago; Pollitt's time in Sylvia Pankhurst's Workers Socialist Federation and when exactly did he join the CP? 'cos "Keef" thinks that 'Arry was deliberately vague in his autobiog; the Shop Stewards Movement during the First World War; Palme Dutt - fuck, you've got to mention Palme Dutt if you are going to rant about Pollitt; Stuart McIntyre's 'Proletarian Science', which I read years ago but can only remember snatches of it; from that how "Keef" met someone - Ruth Frow - who actually met T.A Jackson and then we compare and contrast the merits and demerits of the Marx Memorial Library versus the Frow's library in Manchester and "Keef" mentions that the Frow library though smaller is good 'cos it has a nearly complete set of Justice (there is always a volume missing of Justice in any collection - Hyndman's revenge? Or Bax getting you back?); mention of a bound volume of the Socialist Standard from 1907 in the Frow collection, which apparently has a blue cover ("Keef" notices these things, I take pride in not noticing these things); and then we get on to talking about Manchester Branch of the SPGB and when it was strongest in its history - "Keef" guessing the twenties but we both agree that was a low point for Party fortunes (no sniggering at the back), and then we talk about Glasgow Branch and its better days of the fifties and sixties. Throw in a mention of J.R Campbell; some book by Alison McLeod that I read and enjoyed a few years back, but which for the life of me I can't presently remember the title of (McLeod was a member of the Daily Worker staff in the forties and fifties, and the book relates the trials and tribulations of that office environment in those days - Office Space it ain't; and somewhere in amongst all that lot talk of the 'Hands of Russia' campaign that propelled Pollitt to national prominence after the First World War and whether or not the CPB have published anything to mark the 75th anniversary of the first issue of the Daily Worker, and do I mention any of this chat on the blog? Nah, can't be arsed.

This post was written under the influence. Back to the lame arse stuff, next post. Requests on a postcard for any links for any of the above mentioned ethemera.

* I Wonder Why - The brilliant Ella Fitzgerald song that I've never heard more than thirty seconds of in an Insurance Advert on TV from last year. Winmx and Kazaa refuse to return my calls on the subject, so if anyone wants to send me the song as an email attachment you'll make me very happy ;-)

Update - Mmm, just for clarification: Why are two SPGBers seemingly obsessed by the old CP and especially 'Arry? We're not - we just like talking about Labour History up to the nineteen forties for some reason. It's our small talk, if you like. Memory serves me right - last time we ranted in a similar fashion, it was about the old De Leonist Socialist Labour Party in Britain, with special attention given to Len Cotton. On other occasions we swap anecdotes about various warehouses and factories we worked in at various times in Watford and Hemel. Close your eyes sometimes, and it's like the Algonquin Table transported to the 21st century London: only difference being, no American accents and, erm, no table.

Not The Quote Of The Day

I needed something to read for a long tube journey today so I popped into a charity shop and I picked up Ben Thompson's Sunshine On Putty: The Golden Age of British Comedy, from Vic Reeves to The Office (no, I don't know what the title is about either) for a couple of quid.

A reasonable enough read and enjoyable to dip into where my fancy took me, and I did like the fact that he sticks the boot into David Baddiel. You can never do enough of that. However, the following quotation did sort of leap out of me when fast forwarding through the pages:

"In the opening episode of 2003's Ali G in Da USAiii, for example, Baron Cohen outrages respectable US opinion by talking about the 'terrible events of 7/11'. On first hearing. this joke seems crassly obvious, but it also enables him to make a devastating satirical point in the space of five words. By mistaking the date of the attack on the World Trade Centre for the name of the grocery chain which pioneered late-night opening, he not only alludes to capitalism's capacity for making a fast buck out of unthinkable horror, but also to the ever-tightening global grip of the US military-capitalist complex which was instrumental in provoking that murderous attack in the first place." [My emphasis]

Christ, how is it when members of the chattering classes seek to intellectualise comedy they come out with pieces of doggerel like this? It doesn't matter that this crass piece of pseudo-profundity is buried on pages 337 and 338, it marks Thompson out as a card carrying tube. Spolit the rest of the book for me.

Quote of the Day

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."

J. D. Salinger

I Don't Think He's A Morning Person

Will Makem wakes up long enough to *cough* rubbish PB Deb. He must have bought him a bad pint or something.

Mmm, five out of my last six posts have been willo the wisp links to other blogs. People may surmise from that that I have run out of things to say, and they may be right.

Arise Ye

Timid Maximalist has woken up again after a deep sleep. Welcome back.

Reform/Revolution Debate

Speaking to one of the co-conspirators of From Despair To Where? blog last night and, as is his fashion, he came up with a really thought provoking analogy of the Reform/Revolution debate - the thorny issue that more than anything else divides the ultra left from everybody else:

"The Reform/Revolution issue should be seen in the same fashion as a boxer and how he fights. The ultra-left is always going all out for the knock out punch, whereas as with the reform/revolution issue it's always best to jab - to find your range - so that the knockout punch is all the more effective."

I've paraphrased what he said badly (me and my memory) - and hopefully he will either post to his own blog with the proper wording or correct me in the comments box - but it is definitely something to be think about.

It also explains how Chris Eubank battered Nigel Benn all those years ago.

Paps

He kept his side of the bargain with his posting about the mankiest pub in Sunderland,* so the least I can do is properly add A Revolutionary Act to the blogroll - even if it does look like his latest post is a recycling of an old article from the Socialist Standard that he done on Joe Hill a few years back.

I wish he wouldn't keep changing the font colours on his posts though - looks far too garish.

* There were a few pubs in North London, where I attended AWL Branch meetings that would give the pub a run for its money.

Take A Breath

In its next life Inveresk Street Ingrate will be an music blog, but in the meantime an excellent gratis mp3 from the Spolit Victorian Child music blog. No, I've never heard of The Capricorns either but, me being me, I can't help thinking the vocal sounds a bit like Lene Lovich. But I would say that, wouldn't I?

Better check it out quick, 'cos as is the nature of music blogs the mp3 usually gets pulled to be replaced by another, and the blogger at SVC is right: You can't just listen to it just the once.