Deleted scene from The Life Of Brian

Banter around the brazier? Political point-scoring on the picket line? SPGB, SP(EW) and the Swell Maps currently playing on iTunes? Leaflets, lickspittles and (a)lliterations?

Taaffe-tastic.

Throw another effigy of Alan Woods on the fire.

'My Militant Tendency'

This blog doesn't usually do poetry - see Cactus Mouth Informer for a poetry overdose - but I got a message via MySpace from an Irish poet, Kevin Higgins, advertising his latest collection, 'Time Gentlemen, Please', and I like what I've read of his poetry so far.

I'm guessing that Kevin contacted the unofficial Socialist Standard MySpace page because he spotted the 'S' word.

As he writes:

"Several of the poems deal with my own past experience as a member of Militant from 1982-94 and throw some critical and satirical light of the Left as it was and has become – the title of one of the poems being My Militant Tendency - while others attempt to deal with the political situation now."

If this interview from the Galway Advertiser is anything to go by, it appears that he has travelled quite a distance from his political past:

“From the age of 15 to 27 I was an active Trotskyist,” he says. “I was the leader of the anti-poll tax campaign in the London Borough of Enfield when I lived there. From the age of 27 until, say, 38, a couple of years ago I thought it was a pity socialism was clearly now not going to happen. I was in a kind of mourning, I suppose. But now I think that, for all its faults, the society we have is far preferable to anything the ‘comrades’ would bring, were they, Lord protect us, ever to stumble into power.”

I'm not using this an opportunity to have a dig at the Millies. It's his take on his former comrades, and obviously plays some (small) part in the poetry he now writes and, to be honest, it's not the first time that I've read (or heard) a former Millie voice their concerns in such terms. I don't think it's a peculiarity of that version of the Fourth International. I'd venture that it's part and parcel of the whole Leninist tradition and, anyway, any politics which mistakenly roots itself in substitutionism should always carry a health warning.

And I'm also self-aware enough to see I wee bit of my youthful self in this poem:

My Militant Tendency

It's nineteen eighty two and I know everything.
Hippies are people who always end up asking
Charles Manson to sing them another song.
I'd rather be off putting some fascist through
a glass door arseways, but being fifteen,
have to mow the lawn first. Last year,
Liverpool meant football; now
it's the Petrograd of the British Revolution.
Instead of masturbation, I find socialism.
While others dream of businessmen bleeding
in basements; I promise to abolish double-chemistry class
the minute I become Commissar. In all of this
there is usually a leather jacket involved. I tell
cousin Walter and his lovely new wife, Elizabeth,
to put their aspirations in their underpants
and smoke them; watch
my dad's life become a play:
Sit Down In Anger.

More of Kevin's poetry can be viewed here. Details on the newly published collection and a background bio on its author can be viewed here.

Do They Mean Us? #15

Lazy bastard that I am, I've had this post in the draft section for the last ten days. Whatever . . .better late than never, I guess.

The following glowing testimonial is from the discussion board of Urban 75 and dates from a few weeks back when, during the course of a increasingly heated discussion on the post entitled '10 candidates for Lambeth and Southwark GLA constituency!', SPEW/CWI member, 'dennisr', thought he would try get into the Guinness Book of Records by seeing how many urban myths about the SPGB he could cram into one post:

"The socialist party you link to has feck all to do with the SPGB - either faction. They are not 'dissidants' - they are an organisation of thousands (which is not a lot in itself but - as opposed to 20 just or however many the ejets of the SPGB claim...). The SP are registered as the Socialist Party but not allowed to stand as the Socialist Party.

The Socialist party - which has sitting councillors in Lewisham and Coventry comes from the Militant. irt is forced to stand as Socialist Alternative because the two man + dog of the SPGB (now split inot 2 or 3 factions all with members possibly only just in double figures...) got their knickers in a twist about the name.

In Huddersfield the SP candidate stood under the Save Our NHS name because she was part of an alliance with non-SP members - she is also now a sitting councillor (she is also a doctor which may have something to do with her NHS concerns...).

Outside of the prolatarian stronhold of Clapham the SPGB don't exist." [Post dated 07-04-2008, 15:46.]

Fast forward three and a half weeks and my eye catches the results of Lambeth & Southwark and its neighbouring constiutency of Greenwich and Lewisham.

The SPGB candidate, Danny Lambert, receives 1588 votes (0.97%). Yep, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking William Morris and how it's hardly a case of " . . .a thousand and society begins to tremble . . ", but not too bad an effort in the circumstances from two men and their dog.

How did the artists formerly known as the Militant Tendency do in Greenwich and Lewisham? Must have done better than us sad sacks. According to 'dennisr', they've got thousands of members. The SP/CWI has been one franchise in the crowded Fourth Internationalist market who have been experiencing genuine growth in recent years (admittedly after a fallow couple of years), and in Chris Flood, a sitting local councillor, they had a popular candidate. A tribune of the people, no less, who has built upon the work of their other councillor in the Lewisham area, Ian Page.

Drum roll please:

1587 votes (1.08%). If I could capitalise that, I would. Wait up, I can: ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY SEVEN VOTES. Thank christ for their own sake that the Millies don't indulge in the SWP-mantra of 'It's never been a better time to be a socialist.' If that was the case, 'dennisr' would be eating so much humble pie that he would be the SP/CWI's answer to John Molyneux in a matter of weeks. And by that, I don't mean that 'dennisr' would be submitting articles on Picasso to Socialism Today.

And, for the record, we in the SPGB camp shouldn't be too gleeful about the comparable results. As a comrade pointed out in the comments section of the SPGB election blog, Vaux Populi, after the London results came in:

"Of course we shouldn't get carried away. What's happened is that they've been relegated to our league (Third Division South?) rather than us promoted to the league they thought they were in."

Very wise and insightful words from the comrade and, by way of a reward, for his (and other comrades) hard work during the election campaign, the Party should have a whip round and buy him a Rothmans Football Yearbook that's been published in the last 15 years.

I don't care if he has read (and understood) the footnotes in volume three of Capital. He should be brought up to speed as soon as possible with regards to the football pyramid system currently applying to clubs in England and Wales.

They Blogged About Andrew Glyn, So I Don't Have To Pretend To

Old Etonian Oxbridge academic was apparently a member of the Militant Tendency in the 70s and the 80s? How did that square with their much celebrated workerism during that period? Mmm, where's that quote again from the 'Communist Manifesto'? There it is:

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole."

That's the one. I bet he had it typed up in bold, laminated and carried it dangling from his neck at Millies get togethers. It would have helped avoid misunderstandings.

As a pre-eminent economist in his day, I wonder if he reined in Ted Grant's 24/7 millenarianism during that time, or did hee supply the number-crunching to back it up?

OK, enough waffle from me. A few links about the recent passing of Andrew Glyn are in order:

From Stumbling and Mumbling Blog: Andrew Glyn

From 1/888 Branch News blog: Andrew Glyn - Marxist economist and socialist fighter

Andy gets in on the plaudits: Socialist Unity Blog

Labour and Capital get in on the blourning: Andrew Glyn

Nice comments accompanying the piece: Andrew Glyn is Dead

SPGB gets snotty (again): Andrew Glyn

The British Security Services allegedly tapped his phone in the eighties. A Foreign & Commonwealth Office blogger eulogises him in the naughties: Andrew Glyn

Finally, I did like this comment attributed to Glyn by one of the commentators over at Crooked Timber:

"Towards the end of the term in which I was taught by him, the film ‘Rosa’, about the life of Rosa Luxemburg, came out. After remarking on how the film made no mention of Luxemburg’s criticisms of Lenin, Andrew’s next comment was something like: ‘Her life shows that it is actually possible to be both a serious revolutionary socialist and a human being."

Sounded like he was a decent bloke.

"Don't mention the class war."

. . . unless you are a Republican Presidential candidate.

Marx and Coca-Cola kicks off on Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson invoking their workerist credentials against Mitt Romney. Christ, it reads like a branch meeting of the old Millies.

Later in the same post, he does a Stacey London on the Government Ministers in Chavez's Government. Christ, it reads like an old profile of Degsy.

Degsy Goes Down - History Part II

Reidski in the comments box below reminded me that June 12th was also the date the Derek Hatton was expelled from the Labour Party. Wasn't 1986 also the year that Liverpool won the double, beating Everton in the FA Cup final? That really was an annus horriblus for the Pierre Cardin section of the old Militant Tendency.

Fascinating to read that the vote on the Labour NEC to expel Hatton was only won by 12 votes to 6. Six people voted against Hatton's expulsion? OK, I'm guessing that Benn (Tone) and Skinner (Dennis) were on the NEC in '86, but who were the other four who were prepared to give so much slack to the most prominent member of the 'It's just a newspaper, honest' reading circle?

Maybe the Parcel of Jonahs over at Dave Osler's comment boxes are right when they opine that the Labour Left's strength is but a shadow of its heyday in the eighties, and there's no way back. If a decent and straightforward bloke like John McDonnell can't muster up sufficient numbers to even ensure that there is a token leadership challenge against Gordon Brown then the Labour Left really has done a Captain Oates these last ten years.

I remember encountering the old Millies in the Labour Party Young Socialists, and even then there seemed something amiss about them, but from this point in time it's weird to think that someone like Hatton was ever taken seriously. I can't help but smile when I think of Steve Coleman's words when he was reviewing Alan Bleasdale's drama, GBH, in the pages of the Socialist Standard:

"Militant renamed it BGH: Bleasdale Gets Hatton. Hatton himself went on Channel Four's Right To Reply to say that Michael Murray must have been based on him because the fictional character was a bullying, corrupt council leader." [The Eileen Critchley Show, August 1991 Socialist Standard]

Whatever did happen to Degsy?