Do They Mean Us? #22

Bless my cotton socks, we're they're in the news. Trending even.

New entry at number nine, though I'm sure - Top of the Pops appearances not withstanding - the article will fall outside the top ten within hours minutes. Why the sudden fame? Did Russell Brand finally get round to reading one of the 1,307 tweets sent to him in recent months by Party members, urging him to click on the link?

Nothing so sweaty and rock 'n' roll. No, the BBC discovers that the SPGB is apparently loaded because it's sitting on prime property in London SW4. Cash rich but membership poor inquorate. I guess the piece by Brian Wheeler isn't too much of a hatchet job, and the Party spokesperson quoted is able to make our case for what we are about, and why it's not that much of an anomaly, despite the 'Life of Brian' aspects to it. However, I'll still make a point of battening down the hatches in anticipation of the brickbats that will be thrown the SPGB's way on social media over the next few days.

One quibble, however, about the piece. 52 Clapham wasn't purchased for £300 back in 1951. It was purchased for £3-4000, which was obviously a fair bit of wedge back in the days of Alma Coogan and Al Martino.

Now, if I could only work in a Rock the Kazbar pun into the post this latest 'Do They Mean Us?' would be sorted. Bear with me . . . Something will come eventually . . . for fuck's sake. My blogging mojo's has truly gone. Kilimanjaro, here I come. 

Do They Mean Us? #21

On this day of days, a nice excuse to post this funny cartoon from the cheeky bastards over at Great Moments in Leftism:

The one failing is that they decided to make the archetypal SPGBer look a bit too much like leading Millie Peter Taaffe. That can't be right.

Do They Mean Us? #20

I don't know. You try and quietly retire a label on the blog, and google alert pops up and bites you on the arse for your trouble.

In today's Scotsman, the ex-Labour MP Brian Wilson raises as a smile with his passing reference to the old days of the SPGB in Glasgow in an article about the monarchy and those opposed to it:

Somewhere between Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey, I was trying to define my attitude towards monarchy and my thoughts turned, improbably, to the old Socialist Party of Great Britain who used to put up a candidate in Partick and get about 80 votes.

The SPGB were defined as the “impossibilists” of the British Left. Their considered view was that aspiring to social reform in one country was a waste of time which would only delay the revolution. Socialism could only prevail when 51 per cent of the world’s people were prepared to vote for it.

Since there was no immediate prospect of this happening, they could get on with their lives undisturbed while observing the frailties of humanity from their lofty ideological peak. The great advantage of impossibilism was that it allowed its adherents to feel intellectually superior without the requirement to actually do anything. In fact, doing anything would be counter-productive.

It occurred to me that my attitude to monarchy has morphed into the impossibilist tradition – I’m against it, but since not a lot of other people are, there isn’t really much point in worrying about it until they change their minds. On the basis of this week’s evidence, that is not going to be any time soon. So chill out, watch the concert and have a G & T.

I know I'm supposed to be programmed to be worked up into a lather about Wilson's nonsense about the SPGB's supposed position being that social reform delays the revolution, but what actually immediately struck me when reading the excerpt is that Wilson is probably in that last generation of Labour Party politicians who can even make a passing reference to the SPGB. That's not a dig at the SPGB and its lower profile amongst the British Left but more a realisation that the days of Labour politicians being immersed in that world of politics which dealt with such ideas as the radical transformation of society has long since disappeared.

When did it disappear? I can't place a date on it, but I'd peg it somewhere between Kinnock screeching 'Alright' at the infamous rally in Sheffield in '92 and the second verse of 'Things Can Only Get Better' kicking in '97 . . . and I know I'm being overly generous when siting it in the 90s.

More cold water. comrades. More cold water.

Much too frivolous for the 'Do They Mean Us?' series but if you happen to type 'Socialist Party of Great Britain' into an anagram generator, it comes up with PROFITABLY RAINIEST CASTIGATOR.

It's got everything: the social composition of the membership, the ingrained pessimism and the on-the-surface hostility to all and sundry.

And you thought the Thatcher link was going to be the most frivolous post of the day?

SPGB'itis

We've had the staples: Small Party of Good Boys and Simon Pure's Good Brand are the best known, for instance.

We've had the witty Small Party of Glesga Bookies (as the local branch in Glasgow was known in its early days because, it turns out, a number of its members were bookies) and we have had the just plain abusive Smug Pricks and Gobby Bastards (just made that one up but I've yet to copyright it).

But I think the old school playground nicknames all fall by the wayside with Julian V from Enfield and Haringey Branch's recent suggestion on the Party's discussion list that the SPGB now stands for Senile Pensioners in Geriatric Bathchairs. The bloke's got form in the witty stakes. It was Julian who came up with the title of 'Socialism Or You Money Back'.

Sterling Cooper's loss was the SPGB's gain.

Cheeky opponents and the usual malcontents will riposte that they've been referring to us as that for years, but it's no good now mentioning that now on the commentary of your latest dvd. Prove your point by providing the requisite YouTube clips from those Arena specials you were on all those years ago. Otherwise, button it or we'll send the youth section around to have a word, brew a pot of tea and share some Werther's Originals.

World Socialists a twitter

Being the slow reader that I am, I've only just spotted* this most excellent competition in the September issue of your soaraway Socialist Standard:

Competition for the Twittering Classes

The latest fad for micro-blogging is coming under fire, with a study showing that 40 percent of ‘tweets’ are ‘pointless babble’ and only 8.7 percent pass along ‘news of interest’(BBC Online, 17 August). Considering the gargantua of garbage which is the printed book output, this is not a bad batting average. However, keen as ever to raise the bar of public discourse, Pathfinders proposes a competition for the best expression of the Party Case in 140 characters or less. Brief reflection offers: ‘World for the Workers, not the Rich W**kers’ however you are sure to do better than that. Emails or letters to our Clapham office. Closing date 10 November, for our December issue, and best ideas will be printed. First Prize will be, of course, comradely adulation, as we socialists are trying to move away from material remuneration systems.

Why not? I'm sure I read somewhere that someone has been putting The Communist Manifesto on twitter (bugger if I can find it, though). And, no doubt, someone from Aufheben will eventually get around to serialising The Grundrisse on twitter . . . but we may get socialism before that particular exercise in twitter publishing is actually completed.

My contributions to the comp are the following:

world socialism - for a world without war, want, wages and the fat controller.

Banish the gods from the sky, the capitalists from the earth and the chuggers from the high street.

I thought I'd play it safe with a careful tweaking of the classics.

I can already feel the "comradely adulation" coming my way, and I don't like it. It seems so unnatural: comradeship and the SPGB, I mean.

*'just spotted' roughly translates as 'this post has been in draft for three weeks'.

Do They Mean Us? #19

Has it really been 14 months? Wee Owen has a lot to answer for.

The unexpected return of an occasional series on the blog which was prompted by this recent post on the SPGB discussion list:

"I've been reading Ken MacLeod's novel The Night Sessions. It's a near-future thriller where religion is marginalised but fundamentalists plan violent resistance. At one point, a document is quoted as follows:

'The Congregation of the Third Covenant, therefore, calls upon the true Protestant Church and People of Scotland and the other Revolution States ... to muster under its banner, and to wage war upon the apostate Churches ... '

Wonder where he got some of the phraseology from.

Longstanding readers of the blog will know that Mr MacLeod is a friendly critic of the Party, which makes a nice change. (The friendly bit, I mean.)

And the SPGB as inspiration for some fictionalised 'Wee Free'ers'? Why not. Wasn't the first ever SPGB branch in Scotland in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire in around about 1909/1910 period? We both have enough dourness to spare.

Hat tip to PB for the Ken MacLeod spot.

Separated at birth?

". . . Otherwise we would be like the SPGB standing on the sidelines for a 100+ years saying 'abolish money' and wondering why folk walk on by slightly bemused . . . "

Thus spake a Millie cadre over at Urban 75 only the other day.

He was half right. According to next month's Socialist Standard front cover, what we actually do from the sidelines is scream and shout 'IT'S ALIVE! We have to kill money.'

Is it just me or does Godzilla's next nemesis on a street near you look like a distant relative of 'Ciao', the 1990 World Cup mascot?

Click on both pics to get the full flavour of what I'm wittering on about.

Do They Mean Us? #18

I can't remember if I have previously included the WSPUS in the 'Do They Mean Us?' series but, what with my geographical arrangements, it would be daft for me not to take the opportunity to feature them if and when the occasion arises.

They get a special mention today because I had a bit of a result this week when I was able to obtain a secondhand copy of the 1990 edition of The Encyclopedia of the American Left for only $2.85 (plus $3.99 postage) from a bookshop in Auburn, Wa. (Trust me, that is a result. The later 1998 edition is going for anything in between $32 to $100 on Amazon.)

Edited by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle & Dan Georgakas, this 900 page tome covers everything and everyone on the American Left from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to Di Zukunft (a Yiddish language socialist journal given over to literary and wider cultural matters). Granted, what with the book being published back in 1990, that of course means that there's nearly twenty years of the American Left that could be covered in later editions but as my ignorance of the history of the American Labor Movement is vast enough as it is, I can work my way up to 1990 for now.

Whether I'm living in the States or in Britain, old habits die hard and on receiving the book I immediately turn to the back of the book to see whether or not the SPGB or the WSPUS are featured in the index. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that the WSPUS has a modest entry in the book. I wouldn't expect much more than that. As the entry states, the WSPUS historically has been most visible and vocal in the Boston area, and it would be a self-delusion to claim otherwise. However, I think the entry gives the mistaken impression that though the organisation started in Detroit, it left Motor City soon after but the truth is that for a time in the 40s & 50s, the WSPUS had a strong local there and even had its national headquarters based there for a time in the 50s.

Nice to see the mention of Isaac Rabinowich ('I. Rab') in the piece. I had the good fortune to met his grand-daughter, Karla Rab, a few months back when she helped out with the Party stall at the Brooklyn Peace Fair. She has been working on a biography of her grandfather for a couple of years now and, now that it has been completed, she is in the process of looking for a publisher. It should be a fascinating read.

Final mention should be made for the author of the piece on the WSPUS in the book. Franklin Rosemont is a longstanding IWW member and well known surrealist. Why it seems particularly apt that one of America's leading surrealist should pen the entry on the WSPUS I can't quite articulate, but it just seems par for the course.

WORLD SOCIALIST PARTY

The WSP is the US companion party of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB), which was formed in 1904 by a group of anti-reformist Marxists who had broken with H.M. Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation. During World War 1, SPGB members Moses Baritz and Adolph Kohn came to the United States to avoid conscription, and they established a following in Detroit. In 1916 some of their supporters founded the SP of the United States, but changed its name to Workers' Socialist Party a few months later when they found that the name Socialist Party had been copyrighted by the SP of America. The new party at first existed only in Detroit, and from 1919 to 1922 took the name Detroit Socialist Educational Society.

WSP locals have existed off and on in several US cities, including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But its real stronghold, and the only city where it can be said to have had an enduring influence, was Boston, where the tireless I. Rab conducted Marxist study classes and lively forums almost nightly from the early 1930s through the late 1940s, and more or less weekly for many years thereafter. In the 1970s the Boston WSP local had a regular program on the radio.

In 1939 the WSP started publication of The Western Socialist ("Journal of Scientific Socialism in the Western Hemisphere"). The name World Socialist Party was adopted in 1947 to avoid confusion with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party.

Tractarians and debaters rather than activists, the WSP persists today as a very small educational group, pamphleteering and leafletting for what it regards as the only truly and purely Marxian socialism. See also Proletarian Party

- Franklin Rosemont

REFERENCES

Jerome, W. "A Brief History of the World Socialist Party." The Western Socialist 33, no. 252 (1966).

Do They Mean Us? #17

I've been signed up to the Urban 75 messageboards for nearly four years now but I've only just this minute got round to checking out the 'urban75 dictionary'.

Of course, when you mention the SPGB and Urban 75 in the same sentence, it can only result in one possible response: 'nomoney'! And, right enough, he's even got his own entry in the dictionary:

nomoney [noun] extreme and vocally sectarian dogmatist who can't see how anyone can come to different conclusions to their sect.

They would say that. 'nomoney' - long gone from the messageboards but not forgotten.

Do They Mean Us? #16

Bloggers block can mean only one thing . . . a dash of cut and paste to conjure up another post in the 'Do They Mean Us?' series:

“At the Barras market in Glasgow about 25 years ago open air political meetings were not uncommon, and the best were conducted by a fiery brand of working-class revolutionaries called the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Founded about a hundred years ago (and still going, I’m glad to say) and proudly hostile to all other allegedly socialist or communist political parties, they had several fine speakers and in those less apathetic days could always raise a fair crowd of the starvelings whom they hoped to rouse from their slumber.

Scorn for their hearers’ meek acceptance of poverty and satire upon the quality of goods and services supplied to the workers were prominent in their arguments, as when the speaker would draw our attention to an evil-looking greasyspoon caff and recite parts of the horrible menu, concluding with Stomach pump free of charge. Once, when challenged by a wee bauchle with scarce a backside to his trousers on the grounds that ‘under socialism we widnae be individuals’, the agitator on the soapbox paused from his remarks on the rival attraction of ‘Jehovah’s Jazzband’ (a Salvation Army ensemble) just down the street, fixed him with a baleful eye, and loosed a withering tirade about how the questioner was obviously a proud specimen of individuality, with your individual Giro and your individual manky shirt and your individual football scarf and your individual council flat and your individual Scotch pie for your individual dinner . . .

It went on for ages, a tour de force of flyting”. [Kenneth Wright, Glasgow Herald, 13 February 2001.]

Being on the receiving end of the withering wit of Glasgow Branch comrades on many an occasion, I've narrowed the suspected speaker down to a shortlist of ten of the wizened old scrotes.

Special Note: I scoured the internet high and low but I couldn't find a picture of the Barras circa 1976, so I decided to throw post authenticity out of the window by posting a still from Bill Forsyth's 'That Sinking Feeling' to accompany the post. Trust me, Glasgow 1980 was not that different from Glasgow 1976. The Smiles Better Sunshine Gimp was a lifetime away.

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.

Do They Mean Us? #14

"The Labour Party, Trades Council and the STUC . . . were largely responsible for securing the biggest postwar demonstration in Glasgow till then, at the start of the 1960s. Incidentally, that was the demonstration that produced the slogan to end all sectarian slogans. Just as we were turning round the corner of Sauchiehall Street two grim stalwarts of the Socialist Party of Great Britain were standing heralding the march with a huge banner and slogan which read: ‘This demonstration is useless – You must first destroy capitalism.” [Janet and Norman Buchan, “The Campaign in Scotland”, in The CND Story, edited by Hohn Minnion and Philip Bolsover, 1983, p. 53.]

Dusting down an old series as a stop gap for the blog. Truth is that bloggers block has kicked in as I am too busy wishing that I was at this Conference 3470 miles away. *Sigh*.

I originally read the quote cut and pasted above years ago in an old copy of the Socialist Standard. It's definitely SPGB old skool. How could it not be? What with the incident involving the original 'Cold Water Brigade, Glasgow Branch, and dating from the height of the first wave of the nuclear disarmament, it reinforces all the preconceptions held against us by the 'Do something NOW?' brigade, and also makes our (few) political friends wince in partial recognition.

Part of me would love to pretend that we're not really like this - or that we've mellowed down the years - but sometimes you have to put your hands up to the fact that it's best to be blunt about such matters. Over forty years later and there's three of us doing a stall at the recent Brooklyn Peace Fair, and what's our opening line to the people hovering by our stall?:

"If you want to get rid of war, you have to get rid of capitalism."

The haircuts and the clobber may have changed down the years, but the patter's just the same.

Do They Mean Us? #13

From the latest issue of the Weekly Worker:

“I do wonder why you publish letters from people who clearly do not subscribe or make financial donations to the Weekly Worker,” writes comrade AN, who has sent us a £20 cheque for our April fighting fund. “It feels like they are taking a considerable liberty by asking you to publish their material and yet do nothing to help support your existence.”

As the other great JC, Jack Conrad Julian Cope, once said, "Bless my cotton socks I'm in the news."

No, not me; someone else.

Do They Mean Us? #12

No idea why, but I seemed to have put this blog series in cold storage in recent months, but along pops the letters page of this week's Weekly Worker to bring it back to life:

SPGB time-warp

I was intrigued by the letter from Alan Johnstone of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (March 20).

Over the past 20 years or so, the ‘Socialist Party’s’ house journal has become a shadow of its former self, having been transformed into a coffee table glossy, containing long, rambling, self-indulgent articles on the state of the world and the individual, denuded of any study of Marxism, or need for revolution, or the role and changing nature of the state in any such process.

Johnstone’s party in its reverence for parliamentary bodies is trapped in a time-warp and unable to find a way out. It has ditched its former, strictly defined identity, but failed to develop one relevant to the 21st century, which is why it is decaying, demoralised and internally fractious.

It is true that Marx once maintained, between 1870 and 1883, there was a possibility of a peaceful transformation of bourgeois democracy into proletarian democracy in the United States and Britain (Johnstone even denies the desirability of proletarian democracy!). At that time monopoly capitalism did not exist, imperialism had only just been born and bureaucracy and militarism were not yet highly developed. Later, in 1917, Lenin stated - in his outstanding scientific study of the Marxist theory of the state and revolution - that this exception was outdated and non-existent and that in these two countries too the destruction of the bourgeois state machine and its replacement by a new one was the indispensable precondition for the proletarian revolution.

Parliament did once function as the executive of the capitalist class in its struggle against feudalism. But with the development of monopoly capitalism, parliamentary democracy - democracy for capital - lost its validity. The dominant section of the ruling class could no longer control events through this machinery. A new apparatus of government was developed: a cabinet and prime minister with supreme power; increased use of ‘orders in council’, statutory instruments and other powers to ministers; a well organised civil service, central and municipal; a police force and a standing army. Other instruments of coercion such as the judiciary and prisons are complemented by the ideological apparatus of the educational system, the mass media and, lastly, parliament.

‘Democratic’ methods are always preferred by the capitalist class as being more effective, but history, logic and common sense tells us that when democratic means and other methods of influencing opinion start to fail, the real powers behind these come into play: the repressive machinery of the law, the police and prisons in individual cases, the armed forces when the threat to capitalist policy and safety is on a large scale.

The conclusion is that the only way to solve the contradictions of capitalist production, to put an end of class conflicts, international wars and environmental destruction, which are inseparable from capitalism, is for the conscious organisation of the working class to take power by revolutionary action, to destroy the capitalist state machine and carry through the change to socialism, on the basis of which a communist society can develop.

Andrew Northall

Kettering

Ouch. Hell hath no fury like an ex-member sticking the boot in.

"Internally fractious"? Absolutely. It's having one of its periodic rows and I wouldn't pretend there is any light at the end of the tunnel, but it's kind of cute for a latter day Leninist accusing the SPGB of not adapting to the 21st century.

And the dig about the coffee table Socialist Standard not measuring up to its inky ancestor from the late eighties? Curious accusation to make which doesn't really bear out on close inspection. I actually have some sympathy with any critic - friendly or otherwise - raising the issue of there not being enough theory in the pages of the Standard but that criticism was equally valid in '78, '88, '98 and 2008. It's rooted in an ancient Conference resolution which means that the Standard is primarily aimed at the first time reader which means, in my personal opinion, that it will always be caught between two stools.

If Northall's criticism is to hold any water, it's a criticism he should have been making in '88 or '98, never mind 2008, but that would mean that he'd have to explain what he was doing in the SPGB during all that time.

Do They Mean Us? #11

Gray over at 'Isn't It About Time We Tried Socialism?' blog espies a mention of the late comrade, Wally Preston, over at Shiraz Socialist.

Wally rejoined the SPGB after his time in the IS/SWP (I understand he was the IS Industrial Organiser for a time in the early seventies), and was a driving force behind the incredibly active Eccles Branch of the SPGB in the 1980s.

His widow, Blanche, is still a stalwart of the SPGB.

Do They Mean Us? #9 & #10*

Two for the price of one: A brief resumption of what has always been an irregular series.

Via the yahoogroup, Leftist Trainspotters, comes the news that there is now a page on ETOL especially dedicated to the late John Sullivan's wonderfully witty writings from the eighties that satirically skewered just about every British far left group that ever had a batch of unsold papers overstuffed in the magazine rack at Housmans Bookshop.**

Pride of place naturally goes to his two pamphlets, 'Go Fourth and Multiply', published in 1981 under the pseudonyms of Mo Klonsky and Chas Aguirre, and the pamphlet that updated and overtook GF&M;, 'As Soon As This Pub Closes', published in 1986 but this time using the pseudonym of Prunella Kaur. (I bet I got the pseudonyms mixed up.)

Bob Pitt's What Next? had previously published 'As Soon As This Pub Closes' on the net, (the late Al Richardson's obituary for John Sullivan that appeared in What Next? can be read here), but it's wonderful that both pamphlets are now together on the same link, alongside a piece, 'Rolling Your Own', that I'd previously never read before.

'Rolling Your Own' dates from the same period as 'As Soon As This Pub Closes'***, and is a handy bullet pointed guide to kick starting your own sect. Think the SWP's Rebel Guide Pocket Pamphlets, and then toss that thought out the window. . . the analogy doesn't work.

I have one minor quibble, however, with Sullivan's essay; his list of forgotten theoreticians included in bullet point, 3.2, in the section entitled Ideology. What about a Menshevik Internationalist franchise based around the writings of Martov? It could have been a contender.)

I could overwork the cut and paste button on the keyboard reproducing choice nuggets from both pamphlets where Sullivan hoisted the left on its very own piss-poor petard - just the subheadings should be evidence enough of the wittiness of Sullivan's pen: "If you enjoyed the 1950s, you’ll love the NCP" . . . "The Agonies of Being English" (about the RCG) - but as this post is supposed to be part of the SPGB series, Do They Mean Us?, I'll confine my cut and paste to Sullivan's gentle barbs lobbed in the direction of the SPGB:

From 'Go Fourth and Multiply' (1981):

"THE Socialist Party is in some ways the most extreme of all left organisations. It stands for nothing less than complete socialism now and has no time for Labour governments, Alternative Economic Plans, or any kind of transitional strategy.
On the other hand, the SPGB can be seen as moderate. Its activity consists of contesting elections, selling its publications and giving lectures. It abhors violence and sees no reason why the socialist society should not be smoothly inaugurated once it gets a parliamentary majority. It is this legalism which has prompted the gibe that they are the Small Party of Good Boys.

The SPGB is sometimes ridiculed for having so few members after 77 years’ work. (This gibe surely loses force as the groups formed in the 1960s settle into middle age without having found a way to the masses.) . . .

From 'As Soon As This Pub Closes' (1986)

". . . People have the impression that a group bound to a doctrine first enunciated in 1904 must be composed of dogmatic robots. Nothing could be further from the truth! The SPGB was, until recently, full of the most delightful and varied eccentrics one could hope to meet. The reason for this is that although the D of P is sacrosanct, it covers only the question of how the socialist society will be brought about. The party, in contrast to many other sects, does not try to regulate its members’ domestic lives, eating habits or personal relationships . . .

. . .However, the D of P, inflexible as it is in the area which it covers, does not specify what the society of the future will be like; consequently, SPGB meetings, whatever the ostensible topic, quickly tend to gravitate towards discussion on precisely this theme. Under socialism will we be vegetarian, monogamous or not? Will we still live in cities? Will we use more or less water, and will goods still be mass produced? Visitors to SPGB meetings, expecting to hear solemn Marxists discussing how to overthrow the bourgeoisie, are usually surprised and charmed. No speculation is forbidden by the D of P, so imaginations can soar, unfettered by the tedious discussions on tactics and strategy which form the content of most socialist theory. Even the least imaginative of the speculations are more appealing than descriptions of the Christians’ dreary, male chauvinist heaven . . .

. . . As we reach the fag end of the twentieth century, thoughts inevitably turn towards the centenary celebrations in 2004. Conway Hall has been looking a bit dowdy in recent years, but it is a central spot with many associations for socialists, so it might well be the site for the festivities. A committee will be set up to determine the precise form which these will take, as the party does not believe in arbitrary decisions by authoritarian leaders. It can look forward with quiet confidence. Membership has grown from a mere 100 founders to nearly 700. In contrast, most of its early rivals have passed into history, and later competitors are in disarray. The Communist Party is splintered and in apparently terminal decline, while the Labour Party has abandoned whatever socialist rhetoric it once employed to deceive the masses. The Socialist Workers Party no longer attracts intelligent young people as it did in the early 1970s, so the SPGB can look forward to having the field to itself. The apolitical sociologists asking boring questions about the party’s social composition are a nuisance, but the D of P has nothing to say about them."

Poor John . . . if only he was about today to write up the sequel to the sequel. No idea what his pseudonym would have been this time around, but perhaps he could have toyed with the idea of calling the updated pamphlet, 'We Started Something We Couldn't Finish'. Twenty-One years is a long time waiting for a revised edition. And a hell of a lot can happen in the intervening period . . . even in the case of the 'Small Party of Glasgow Bookies'

*Hat tip to the Phil Evans cartoon that I've lifted so shamelessly from the online version of 'More Years For The Locust', by that other seriously funny writer from the Trotskyist tradition, Jim Higgins.

**On the left side of the picture, sandwiched inbetween 'Workers Action' and 'Marxist Review' - and to the left of the 'Jewish Socialist', naturally - is the 'World Socialist Review', the occasional printed journal of the World Socialist Party of the United States. Why no Socialist Standard in the picture? As it looks like an oldish pic of the magazine rack in Housmans, I'm guessing that either the infamous Max placed it under the counter as an act of Stalinist intervention or some embittered ex-SPGB member hid that month's batch behind the ICC titles. OK, I'm lying. Comag probably fucked up the delivery . . . again.

***Named after the Alex Glasgow song of the same name.

Do They Mean Us? #8

"stupid trotsky-fascists"

The above two word reply* to little old me posting this piece on the unofficial Socialist Standard page reminded me that I hadn't updated the 'Do They Mean Us?' series on the blog for a while.

I remember reading the following choice quote in the seventieth anniversary issue of the Socialist Standard in the mid-eighties.** Considered such a badge of honour for the Party, the denunciation was reprinted in the June 2004 special commemorative issue of the Socialist Standard and I bet a Party historian could point to seven or eight other occasions when the quote has been lovingly put in bold within the pages of the SPGB press. Nothing like being noticed:

“The Communist Party has NO dealings with murderers, liars, renegades, or assassins. The SPGB, which associates itself with followers of Trotsky, the friend of Hess, has always followed a policy which would mean disaster for the British working class. They have consistently poured vile slanders on Joseph Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, told filthy lies about the Red Army, the Soviet people and its leaders, gloated over the assassination of Kirov and other Soviet leaders, applauded the wrecking activities of Trotskyist saboteurs in the Soviet Union. They have worked to split the British working class, and are in short agents of Fascism in Great Britain. The CPGB refuses with disgust to deal with such renegades. We treat them as vipers, to be destroyed”.(Letter from Secretary of the West Ham branch of the Communist Party, 23 February 1943, reproduced in Socialist Standard, May 1943).

Jeez, that bloke on MySpace is an amateur. That's how you denounce somebody; And some pundits will still try and insist that political debate has plummeted into the gutter since the ascendancy of political blogging?

I love the fact that it's the secretary of the West Ham branch of the old CPGB who is bursting a bloodvessel. So much for the myth of the cheery, chirpy cockneys. West Ham fans were frothing at the mouth even back then. No ICF . . . No Alf Garnett . . . and No Calum Davenport playing like a ricket in defence, and yet the Upton Park faithful were still one hammer short of a tool box.

*In fairness to the bloke, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. From looking at his MySpace profile, I think he takes pleasure in being a political wind-up merchant. I can identify with that.

**In the mid-eighties, when you enquired for more information from the SPGB, they were prone to sending people back issues of the Socialist Standard from ten years before. Test the rule: if you hurry quick, you might strike lucky and get the special June 1994 Euro-Election issue of the Socialist Standard. I sold mines for seven kopecks on Ebay about three months ago. It's a collector's item.

Do They Mean Us? #7

Taken by the title of the blog, the Friday morning reader makes a discovery.

Do They Mean Us? #6

Missed this mention of the unofficial Socialist Standard MySpace page at the time - though I note that Alan J got his fourpenneth in . . . good lad:

"Late last year, while preparing for a lecture on politics & online communities for a 3rd-year module Communities On-line (which I taught on with Janet Finlay) I had a look in MySpace and did some searches on political terms. I searched for the major UK parties and found a small number of Lib Dem and New Labour MPs, all with derisory numbers of 'friends' . . . The term 'socialist' was a cracker, though, turning up the Socialist Standard page with around 13,000 friends (as of today, ranking it behind only Obama and Clinton on the technpresident table). Socialist Standard is the organ of the rather wonderful Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) who, as well as arguing for the abolition of money, only have one form of political intevention - the debate. (I've had a soft spot for them ever since one of their number engaged in a year-long correspondence with a rather spotty 16 year old who had written a letter to the local newspaper in the 1970s. The letters I received weren't formulaic, but long, detailed responses to the points I had raised in my letters. ) This raises the question though: what is it about the SPGB and MySpace that generated this number of 'friends', and what might it signify?

It's good to know that as well the page reaching out to a new generation of readers, it also has cause to occasionally drop into the cyber-lap of the former subscriber/last century reader/yesterday's political adversary.

As the author of the quote, Steve Walker, teaches at Leeds Metropolitan University, perhaps he has been known to break biscuits with that well known ex-SPGBer at the other ivory tower in Leeds?

And, in answer to his closing question: "What might it signify?"

Probably sod all . . . except that with the innovation of publicising the Standard on MySpace, we've hopefully pushed the average age of the magazine's readership down to 71 years . . . and, for the casual peruser of the myspace page, forever associated revolutionary socialism with an impeccable taste in music.