Manchester, So Much To Answer Four

It's that time of year again, people. (Cue cut and paste.)

Anarcho-Stalinist-Wobbly-Zapatista surfer dudes The love child of Dane Bowers and Guy Garvey has the Christmas number 1, and Manchester Branch have once again issued details of the quiz from their end of year Branch social. It's the usual routine on the blog. I reproduce the quiz questions below. I place my own pisspoor answers in the comment box. Not ONE of my seven three readers - what with me just reading books and half-watching films it's been a fallow year for the blog - join in the spirit of the season by trying to supply their own answers and I then post the correct answers in the comments box at a later date.

. . . .Oh, and I once again use a variation on the same post title that I always use for the Manchester Branch end of year quizzes because I can't think of any wittier alternatives, and this year it actually makes sense.

Your starter for ten nine:

1. Which song contains the following lines?

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,

Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.

We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.

2. How many members did the Party have at its foundation?

3. He was born in Leeds in 1884; Kropotkin taught him to skate; Lord Alfred Douglas sued him for libel; he was the only British journalist present at the founding of the Comintern; he married Trotsky's secretary; he was an agent for MI6; he wrote a best-selling series of children's books. Who was he?

4. Who wrote many theatre reviews for the Socialist Standard in the 1990s?

5. Who was Dic Penderyn?

6. Who was Philoren, and what was the title of his book?

7. Why is Edmund Wilson's book on the background to the Bolshevik Revolution called To the Finland Station?

8. Two people were expelled from the SDF at its Burnley conference in 1904. One was Horace Hawkins; who was the other?

9. What happened in Tilbury on 22 June 1948?

Get googling guessing.

Manchester, So Much To Answer Three

It's that time of year again, people.

Anarcho-Stalinist-Wobbly-Zapatista surfer dudes have the Christmas number 1, and Manchester Branch have once again issued details of the quiz from their end of year Branch social.

It's the usual routine on the blog. I reproduce the quiz questions below. I place my own pisspoor answers in the comment box. Not ONE of my seven readers join in the spirit of the season by trying to supply their own answers and I then post the correct answers in the comments box at a later date.

. . . .Oh, and I once again use a variation on the same post title that I always use for the Manchester Branch end of year quizzes because I can't think of any wittier alternatives.

Your starter for ten:

1. 'On a summer day in the month of May a burly bum came hiking/ Down a shady lane through the sugar cane, he was looking for his liking./As he roamed along he sang a song of the land of milk and honey/ Where a bum can stay for many a day, and he won't need any money.'

Which song?

2. What is the subtitle or alternative title of News from Nowhere?

3. In 1907, why did the Party pay £2 to Richard Bell, secretary of the Amalgmated Society of Railway Servants?

4. What happened in Derbyshire on 24 April 1932?

5. Which Party member was known as 'Two Shirt'?

6. Which footballer refused to give a Nazi salute when England played Germany in Berlin in May 1938?

7. Which year were the big Party meetings at the Metropolitan Theatre?

8. Who were the four people who threw Engels' ashes into the sea?

9. Who was Ishi?

10. Where do Blackburn Rovers play?

Get guessing.

It's Getting Grimmer Up North*

A Socialist Party Day School

Organised by Manchester Branch

Saturday 12 September, 1pm - 5pm

Capitalism and the Crisis: the Latest Recession

Speaker: Adam Buick

Cassandras, Jeremiahs and Chicken-Lickens: Why it’s dangerous to hope for the worst.

Speaker: Paddy Shannon

Friends’ Meeting House

Mount Street

City Centre (next to Central Library and Manchester Town Hall)

*The first person to spot the deliberate typo in the poster gains free admission to the day school.

Manchester Branch - So much to answer for

Via the SPGB's discussion forum comes the questions from the quiz at the 2008 Manchester Branch Social:

1. 'Look around the mountains, in the mud and rain,/ You'll find the scattered crosses, some that have no name./ Heartbreak and toil and suffering gone,/ The boys beneath them slumber on.'

Which song?

2. What is the origin of the word 'boycott'?

3. Which Party member had a picture of Marx on his wall and told Special Branch it was Johannes Brahms?

4. With which industrial dispute is the song 'Which Side Are You On?' associated?

5. From which novel is the following exchange taken?

'... you sound just like my old man.'
'Is he a socialist?' Reid asked. He sounded incredulous. 'Lifelong SPGB member,' I said.

'SPGB? Oh, brilliant!' Reid said.

'What's the SPGB?' Myra asked.

6. Who killed Hattie Carroll, and when?

7. Which current Party branch (excluding Central Branch) is the longest-surviving?

(a) under the same name

(b) allowing for changes of name

8. What is 2807 Karl Marx?

9. Who or what is the Spartak Moscow football club named after?

I've been out the mix too long. Off the top of my head - and without resorting to google - I think I know two four of the answers.

They're promising the answers tomorrow, and I'll post them in the comments box alongside my excuses.

Madchester - So Much To Answer For

The Sick Society

Manchester Branch Day School

Saturday 19 April, 1pm to 5pm

Capitalism on The Couch

Speaker: Peter Rigg

Can Socialism Cure our Ills?

Speaker: Ed Blewitt

Friends Meeting House,

Mount Street,

City Centre

(next to Central Library and Manchester Town Hall)

Manchester, So Much To Answer To

Found via the SPGB discussion list, Manchester Branch's mini-quiz for the end of 2007:

1. ‘Rise like Lions after slumber/ In unvanquishable number —/ Shake your chains to earth like dew/ Which in sleep had fallen on you —/ Ye are many —they are few.’ Which poet, which poem?

2. When was Bolton Branch founded?

3. Who wrote 'And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda'?

4. In which city was Jim Finnie for many years the Party contact?

5. What was Shengwulian?

6. Where is Edgeley Lane?

7. What does OBU stand for?

8. When did Jack Fitzgerald die?

9. Who was Samuel Bamford?

I'll post the answers in the comment box when I get the answers myself.