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.

SPGB Glasgow Day School

More information

Glasgow Branch website

Edinburgh Branch website

Socialist Meeting in Glasgow: Why the SNP Must Fail

Glasgow Branch of the Socialist Party

Presents

Why the SNP Must Fail

Speaker: Vic Vanni

In his talk the speaker will look at the birth of the SNP and why it’s nickname was "The Tartan Tories” and he will explain how the SNP was transformed from the mere handful it had been until the late 1950s to the major political force it is in Scotland today.

The speaker will also look at the conflict which raged in the SNP for decades between the traditionalists and the pragmatists and why the triumph of the latter paved the way for this rags-to-riches transformation.

The SNP can hardly wait for the next General Election when it expects to make the substantial gains, probably at the expense of Labour, which it hopes will be a major step towards their goal of a fully independent Scotland.

Could this happen at some point in the future and would it be in the interests of the working class in Scotland if it did?

Wednesday, August 19th

8:30pm

Community Central Halls,

304 Maryhill Road.

Website: Glasgow Branch of the SPGB

Email: richard.donnelly1@ntlworld.com

Socialist Courier Blog

Glasgow May Day School (Saturday 9 May 1.00pm till 5.00pm)

May Dayschool 2009

Saturday 9 May 1.00pm till 5.00pm

Banks:Who needs them?

Community Central Hall 304 Maryhill Road Glasgow

Capitalism in Crisis:

1.00 - 2.15pm 2009: The Year of Economic Crisis.

Speaker Brian Gardner

Glasgow Branch.

This year has seen the collapse of banks, of building societies and the closure of factories and retail outlets. As millions of workers throughout the world face the re-possessions of their homes and the grow-ing fear of unemployment we ask why the economic bubble has burst. We look at the various "solutions" that are offered to alleviate the problems and analyse what can be learned from previous eco-nomic slumps. Previously abandoned by political econo-mists the old ideas of Keynes have made a startling come-back to the extent that many politicians are now espousing his ideas as a solution to the present economic woes. We look at the problem from a Marxist viewpoint and con-sider whether these ideas have value in today’s context.

2.15 - 3.30pm The Environment in Meltdown?

Speaker, John Cumming

Glasgow Branch

How serious is the threat to the global environment? Is the melting of the polar ice pack a product of global warming caused by natural causes or the over production of carbon gases? Is the growing water shortage as serious as depicted and is there any possible solution? Is man-made pollution the cause of the threat to the world's oceans and the possible destruction of the marine food chain? All these inter-related pollution problems are examined from a socialist analysis and some of the proposed solutions are examined.

3.30 - 3.45pm Tea break

3.45 - 5pm Can Socialism Solve the problems?

Speaker Paul Bennett

Manchester Branch

Modern society has produced immense social problems. We have millions of people existing on less than a $1 a day in-side a system that could produce enough food, clothing and shelter to satisfy all human needs. We have magnificent ad-vances in human knowledge but seem incapable of solving problems like world hunger, poverty and war. Wealth today takes the form of commodities - articles produced for sale with a view to making a profit. The Socialist Party is unique in that its only aim is world socialism - a society where everything is produced solely to satisfy need not make a profit. How would this new society based on common ownership operate? Could it solve the problems of capitalism?

Looking forward to seeing you all there.

For more information about the Glasgow Branch of the Socialist Party, please visit their Branch Website.

Socialist Party Debate: Did Trotsky Point The Way To Socialism?

Hat tip to Fraser for the poster.

1968 . . . and all that chat

Further to last Friday's post on the blog about an SPGB speaker at a session at Glasgow's Radical Independent Bookfair, 'News From Nowhere', the yahoo discussion list for SPGB members and sympathisers in the Caledonian area, carries a mini-report back of the meeting.

I've posted it in the comments of the blog through a mixture of respecting the comrades list privacy and because I want to hoover up the page views.

Bloggers with sitemeters will understand my reasoning.

PS - Don't quote on me this, but I'm pretty sure that the Benjamin Franks that was listed as one of the panel speakers is the same Benjamin Franks whose book, 'Rebel Alliances: The means and ends of contemporary British anarchists', was reviewed in the November 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Last time I looked there was a secondhand copy of the book in the Left Section of a secondhand bookshop in the East Village. I'll have to see if it's still there the next time I'm in the Lower East Side.

Socialist Party speaker at tomorrow's Glasgow Radical Independent Bookfair

'Learning from 1968……. To the Present'

RADICAL INDEPENDENT BOOKFAIR

August 23rd 2008

Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow

"Recent media reports on the 40th anniversary of the student protests of 1968 recalled students' discontent with class inequalities, civil rights and the increasing beureaucratic control of education. In 2008, in the grip of neoliberalism, recession, temporary contracts, job losses and increasing emphasis on 'employability' in education, it has been reported that today's students no longer want to change society or the education system, but instead just want their education to enable them to get good enough jobs so they can pay their rent. The August RIB will host a symposium that looks at these and other issues surrounding how education policy and practice has developed and changed over the last 40 years, and student/teacher responses to them."

Timetable:

1pm- Angela McClanahan (worker in higher education): Introduction

1.45 start- Benjamin Franks (worker in higher education)

2.05-2.10 start: Gordon Asher (student and worker in higher education)

2.30 Break

3pm Christian Garland (author and activist)

3.20-25 start: Victor Vanni (Socialist Party of Great Britain)

3.40-3.45 start: Audience discussion, chaired by Angela

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.