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Wednesday, October 14, 2015
The House of Twenty Thousand Books by Sasha Abramsky (New York Review Books 2015)
Friday, October 24, 2014
Time to say goodbye . . . .
I guess eleven plus years is long enough:
Peter Saville (Enzo Cilenti): "The posters."
Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan): "You've got the posters? It's the fucking gig!"
Peter Saville: "Yeah, I know - it just took ages to get the right yellow."
Tony Wilson: "The gig's over."
Peter Saville: "I know."
Tony Wilson: "It looks fucking great actually - yeah, really nice. It's beautiful - but useless. And as William Morris once said: "Nothing useless can be truly beautiful."'
From Michael Winterbottom's '24 Hour Party People'
http://invereskstreet.blogspot.com/
I always enjoyed it more than other people.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Mixing footie with non-market socialism?
As much as I'd like to think that my sitemeter sighting has uncovered a hitherto unknown connection between midlands footie and non-market socialism - Romeo Zondervan and Martin Jol sent by Cajo Brendel to the Black Country in the early 80s to form a Council Communist cell, perhaps? - I'm guessing the person googling was looking for this 'William' Morris.
Maybe they'll pop back to the blog and put us all straight?
Monday, December 28, 2009
The Road to Socialism - Kropotkin, Morris and Marx
A date to put in that new diary you got from your Auntie Rhea:
Hat tip to Fraser for the image. Three months to read this old piece on what Marx should have said Kropotkin.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
William Morris's Vision of Socialism
Another bit of flagrant cut and paste from the blog archive.
Another talk from the 1982 'Socialist Thinkers – People Who History Made' lecture series.
According to the Socialist Standard of the time, the talk dates from Sunday 12 December 1982, and was held at the Prince Albert pub in Kings Cross, London.
First Part
DOWNLOAD LINK: William Morris's Vision of Socialism
FILE NAME: 02 william morris Part 1.mp3
FILE SIZE: ~60.58 megabytes
LENGTH:1:05:46
Second Part
DOWNLOAD LINK: William Morris's Vision of Socialism
FILE NAME: 03 William Morris Part 2.mp3
FILE SIZE: ~50.57 megabytes
LENGTH: 54:54
Further Reading on William Morris:
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Can We Be Frank?
Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (35)
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the 35th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.
We now have 1191 friends!
Recent blogs:
'Pro-life' hypocrites How We Live and How We Could Live Upton Sinclair and 'The Jungle'
This week's top quote:
"But first, I will say what I mean by being a Socialist, since I am told that the word no longer expresses definitely and with certainty what it did ten years ago. Well, what I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers, nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all - the realization at last of the meaning of the word COMMONWEALTH." William Morris, How I became a socialist, 1894.
Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!
Robert and Piers
Monday, December 24, 2007
William Morris's Vision of Socialism
Penultimate talk from the 'Socialist Thinkers – People Who History Made' lecture series.
According to the Socialist Standard of the time, the talk dates from Sunday 12 December 1982, and was held at the Prince Albert pub in Kings Cross, London.
First Part
DOWNLOAD LINK: William Morris's Vision of Socialism
FILE NAME: 02 william morris Part 1.mp3
FILE SIZE: ~60.58 megabytes
LENGTH:1:05:46
Second Part
DOWNLOAD LINK: William Morris's Vision of Socialism
FILE NAME: 03 William Morris Part 2.mp3
FILE SIZE: ~50.57 megabytes
LENGTH: 54:54
Further Reading on William Morris:
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Hammersmith and Islington
Just posted on the unofficial Socialist Standard page on MySpace is a double book review from the September 1985 Socialist Standard of a couple of excellent books published in the old Journeymen Press series :
William Morris's Socialist Diary, edited and annotated by Florence Boos; "Don't Be A Soldier!" – the Radical Anti-War Movement in North London 1914-1918 by Ken Weller
If I remember rightly, The Journeymen Press - in association with the History Workshop Journal - published a series of monographed pamphlets in the early eighties focusing on working class history. I only know of the four books in the series that were once on my bookshelf:
I'd love to know if there were others in the series, but the internet doesn't really help me out. The good news is that Morris's diary, with Florence Boos introduction and footnotes is available online via the Marxist Internet Archive. I've never been on the Morrisonian wing of the SPGB, but I agree with the reviewer that it's humbling to read that as brilliant a man and socialist that Morris was, he still had the doubts, depressions and the political down days that the rest of mere mortals have in the here and now.
Of the two books under review in the Standard, I especially recommend Ken Weller's book if you can get a hold of it. Weller was one of the driving forces behind the old libertarian socialist group, Solidarity, and as the Socialist Standard writer acknowledges in his review, the subject of the book was obviously a real labour of love for Weller, shining a light on a corner of radical working class history that has been hidden from view all too well down the years.
I'm ready to be corrected but what was also refreshing about such a specialised labour history work is that I don't think it started out as a PhD thesis, and thus is very readable for those of us who aren't schooled in ploughing through the usual academese. (If I'm wrong, I apologise but Weller's prose doesn't read like someone trying to get a doctorate. It reads like someone trying to pass on ideas to the rest of us half-educated eejits.)
I take the reviewer's point about the strange position of the SPGB within the text - to paraphrase Trotsky, we've been 'consigned to the footnote of history' - but as I remember it there are enough references in the text to members and ex-members of the SPGB during the period under discussion to bring out two important points from the book:
1) That despite the best attempts of our political opponents on the left in the capacity of their day jobs as historians and wannabe academics, the SPGB was not marginalised from either radical working class politics or the fabled 'official labour movement' from its foundation. It's there in the pages of Weller's book that the SPGB had a voice and made an impact of sorts in that tumultuous time of working class politics. It was one of those periods in its history - and there have been others - when the SPGB punched well above its weight;2) and following on from the mention of it being tumultuous times, Weller, by focusing on one part of North London, was able to bring to the modern day reader the sense of fluidity and vibrancy of radical politics during that time. (And as a consequence explains inadvertently better than most why the SPGB took on the curmudgeonly 'personality' that it did, which has been misunderstood and understood all too well in equal measure ever since.) Granted, the text starts from a low point for radical politics in that period; covering a time that begins with the capitulation of the major parties of the Second International to a defencism and nationalism that they previously asserted that they would never be sucked into, but Weller was able to rescue from the margins and - yep - the footnotes those few workers who stood against the tide of patriotism and our masters' interests.
Recommended.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
The First Paper Sale To You
Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (19)
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the 19th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.
We now have 917 friends!
Recent blogs:
Religion or capitalism: Which is the root of evil? Ethics and the class struggle The postal workers strike
This week's top quote:
"It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious." William Morris, 1884.
Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!
Robert and Piers
Socialist Party of Great Britain
Hat tip to Buff for pointing me in the direction of Adam Koford.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
If You Will Insist In Trying To Quote William Morris This Is How You Should Do It
I think I have already set my stall out on what I think about William Morris in a previous post, but I thought I would reproduce the following 'cos if you are going to try and win special kudos by quoting one of the old beards I think the following exchange of dialogue between Tony Wilson and Peter Saville from Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People is the right way to go about it:
[Peter Saville eventually turns up towards the end of the launch of the Factory music night, and approaches Tony Wilson to hand him the finished posters that were supposed to advertise this self-same Factory music's night launch.]
Peter Saville (Enzo Cilenti): "The posters."
Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan): "You've got the posters? It's the fucking gig!"
Peter Saville: "Yeah, I know - it just took ages to get the right yellow."
Tony Wilson: "The gig's over."
Peter Saville: "I know."
Tony Wilson: "It looks fucking great actually - yeah, really nice. It's beautiful - but useless. And as William Morris once said: "Nothing useless can be truly beautiful."'
A nice wee slice of dialogue courtesy of Frank Cottrell-Boyce (who I can just about excuse for writing episodes of Brookside - however, the jury is still out on whether or not he can be forgiven for writing a column for the Revolutionary Communist Party magazine, Living Marxism. ) but you imagine Tony Wilson saying something as Pseud Cornerish as that in real life.
From what I saw of the film it looks like another gem from Michael Winterbottom, who with In This World and Wonderland has made two of my favourite films of recent years.
Admittedly, I could only ever seem to download the first half of 24 Hour Party People from the internet, but the first half does includes scene of the Sex Pistols playing a gig at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976, organised by the blokes who later became the original line up of the Buzzcocks.It is also the half of the film that includes the formation of Joy Division; the death by suicide of Joy Division lead singer, Ian Curtis, and the launch of the Hacienda club amongst other things, and there are nice wee cameos from Peter Kay, Howard Devoto and Mark E. Smith.
Funnily enough, it appears to be nigh on impossible to download the second half of the film.
I guess the story of how New Order got John Barnes to do the World In Motion rap; the Happy Mondays banrupting Factory Records financially when recording the follow up to 'Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches' whilst Northside were bankrupting Factory Records critically isn't that alluring a second half.
Erm, this post has mutated from being about the use and abuse of William Morris's legacy to being about Michael Winterbottom's brilliance of moving from one genre of film to another time after time, Tony Wilson's ego, and the exasperation at tight wad Joy Division fans who won't put the second half of 24 Hour Party People on Winmx for the rest of the unwashed to download. Further confirmation that Morris is never exactly uppermost in my mind even when I'm supposed to be writing a post about the poor sod.