Guest writers for the Standard?

[alanjjohnstone]

I'm pleased that Chomsky is aware of our existence through your intitiative, Tristan, something that pleases me. Another reason to reach out to non-members. I think it also shows that someone of the prominent stature of Chomsky is approachable by a relatively insignificant party as we presently are and thus is also another encouraging sign for my proposal and may widen the pool of prospective contributors.  Need any accompanying submission require to have a critical commentary alongside? Could not the content of one particular article be worthy of our full endorsement and the only qualification required being that on other matters, there may well be differences of opinion which need not be gone into in that current issue of the SS, all easily explained in a brief introductory paragraph or two. (Just to be clear, i do not consider Chomsky's views on most aspects of politics to be above rigourous criticism and i don't suggest he is one of those writers who could produce an article that we could unqualifiably agree with without comment)But of my own suggestion, Derek Wall, may well fall into that caveat that ALB added having called us "hateful tossers"…Perhaps we can prove him wrong. 

[Tristan Miller]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Need any accompanying submission require to have a critical commentary alongside? Could not the content of one particular article be worthy of our full endorsement and the only qualification required being that on other matters, there may well be differences of opinion which need not be gone into in that current issue of the SS, all easily explained in a brief introductory paragraph or two.

I'd actually consider what you describe to be a critical commentary.  A critical commentary need not comprehensively address every point made by the original article, particularly if there's little or nothing in it we disagree with.

[moderator1]

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

moderator1 wrote:

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

 I also find it quite surprising that a member of the NERB was censured on the grounds of the hostility clause for retweeting a tweet from the Labour Party, yet we are proposing to give space in our Journal to writers who are not members of our Party.

This in fact is not what occurred if by "censured" you mean suspended.  What actually occurred was a party member informed a member of NERB that the twitter account they owned contained a retweet from Labour and they should take action to delete it – otherwise it was in breach of the hostility clause.The NERB member took umbridge at this information and responded with an insult which resulted in an indefenite suspension.

That wasn't what I meant, what I meant by censured was they were told they should take action to delete it. The point I am trying to make is that re tweeting something that makes a similar point to ours Although from the labout Party) is not a million miles away from inviting a non Socialist to write in the Standard. I don't think either re-tweeting the Labour Party or getting non Socialist writers in the standard is something we should be doing. I am willing to accept that this might not be a majority opinion of those members of the party registered on this forum.As to the term momentous, I do think that it is a momentous decision to have a change in editorial policy where we regularly invite non party members to contribute, you may not, but that's your prerogative.

My apologies for misunderstanding your concerns reiterated above.  My kneejerk response to the re-tweeting incident was with hindsight clearly off-topic and should have been posted in a personal capacity and not as moderator. 

[Author]

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