of trotological interest

[ZJW]

‘Hack work vs. history: Aidan Beatty’s “The Party Is Always Right: The Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism’:https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/13/dxgf-a13.html

(The anthropologist who is mentioned — John Comaroff — has an interesting-looking book called ‘Ethnicity Inc.’:https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo6206909.html)

[imposs1904]

I’ll tag the details of this new biography of Paul Foot onto this thread, instead of starting another one:

Paul Foot

The biographer, Margaret Renn, was from the same political tradition as Foot, and was also his contemporary.

Foot first originally joined the International Socialists in Glasgow in the early 60s when he was working as a local journalist. He also knew the SPGB in Glasgow. I remember a comrade contacted Foot a few years before he died, to ask him about this, and he replied with the following:

“I went to Glasgow for my first job (a reporter on the Daily Record) in September 1961. I joined the Young Socialists and the Woodside Labour party. A highly influential figure in the Woodside YS at the time was Vic Vanni, a big, very good-looking and persuausive bloke, a sheet metal worker, whose father had come to Glasgow from Italy, and ran a fish and chip shop. I became friendly with Vic and liked his sense of humour. He was greatly influenced by the SPGB, and many times I went with him and others to hear the SPGB lecturers in St Andrews Hall (I think). We also heard SPGB speakers like Dick Donnelly speak at open air meetings off Sauchiehall St.
“Before I left Glasgow in 1964, Vic joined the SPGB and I think he is still a member, probably a very senior one. . .

“These SPGB speakers had a wonderful, proletarian, down-to-earth way of conveying Marxist ideas. They were all, without exception, sardonic and witty speakers, and they made a profound impression on me. In particular, they scornfully rejected the idea – prevalent at the time, that Russia etc were Socialist countries . . .”

[Author]

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