Our invisibility.

April 2025 Forums General discussion Our invisibility.

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  • #257284
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    Reading our Sylvia Pankhurst pamphlet, I ask why she, and other well-known 20th century personalities who shared our views, didn’t join, or at least contact, the S.P.G.B. (Or even ever mention us!) Instead, they set up their own parties, which soon folded.

    #257311
    DJP
    Participant

    Pankhurst was one of the UK representatives of “left communism” and so didn’t share the same political views as the SPGB. Why would she need to contact them or mention them?

    Guy Aldred, if he counts as well-known, did in its beginning years nearly join the SPGB.

    #257312
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    According to the pamphlet, Pankhurst was for a time a real socialist, as her two pieces in the pamphlet demonstrate.

    #257313
    DJP
    Participant

    She thought workers should abstain from parliamentary activity. That’s at least one difference.

    #257314
    robbo203
    Participant

    Pankhurst was one of the UK representatives of “left communism” and so didn’t share the same political views as the SPGB.
    ………………

    There are differences but there are also clear commonalities, surely?

    #257317
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    Otherwise, why did we bother producing a pamphlet?

    #257318
    DJP
    Participant

    The original question was why didn’t Slyvia Pankhurst join or contact the SPGB, not whether she had any shared viewpoints. I just gave a good reasons why she wouldn’t have needed or wanted to.

    Obviously she had some shared viewpoints, but the same is true of a lot of people and organisations of that time, and now.

    • This reply was modified 1 month ago by DJP.
    #257320
    imposs1904
    Participant

    The longstanding British Communist Party leader, Harry Pollitt, was a member of Pankhurst’s Workers’ Socialist Federation in his early political days in the Greater Manchester area.

    He definitely knew of the SPGB back then as he mentions Moses Baritz approvingly in his autobiography, ‘Serving My Time’.

    The SPGB weren’t so kind to Pollitt in his CPGB leadership days, nicknaming him Harry Pollute . . . which I think is pretty funny, tbh.

    #257322
    Bijou Drains
    Participant

    She wouldn’t have passed the Form A

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