KAZ
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
A thousand thanking yous to the comrades and friends who turned up to distribute our materiale at the big May Day meet at Clerkenwell. A most heavy bag of leaflets (mostly "Problems" mated with "Manifestoes") vanished with considerable rapidity. Order of Jack Fitzgerald Socialist Hero Medals have been awarded to: Chris Dufton (NLB); Mike Foster (WMRB); Oliver Bond (WLB); Ray Ellison.
'I resigned for "personal reasons", not disagreement. I was fed-up with the controversies, although I was somewhat controversial. I tended (but only tended) towards the Turnerites. My father had died fairly recently. My girlfriend/companion had to get a job abroad (in Holland). I wanted a change of job. Hardy suggested I go into the Post Office, become active in the Union; and more or less got me work writing for "The Post", the official journal of the UPW. Although I did not join the Labour Party, or even support it, the union was affiliated to the L.P. This did not worry Hardy. But I decided to resign from the S.P.' (from a letter from Peter Newell).
This is the old deep-level shelter at Clapham North. Two tunnels about 1,200 feet long with connections to the surface. One of eight. They started building them in 1940 as air raid shelters but by the time they were finished the Blitz was over. They did use them briefly during the V-1 raids. They were intended to be part of an express tube system – a bit like the cross-rail. You can see one of the entrances when you come out of Clapham North tube. see: underground-history.co.uk/claphamn.php. Spooky ain't it. And all beneath number 52! I've often said while at the Maharani that the building next door is the entrance to the Clapham Common shelter where the Windrush boys were stored. Actually the first post-war West Indian migrants were housed at Clapham South.
Howdy! Please get this matter in proportion. It's difficult enough to get folk out for a sensible demonstration against the real enemy – capitalism and its wretched old Etonian reps. A demo against this would be one tiny group of old folks shaking their fists at another tiny group of old folks, cussing each other out about collectivisation and a hundred other things that happened before anyone was born. Youngies looking on with a wtf. As I have said their emphasis is on activism (rent strikes, trade union struggles) rather than party politics. Do you not like activism? (It's no socialism – but…). Any response other than a fairly polite review would be entirely inappropriate. – KAZ
Howdy!Yes. Well. Pickets. Press releases. My word!There were less than twenty people at the launch, all appeared to be well known to the organisers. I would say like our display it was primarily aimed at members (or whatever the MML has). Although they intend to move the display round the country, I would say it requires a certain degree of understanding of the period. Not sure how it would go down with the kiddies. Some one brought this up at launch.Subject matter was mainly labour movement" (activism including trade union) rather than specifically 'socialist', with few references to political parties (those to the BSP largely inaccurate – surprising given that the writer of the text is actually a professor of labour history: academics? meh!) . About one each to Lenin and the Bolshies (some sort of pop group?) and maybe a couple to the CP. All offhand. So the omission of ourselves was certainly not out of order.12 panels: 1. Timeline. 2/3. General about war. 4-6. Red Clydeside and the shop stewards movement. 7-11. Women activists (Mary Macarthur, Sylvia Pankhurst, Helen Crawfurd, Mary Barbour). 12. Anti-war movements.Very slick appearance. Although they had lottery funding (!) it came out fairly cheap. Big seven foot printed panels which rolled up into cannisters. £60 a go. Worth considering for our use – but since permanent would have to be general. Geezer used photoshop to do the layout.Datzboutit.KAZ
Howdy! I must be one of the few SPGBers to have actually visited the John Buckle Centre, even though it is only about 10 minutes away from no. 52. I think it is rather unfair to describe the RCP(ML) as a nutty sect. Apart from a rather strange obsession with North Korea, their politics are fairly orthodox Left and certainly less strident and self-obsessed than some of the Trots and the ethnic India 'Maoists' of Southall. I was warmly received on my visit and the individuals I met and dealt with were certainly less nutty than most of the SPGB folks I encounter on my London forays. I am always surprised how much these Leninist groups resemble our own. If they are a sect, what are we?
