| Obituary:
Robert Barltrop Former member Robert Barltrop died on 26 April after a short illness. He joined the SPGB in 1946 as Robert Coster. A prolific speaker and writer for the Party, his work including the pamphlet Schools Today (1959). He resigned in 1959, before drifting into the fringes of the anarchist movement, and for a time even became an independent local councillor before rejoining the Party in 1970. He wrote prolifically for the Socialist Standard (and drew its first ever cartoon-strip feature), also serving for several years on the editorial committee. He left again in 1982. Born in 1922, in his youth, he was, amongst other things, an enthusiastic boxer, and always retained an interest in the pugilistic arts. He worked as a school-teacher. He was an excellent artist, especially line drawing, and an expert in calligraphy. Very proud of his London heritage, he wrote several books on the cockney patois, a pride also reflected in three short autobiographical works published by Waltham Forest Library and in his regular weekly column in the Newham Recorder. He also notably wrote a book on the American author Jack London. He was best known though for his work The Monument (1975), which remains a fascinating and entertaining introduction to the history of the SPGB. The book was largely written in the 1960s while he was out of contact with the Party, which explains the contentiousness of some of its many stories, anecdotes and perceptions. Robert Baltrop was a controversial figure in the Party but he was always very civil to younger members who had not crossed swords with him politically. With him vanishes a great London character. KAZ |
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| 50 Years ago The Snoopers A furore arose recently in the readers’ letters column of the Daily Mirror, when an article revealed that there were thousands of people employed by Finance Companies whose job it was to snoop into people’s lives, and report on would-be hire purchase customers’ credit reliability ( . . .) Most people look upon snooping as an unsavoury occupation, but do not see where the real unsavouriness lies. This kind of activity is an essential part of property society, a society which provides even more unsavoury occupations, such as the policeman who breaks strikers' heads with his truncheon, or the soldier mangling workers of other countries. The jobs themselves are not likely to ennoble the characters of the performers, but this is not the main issue. They are carrying out a necessary function of an irrational and harmful social order, and one which exemplifies the sheer idiocy of the social organisation. What sensible reason can there be for an arrangement whereby some workers produce goods, other workers advertise them, yet more workers arrange them in gaudy shop-windows, more workers fill in hire purchase forms, even more run the complicated accounting and collecting system of the finance companies, some more occupy their time snooping into the buyers' lives, others add up the bosses' profit, a few store it away in bank vaults, and finally, a tiny section of the population live more than comfortably on the proceeds? Surely a simpler and less wasteful arrangement is called for? Why should a vast number of people have to perform useless and frustrating tasks, in order to satisfy the selfish wishes of a ruling clique? Yet it is working people themselves who perpetuate this foolish system: who do the useless tasks as well as the useful; the unproductive as well as the productive. The trouble is that the alternative, a world of common ownership and common effort, is frightening in its simplicity. It seems too easy to be true. Nevertheless, true it is. It's as simple as that! (from an article by A.W.I. in the Socialist Standard, June 1959) |
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