‘Ronald’ in the Socialist Standard

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January 3, 2015 at 12:14 am #83448

imposs1904
Participant

Hi all,

I guess this is a question for the older Party members on the list.

Anyone have idea who the Socialist Standard writer, 'Ronald', was? I've previously corresponded with Keith Scholey, the Party archivist, on this question and though he doesn't know himself he was able to ascertain that 'Ronald' wrote for the Standard in the periods 1949-51 and 1971-72, that he was based in the East End of London and that he was a teacher.

My reason for asking is that I've recently transcribed a number of Socialist Standard pieces penned by 'Ronald' from the 1949-51 period, and it's always nice if you can actually name the comrade behind the pen name.

I'm not saying his articles and reviews were especially brilliant, but they were interesting enough. Here's some links to a few of his articles:

November 1949: The People You Meet – Gilbert

http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-people-you-meetgilbert.html

December 1949: The People You Meet – Punchy

http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-people-you-meed-no-2-punchy.html

January 1950: The People You Meet – Just a Housewife

http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-people-you-meet-no-3-just-housewife.html

February 1950: The People You Meet – George

http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-people-you-meet-no-4-george.html

June 1950: Review of a Party member's novel

http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/01/my-time-and-what-life.html

July 1950: Review of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead

http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-naked-and-dead.html

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

yfs,

January 3, 2015 at 12:17 am #107459

imposs1904
Participant

Apologies for the strange formatting of the above post. The pitfalls of cross-posting.

January 4, 2015 at 11:34 am #107460

ALB
Keymaster

I spoke to John Lee (who joined in the late 40s) about this and we think he must be Ron Paulus, especially as you say he wrote again in 1970-71. According to John, he too joined in the late 40s and must have dropped out for a while as he rejoined Haringey branch in 1969/70 of which we were both members at the time. Julian Vein remembers the name but not the person. Unfortunately, the branch minute books for the period are lost. A member left them on the top of his car and drove away without realising and they must have dropped off somewhere. It wasn't me but a member called Malyon who told an interesting story about the end of the war. He was in the army in Norway at the time the German troops there surrendered and was part of a detail taking the details of each soldier. He says that the British soldiers robbed all the Germans of their wrist-watches. That must have been against the Geneva convention. Another anecdote for Monument: the Continuation.

January 4, 2015 at 2:57 pm #107461

imposs1904
Participant

Cheers for the reply. I'm half-hoping that PD will spot see my post, and that she might have more information.It'd be nice if someone stuck a tape recorder – showing my age – under John Lee's nose and got him to do a wee anecdotal rundown of his history in the Party.
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