Socialist Studies 25 years
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Socialist Studies 102 Winter 2016 dropped through my letterbox todayhttp://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/socstudy102.shtmlsome interesting stuff and issues are still marking 25 years. The sectarianism article especially.
Just returned from a brief cut-price sojourn in Alicante which was heaving with retired fellow British proletarians escaping the rigours of a cruel austerity. You couldn't get into the hotel reception for motability scooters. Bit different from when my old dad were in Spain fighting in the civil war – for Franco. Claimed to have bagged himself a couple of anarchists. Any road up, I thought I'd log on and wish all members of the SPGB and Reconstituted SPGB a belated Happy New Year.
Bob Andrews wrote:Just returned from a brief cut-price sojourn in Alicante which was heaving with retired fellow British proletarians escaping the rigours of a cruel austerity. You couldn't get into the hotel reception for motability scooters. Bit different from when my old dad were in Spain fighting in the civil war – for Franco. Claimed to have bagged himself a couple of anarchists. Any road up, I thought I'd log on and wish all members of the SPGB and Reconstituted SPGB a belated Happy New Year.your father sounds like a charming, thoughtful and humane man, characteristics that you have clearly inherited.
Swore blind it was him shot George Orwell. I can believe it. Always was cack-handed the old man. Six inches higher and we would have been spared Nineteen Eighty-Four.
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Bob Andrews wrote:Swore blind it was him shot George Orwell. I can believe it. Always was cack-handed the old man. Six inches higher and we would have been spared Nineteen Eighty-Four.if another shot he'd taken one night, in the company of your mother, had missed by six inches, we'd have been spared you!
Tim Kilgallon wrote:Bob Andrews wrote:Just returned from a brief cut-price sojourn in Alicante which was heaving with retired fellow British proletarians escaping the rigours of a cruel austerity. You couldn't get into the hotel reception for motability scooters. Bit different from when my old dad were in Spain fighting in the civil war – for Franco. Claimed to have bagged himself a couple of anarchists. Any road up, I thought I'd log on and wish all members of the SPGB and Reconstituted SPGB a belated Happy New Year.your father sounds like a charming, thoughtful and humane man, characteristics that you have clearly inherited.
Thank you!
Hang on a minute Bob, he was being sarcastic!
Bob Andrews wrote:Hang on a minute Bob, he was being sarcastic!still hearing the voices then, eh Bob?
gnome wrote:Twford John wrote:Thank you for the link. It's quite an extraordinary read. Were any of observations made in this issue of Socialist Studies met and refuted by yourselves?Since there are those who evidently remain fascinated by this group it may be useful to make some salient observations:Much of the material published by 'Socialist' Studies is highly critical, and often outright contemptuous, of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which it refers to as the "Clapham-based Socialist Party" or the "Socialist Party of Clapham". The group variously claims that the SPGB is anarchist, reformist, capitalist, fascist, Stalinist, Trotskyist, undemocratic, and democracy fetishist. According to 'Socialist' Studies, the Socialist Party of Great Britain colludes with the Electoral Commission to "prevent Socialists [from] carrying out political propaganda on the web", and does this because its own propaganda is not being read as widely as that of 'Socialist' Studies. ' It also claims that the SPGB has a secret de facto leadership of "godfathers", who conspire to suppress socialist ideas and to destroy 'Socialist' Studies.'Socialist' Studies has repeatedly called on the SPGB to respond to some of these accusations and to engage in debates on the ideological differences. However, as these calls were made at the time 'Socialist' Studies was still claiming to be the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the SPGB refused to recognise their legitimacy.The only official published comment the SPGB has made on the 'Socialist' Studies group has been in an article devoted to the history of breakaway groups in the centenary issue of the Socialist Standard, which described them as "a small group of rather disgruntled ex-members".Sources of the references made in paragraph two above.'anarchist' "Reconstituted Socialist Party of Great Britain". Socialist Studies [then publishing as "The Socialist Party of Great Britain"]. 11 June 1991"Democracy and Principle". Socialist Studies. Socialist Studies [then publishing as "The Socialist Party of Great Britain"] (51). Spring 2003.'reformist'"Democracy and Principle". Socialist Studies. Socialist Studies [then publishing as "The Socialist Party of Great Britain"] (51). Spring 2003.'capitalist' "Democracy and Principle". Socialist Studies. Socialist Studies [then publishing as "The Socialist Party of Great Britain"] (51). Spring 2003."The Clapham-based Socialist Party – Just Another Capitalist Party". Socialist Studies [then publishing as "The Socialist Party of Great Britain"]. 1 August 2006.'fascist'"The Bourgeois Revolutionaries with the Judas Touch". Socialist Studies. Socialist Studies [then publishing as "The Socialist Party of Great Britain"] (14): 5–11. 1994.'Stalinist'; 'Trotskyist'"Desperate Spoiling Tactics". Socialist Studies. Socialist Studies [then publishing as "The Socialist Party of Great Britain"] (60). Summer 2006.'undemocratic; democracy fetishist'"Democracy and Principle". Socialist Studies. Socialist Studies [then publishing as "The Socialist Party of Great Britain"] (51). Spring 2003.
I'm with you Johnners. And well done Gnome. A delicious smorgasbord of everything that is wrong with the Socialist Party of Clapham and why, unless they apply for a drinks licence for number 52, they are doomed. Look at the history. The political emigrees of 1848 and 1871, after all the political hoo-ha died down, found themselves in drinking dens, boozing, playing cards, smoking, getting themselves recruited as police spies and having sterile political arguments until the emergence of socialist politics in the 1880's came along to spoil it all. We've had almost 130 years ( if you include Morris' Socialist League) of socialist propaganda that has produced nothing, since it is based on a number of false premises. What we need now are licenced premises ( with a nice big telly to watch the footy). As far as socialism is concerned it's: Time Gentlemen Please!
Bob Andrews wrote:We've had almost 130 years ( if you include Morris' Socialist League) of socialist propaganda that has produced nothing, since it is based on a number of false premises.OK, indicate that you're capable of producing something constructive and edifying for a change; please enumerate these false premises, but on a new dedicated thread.
Bob Andrews wrote:I'm with you Johnners. And well done Gnome. A delicious smorgasbord of everything that is wrong with the Socialist Party of Clapham and why, unless they apply for a drinks licence for number 52, they are doomed. Look at the history. The political emigrees of 1848 and 1871, after all the political hoo-ha died down, found themselves in drinking dens, boozing, playing cards, smoking, getting themselves recruited as police spies and having sterile political arguments until the emergence of socialist politics in the 1880's came along to spoil it all. We've had almost 130 years ( if you include Morris' Socialist League) of socialist propaganda that has produced nothing, since it is based on a number of false premises. What we need now are licenced premises ( with a nice big telly to watch the footy). As far as socialism is concerned it's: Time Gentlemen Please!I had somehow imagined you were a member or sympathiser of the Socialist Studies group , Bob Andrews, but it seems now that you are either a non-socialist, or even anti-socialist, cynic. Thats OK but why dont you just come out and say it so we all know where you stand?
The Gary Slapper obituary reminds us that Islington Branch throughout the 1980's was the most 'vibrant', and 'energetic' in the Party. It also played a significant part in engineering the 'split'. Whatever became of Islington Branch. Why did it run out of energy ? Why did it stop vibrating? They couldn't have all been Anarchoplod.
Islington became Central London Branch, and then merged with Enfield and Haringey to become North London Branch, still going. Ta.
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