ALB
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Young Master Smeet wrote:Indeed, what do they know of cricket who only cricket know?
So Keith Flett has already looked into this. Is he still in the SWP? But there's something in his blog I don't understand (and lets hope the Moderator isn't following this thread too closely but Kent do play at Tunbridge Wells). He says that overarm bowling was only legalised in 1864 but that Wisden started as a fast bowler for Sussex in 1845. But how can you bowl fast underarm?
At the time of course Hyndman was still a young man, still in fact an undergraduate at Cambridge, and it wasn't until nearly 20 years later that he read Marx.I found this other reference to him as a cricketer in a biography of the novelist George Meredith by SM Ellis published in 1919 (which I only bought second-hand because a book by Meredith was recommended in an early Socialist Standard and I wanted to know why; apparently it was because he painted his caracters as the product of their circumstances without free will). Meredith and Hyndman were life-long friends. Here's the reference about something that happened in 1863:
Quote:Henry Myers Hyndman, the future leader of Socialism, was at this date as a young man of twenty-one, an undergraduate of Trinity College, and a member of the Sussex County Eleven.Hyndman was basically a Tory and it was strange that he ever wanted to be associated with socialism but he did and was intrumental in introducing Marx's economic ideas to workers in Britain (as our obituary of him in 1922 recognised).
I knew I had read something about this on the internet and have finally tracked it down (with difficulty). It's from the site of the West Kent Radical History society:
Quote:Social Democratic Federation.The Social Democratic Federation / Social Democratic Party, Tunbridge Wells Branch (1886-1911)The Tunbridge Wells Branch of the Social Democratic Federation was formally established in the summer of 1886 . Many of its earliest members had previously been active in the town’s Tunbridge Wells Secular Society secularist and radical groupings, including David Geer and Tom Jarvis , while William Willis-Harris had been previously associated with secularists in London. The SDF in Tunbridge Wells continued the secularist agitation of the town’s branch of the National Secular Society into the Twentieth Century. During the spring, summer and autumn it held many of its meetings outdoors at the Tunbridge Wells Common, Lime Hill Road and Wood Street (off Camden Road ). The branch grew to be one of the Federation’s strongest. Unsurprisingly it attracted opposition from both Tory and Liberal politicians, and was blamed for a series of arson attacks in 1886 and 1887 , as well as several instances of public disorder, especially in organising marches of unemployed workers. Its members, many of whom were active trade unionists, suffered from blacklisting in retaliation.In the early 1890s the branch’s level of activity fell away as a result of some leading members being forced to leave town. Revival happened in the latter part of the decade. In 1897 David Geer was elected as councillor for the East Ward, one of two socialist councillors (the other being H C Lander of the Fabian Society) elected that year. Two further SDF councillors, William Bournes and James Milstead, were also elected in the next two years, together with other Labour and Fabian councillors. These councillors were strong supporters of municipally owned utilities, including electricity and telephones, and unsuccessfully campaigned for the construction of municipal housing. Trade unionists in the branch took leading roles in the town’s trades’ council and allied Labour Representation Committee and some supported the women’s suffragist movement. The branch’s opposition to the Boer War allowed Conservative opinion to portray the SDF and other local socialists as unpatriotic, and this was largely responsible for Geer and Milstead not being re-elected. However, the branch flourished in the first decade of the Twentieth Century and played a leading role in building the socialist movement throughout Kent and Sussex under the auspices of the South Eastern Counties Federation of Socialist Societies, working closely with branches of the Independent Labour Party. In 1909 the Social Democratic Federation was renamed the Social Democratic Party though this did not affect the organisation.In 1911 the Social Democratic Party joined with dissident branches of the Independent Labour Party and a number of independent socialist societies to form the British Socialist Party and the Tunbridge Wells Branch therefore became a branch of the new organisation.The Social Democratic Federation had a meeting hall capable of holding 200 people from 1886 until 1888 in the area between Quarry Road and the old Central Goods Station and the Social Democratic Party leased rooms in Upper Grosvenor Road from September 1909 until 1911.Note: this short piece is taken from an ongoing substantive piece of research by the author.I hadn't realised that the SDF was that reformists. No wonder the early members of the SPGB broke away from it to form a revolutionary socialist party ! The BSP went on to furnish the bulk of the members of the CPGB in 1920. Which tells us something about the reformism of that party too.
Apparently Hyndman, who later set up the SDF, played cricket for Sussex:http://www.sussexcricket.co.uk/blog-article/the-communist-cricketer?A=WebApp&CCID=14985&Page=97&Items=10
Class War have been running a campaign against another aspect of this sort of thing: so-called "poor doors" in luxury flats for the residents of the "social housing" there that the developers have had toagree to provide to get planning permission from the local council.http://www.classwarparty.org.uk/class-war-action/
Our comrades in Italy have translated the review into Italian and published it on their blog here:http://socialismo-mondiale.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/il-capitale-nel-xxi-secolo.html
Sorry to keep on about this (well, not really) but the ICC have no excuse for their criticism of the position we took on the war and the strikes towards the end of it since our position is easily accessible on the internet and elsewhere.This article "England's Engineers" is not only available on the Socialist Standard archives section of this site but is included in our 100th anniversary publication Socialism or Your Money Back.On our archive there's in an article "Strikes for Peace" which deals with this question explicitly:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1918/no-162-february-1918/strikes-peaceHere's some extracts from the first article:
Quote:Engineers have recently fought for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Bill. For that particular purpose they fought solidly and well. The masters tried their damnedest to beat and overwhelm them with lies and conquer them with hunger. They placarded the Midland towns with crafty official notices. They tried to split the strike with lies and scorn and they tried to split it with bribes and threats. Yet the engineers ignored splendidly the Government promises, official and outside opinion, together with the cowardly threats.Quote:The efforts of the engineers are making for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Act, considering they have no strike pay, considering the domestic suffering, starvation almost, which must follow this state of things, is splendid.And from the second:
Quote:A resolution moved at Glasgow at a meeting where Sir A. Geddes was present struck a firmer note in the following terms :"That having heard the case of the Government, as stated by Sir Auckland Geddes, this meeting pledges itself to oppose to the very uttermost the Government in its call for more men. We insist and pledge ourselves to take action to enforce the declaration of an immediate armistice on all fronts ; and that the expressed opinion of the workers of Glasgow is that from now on, and so far as this business is concerned, our attitude all the time and every time is to do nothing in support of carrying on the war, but to bring the war to a conclusion."The supporter of the war could, of course, point out that, as far as the workers are concerned, there is as much—and as little—reason for carrying on the war now as ever there was. Better late than never, however, and if the Clyde workers realise even at this late date that they have nothing to gain but a good deal to lose by the continuance of the war it is a point to the good.We can't let the Left Bolsheviks get away with their attempt at historical revisionism.
Quote:As for the War 'we' only opposed it 'passively', and failed to intervene in workers' struggles, unlike the Bolsheviks, John Maclean etc.Quite apart from the fact that, not being vanguardists, we don't believe in "intervening" in workers' struggle (we urge them to get on with it themselves and let them do this), it is not true that we had nothing to say on the workers' struggle on the Clyde which these latter-day Left Bolsheviks presumably have in mind. Unfortunately, we have no record of what we said but it must have been "revolutionary" by Left Bolshevik standards as a column in the February 1916 Socialist Standard headed "LLD. GEORGE AND THE CLYDE WORKERS" was left blank with the following explanation:
Quote:The firm who machines this paper has refused to print the article which was set up to appear under the above heading. We are therefore compelled to withdraw the article. We congratulate the Government on the success of their efforts to preserve the "freedom of the Press."To include meetings would overload it with too many messages and defeat the purpose of announcing important additions (new pamphlets, recordings, articles). If we want to inform people of meetings I suggest a separate mail out.
New WWI article from the Socialist Standard just added to our archive on this site, showing our position with regard to "pacifist" opposition to the war (which I think is a position that Left Bolshevik organisations have sometimes accused us of holding):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1915/no-135-november-1915/socialism-v-peacemongering
Apparently Left Unity have written to Class War to discuss their respective plans for next May's General Election:http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/left-unity-requests-election-talks-with-class-war/I wonder whether we will get one of these letters too.
Ozymandias wrote:Yesterday I dithered between actually voting no (!) or spoiling my ballot. Realising a no vote was effectively a yes vote for Capitalism it felt good to attach my wee SPGB sticker onto my ballot paper. But beyond that drop in the ocean I actually felt major relief this morning that workers had rejected secession. I think it would have been a disaster.That confirms what I suspected (and my own view) — that most socialists would have seen No as the lesser evil (or, as Steve Coleman might have put it, Yes as the evil of two lessers). Anyway, one good result is the demise of that unsufferable nationalist demagogue Salmond to be followed perhaps by the decline of the SNP.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Todays New York climate change march is reported on our blog. http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/change-everything-time-for-fresh-greens.htmlThere are no demands, nor will there be any official speeches and some of the sponsors of it will be the fossil fuel industry and the banks. But Ozy is correct…the environmentalist activists are perhaps the few that are making any attempt to identify and tackle the culprit…capitalism. For sure, they have often been off-target but just how effective have we been in discussing the issues. As a party we do need a campaign strategy for getting our message across.Forget about New York. There's a climate march too in Edinburgh on Sunday if youse are free:http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/events/peoples-climate-march-edinburghAlso in Glasgow and London.
Actually, Glasgow branch weren't really expected to distrubute our press statement on the referendum. This was done by the election committee which sent it to all the daily papers in Scotland. It got a mention here (right at the end) if nowhere else.As to the referendum on the EU I can't see this generating enough interest to get over 90 percent of the population aged 16 or over to go and vote. In any case, it is not certain it will take place as it's a Tory election promise that would only be implemented in the unlikely event of the Tories getting an overall majority in next year's general election.
I don't think the accusation of bias against the BBC is fair. They struck me as being "too fair" from the point of view of the British ruling class who have an interest in Scotland not breaking away (as it will weaken them on the world stage) but I've just been listening to a local radio station in South West London on my way back from Clapham. The presenter said that if Scotland voted yes the first record he would play would be "The Road to Nowhere" and also remarked that the Union Jack looked ok without the blue Scottish part of it. (Of course it would still just be a rag on the end of a stick.) Talk about bias! But I don't think Radio Jackie can be heard in Scotland.
