imposs1904
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‘It’s Clichéd to Be Cynical at Christmas* . . .’
I posted this last year but why not post it again one year on? Think of it as a re-gifting.
A selection of Christmas-related articles that have appeared in the Socialist Standard (and elsewhere) down the years.
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2024/12/its-cliched-to-be-cynical-at-christmas.html
Sad to read about the death of the radical filmmaker Peter Watkins at the age of 90.
Best known for the banned BBC documentary The War Game, some of his work has reviewed in the pages of the Socialist Standard.
Click on the links for the reviews:
Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker (2015)
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/10/peter-watkins-revolutionary-film-maker.htmlPeter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker (2015) – part 2
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/11/peter-watkins-revolutionary-film-maker.htmlReview of The War Game – 1966
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-war-game-1966.htmlAnother review of The War Game – 1980
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-war-game-1980.htmlThis novel was published a couple of years ago:
Can anyone top that? I’ll doff my cap if someone provides proof of a concept album centred around Nadezhda Krupskaya’s three weeks in Kettering in 1911.
A bit of fun with regards to Lenin in London.
From the 1974 British TV series, Fall of Eagles, Trevor Griffiths episode, Absolute Beginners, about the Russian revolutionaries in London at the turn of the 20th century. Patrick Stewart as Lenin, Michael Kitchen as Trotsky and Paul Eddington as Plekhanov.
For those of you who don’t know him, Trevor Griffiths is best known for co-writing the Hollywood film, Reds, with Warren Beatty.
Matthew Syed using the same line as Cleverly about Farage word for word at the recent Tory Party conference. Obviously, the Tories are running scared of Reform UK, and believe this is the best line of attack:
This turned up in my YouTube recommendations.
The New Statesman’s take on the current difficulties in Your Party, combining smugness and condescension like only the New Statesman can do:
Added some new pages to the blog.
The pages are dedicated to particular columns from the Socialist Standard from yesteryear.
New Page: Letter From Europe column (1979-1986)
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/09/new-page-letter-from-europe-column-1979.htmlNew Page: Aspect column (1967-1971)
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/09/aspect-column-1967-1971.htmlNew Page: Letter From America column (1977-1978)
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/09/letter-from-america-column-1977-1978.htmlI subscribe to the Bulwark newsletter. (A right of centre anti-Trump news group), and one of their latest newsletters had this timeline of Trump’s latest pronouncements. It makes for fascinating reading:
Fast Times at the End Times
Things are unraveling quickly. And Trump’s approval is fine.
JONATHAN V. LAST
AUG 271. Two weeks
Warning: We’re going extra dark today.It’s been just two weeks since the president of the United States ordered a military occupation of the nation’s capital. I understand that it feels longer. But I want to highlight for you two things: (1) The pace at which we are moving, and (2) how Trump employs a mix of the ridiculous and the dangerous.
August 11: Trump announces he is deploying National Guard troops to take over Washington, D.C.
August 13: Trump declares that he has personally chosen the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors for 2025.
August 15: Trump greets Vladimir Putin in Alaska with a red carpet rolled out by kneeling American soldiers and literal applause.
August 22: Trump announces that the U.S. government has taken a 10 percent ownership stake in Intel.
August 24: Trump demands that the Baseball Hall of Fame admit Roger Clemens.
August 25: Trump announces that he has removed Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
August 26: Trump instructs Cracker Barrel to abandon its new company logo.
“He doesn’t say how he thinks this problem should be dealt with.”
I’m relying on my fading memory here so apologies if I’ve misremembered certain details but I seem to recall that in both the case of Scargill’s Labour Party in the mid-1990s and Respect in the mid-2000s, the leading figures in both these left of Labour initiatives, took to ’employing’ their own pet vanguardists to police the admittance to membership. That was their attempt to ensure they wouldn’t be subject to heavy entryism.
It’s telling that both Scargill and Galloway had their roots – or were at least fellow travellers – in ‘Official Communism’.
Just scanned in.
An excellent Socialist Standard article, ‘Kenya and Berlin’, from August 1953 by Alwyn Edgar (A.W.E. in the Standard) on the ongoing hypocrisy of the ruling class during the Cold War:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/08/kenya-and-berlin-1953.html
Well worth reading, Well worth sharing.
Not clicked on the link but I immediately thought of Jaroslav Hasek’s The Party of Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law.
If you don’t mind, I might cross-post your this over to the Socialist Standard Past and Present blog.
Plans to switch up the blog in the coming weeks:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/07/blog-update-proposed-overhaul.html
Just scanned in. A recommended read.
A really top notch front page article by Harry Waite, which appeared in the July 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard. It really gets to the heart of matter:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/07/our-practical-policy-1938.html
Harry Waite really was one of the best Socialist Standard writers in the 30s, 40s and 50s.
