imposs1904
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Just posting part of the June 2002 Socialist Standard on the Socialist Standard Past and Present blog, and one of the items posted was a notice for the Heather Ball pamphlet, ‘A Socialist Life’.
It turns out that this 2002 pamphlet is not currently online on the Party website, and it also looks like print copies are no longer advertised for sale so I’ve scanned in the introduction to the pamphlet and provided links for the short stories which were included in the pamphlet.
The only things missing from the pamphlet are four pieces that Heather wrote which didn’t appear in the Standard. At some point I’ll scan these in and post them on the blog.
She really was a wonderful short story writer for the Standard. If you haven’t read her before, I urge you to do so:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/06/new-socialist-party-pamphlet-2002.html
Excuse my cheekiness in reposting something from 2020, but the link listed below is to a wee post detailing the early Socialist Standards and its reaction to the annual May Day.
Naturally, those early Standards were much more combative and optimistic in their tone.
As the post from 2020 indicates, it was my intention to produce an expanded version of the piece, covering later years and the changing temper of the Party’s May Day pronouncements but then I promptly forgot about it.
Maybe next year . . .
May-Day and the Socialist Standard
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/05/may-day-and-socialist-standard.html
Always thought the video below was a fascinating window into the old Labour Party and its in-fighting in the late 70s/early 80s. All the more intriguing ‘cos this programme would have been on prime time UK TV during the week of that year’s Labour Party conference.
Peter Taaffe and Tony Mulhearn debating Austin Mitchell and John Spellar. Taaffe was in his element in this:
Where Taaffe’s passing (and legacy) has been discussed on various left social media forums, it’s telling that more than one person has praised the fact that he wasn’t especially aloof when relating to ‘ordinary’ – sorry, Danny, if you’re reading this – folk. One commenting:
“. . . he could talk to working class normal people who were not leftists or academics”
Do vanguardists not hear themselves sometimes?
In its own way, his passing marks the end of a left-wing era in Britain.
Once upon a time, I knew the names of all the leaders of the various Trotskyist groups in Britain. I couldn’t tell you who is the current ‘leading member’ of the SWP. (Callinicos, maybe?)
I’m not especially tech minded but I know that on certain social media sites, they give the user the option of switching to dark mode for the screen appearance. (I take them up on it.)
Is that doable for the Party website, or is it something that only websites with budgets of billions can do?
Special Supplement on Marx (1983)
All online for the first time.
From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard:
“One hundred years ago this month, Karl Marx died. In a speech at his graveside, Engels said that “the greatest living thinker” had “ceased to think”. Since 1904, the Socialist Party of Great Britain has kept alive the socialist analysis of Marx’s thought, and exposed its distortions by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. We are marking the centenary of Marx’s death with the publication of this 24-page special supplement in the Socialist Standard.”
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/04/special-supplement-on-marx-1983.html
Have you thought of contacting Kaz?
I know he has an especial interest in the German Revolution period of 1918/19.
“Troubling”?
I was being melodramatic for comedic effect.
F. M. Robins was a regular writer for the Standard in the early 1950s. All I know about her is that she was a member of the SPGB from 1950 until 1960 (she resigned for personal reasons), and that she was the daughter of F. Foan (Fred?).
There is more known information about F. Foan. He was a longstanding member of the SPGB (1906 until his death in 1954). He was originally a member of the very active Battersea Branch in the Edwardian era, worked originally as a bricklayer and was eventually a work colleague alongside Jack Fitzgerald as a teacher of building construction at the old Battersea Polytechnic. He was himself an incredibly prolific writer for the Socialist Standard for 40 plus years.
Barltrop briefly mentions him in this article from the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2014/02/some-members.html
