imposs1904
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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
Back in 2020, ‘Pik Smeet’ reviewed A.M. Gittlitz’s book, ‘I Want To Believe: Posadism, UFOs and apocalypse communism’ in the Standard:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-trotskyist-oddity-2020.html
. . . which detailed the history of Posadism, a primarily South American Trotskyist movement which was “. . . mostly known among left trainspotter circles for his belief in UFOs and advocacy of nuclear war.”
Posadists were known for the unique position that, if and when, aliens visited earth it would turn out that they came from a fully-realized socialist/communist classless society, as it followed that only such a society would have the technological advancements to perform such a scientific feat.
All fun and games if you spent too much of your childhood watching Star Trek, when you should have been playing Subbuteo and listening to the Top 40 on a Tuesday lunch time.
Therefore, it’s troubling to stumble across some premature Posadism whilst scanning in the March 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard.
F. M. Robins in her article, ‘Anti-climax’, concludes with the words:
“We will close by following Mr. Heard’s lead and indulge a short flight of fancy. Supposing that space ships brought beings from another planet. One imagines they would be fleeting visitors to this miserable world of conflicts, and want alongside potential plenty. Interplanetary travel presupposes a more intellectual and very much farther advanced form of life, the outcome of which we should presume to be a classless society, where all the evils that are the outcome of capitalist society could not exist. The inevitable and ultimate goal of all human endeavours.
Many of us would want to “thumb a lift” for the journey back.”
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/03/anti-climax-1951.html
Apologies for the Star Trek gibe. I was more of a Buck Rogers in the 25th Century kind of kid back in the day. “Biddi-biddi-biddi”.
The longstanding British Communist Party leader, Harry Pollitt, was a member of Pankhurst’s Workers’ Socialist Federation in his early political days in the Greater Manchester area.
He definitely knew of the SPGB back then as he mentions Moses Baritz approvingly in his autobiography, ‘Serving My Time’.
The SPGB weren’t so kind to Pollitt in his CPGB leadership days, nicknaming him Harry Pollute . . . which I think is pretty funny, tbh.
Powerful scene with the late Gene Hackman from Mississippi Burning:
Mississippi Burning was reviewed in the August 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/07/southern-discomfort-1989.html
A 2004 article on Leonard Peltier from the old WSPUS journal, World Socialist Review:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/05/leonard-peltier-and-primal-needs-of.html
An update about the Socialist Standard Past and Present blog:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-blog-is-glitching.html
