Being a member of the Small Party of Good Boys* means that more often than not we do get a bad press from our opponents.
To be honest, a hundred years - birthday this June 12th, just send a card with a Borders book token in it - of playing intellectual skinheads who like nothing more than battering senseless all those who make up that broadest of broad churches, the Capitalist Party - whose current bookends in Britain are Michael Howard and Tommy Sheridan** - with a rolled up copy of the Lafargue's Right To Be Lazy means that we can't be too surprised when someone takes our hostility clause literally and tries to get in their own rabbit punch in retaliation for some half-remembered heckle from twenty five years ago.
The latest in a long line to misrepresent/misundertand/misquote and ultimately misfire (delete as appropriate) against the SPGB is Corin Redgrave of the Redgrave acting clan and WaRP fame. A Diary entry in the New Statesman dating from January the 12th of this year, written by Redgrave, has him, in amongst talking about the honours system and how his father, Michael Redgrave, was a Commander of the British Empire, aims a few barbs in our direction, and the apparent utopian nature of our politics. It appears that Redgrave considers himself a bit of an expert on the SPGB 'cos the old WRP had their headquarters around the corner from our Head Office, in Clapham Old Town, and who knows, perhaps that knowledge of us was further bolstered when he used to occasionally travel past our office when getting a lift in Gerry Healy's WRP paid for beamer on the way to dress rehearsals at the Old Vic?
Such choice fictional events in Redgrave's piece include the following: " . . . on the only occasion I remember when they themselves organised a public meeting, their call was: "For a moneyless society in Lambeth!" In short, they were utopians." Mmm - "moneyless society in Lambeth" that's a new yin on me though ironic that he should spout such bollocks when Ted Knight, ex-member of the same organisation as Redgrave, and someone who still had a close relationship with Healy and co whilst Labour leader of Lambeth Council in the early eighties, indulged in the gesture politics beloved of the Labour Left councils at the time - 'in trying to bring down the (wo)man, man, Mrs Thatch'*** in overspending to the point where his administration was far closer to bringing a moneyless society to Lambeth than we ever had in fifty years of having our office on the High Street. ;-)
I loved the wee gibe about the front of our Head Office being bricked up apart from a small aperture of two square feet. The front was bricked up because of the window smashing as a pastime which was the regular substitute for political debate that took place between the far left and far right of capitalism during the seventies. In the political illiterate period of the time the front window of our office was regularly caught in the crossfire of the time, and after the glass was broken for the nth occasion, it was decided to brick it up as a safety measure.
The WRP, and the Socialist Labour League before it, were notorious for their zealous security measures against friends and foes alike. A comrade recounted a story once where he and another comrade went to one of the SLL's Young Socialist events in the late sixties which were held regularly in Morecambe and other assorted towns which would later only be known for being mentioned in Morrissey song lyrics.
They done the usual politico's day's work of selling the paper and distributing leaflets outside the meeting whilst the punters were going in, and then decided to pop in to sit in on the start of the meeting, to suss what it was all about. After listening to a smattering of the usual bombast from the platform, they then decided to leave the meeting to go have a drink and were suddenly barred at the door by the stewards from leaving the meeting:
"What's the deal? We want to leave and go have a drink."
"Sorry - you can't leave. The meeting has started"
"What? We don't want to listen to the rest of the speeches."
"It don't matter. These doors don't open again until the end of the meeting."
Two pissed off comrades shuffling back to their seats to hear that season's version of "We must build the revolutionary party. We are the revolutionary party. The revolution is just round the corner, comrades." for the next four hours, until two exceptionally unhappy SPGB bunnies finally get out the door to go drink a few pints of heavy. (I wish I could insert a piss myself laughing emoticon here. You could tell when the comrade was recounting the story thirty years after the event that he was still smarting from that lost four hours of drinking time. Aye, before you ask, he is Scottish. ;-)
I could spend the rest of post recounting all the weird and wonderful urban myths heard about the SPGB down the years, but I'll save them for another day - especially as this sort of misrepresentation will no doubt come up again. More chance with the Centenary in two months time - we may well be the recipient of a curio piece from some journo with a contemporary eye for the quirky (guilty as charged) and four month membership of the Socialist Worker Student Society whilst an undergraduate in their dim distant past. I'll keep the blog informed no doubt. (If it lasts that long.)
Aye, before I forget, the reason a four month old piece in the Staggers is only now being discussed by members by SPGBers as a burning issue can be explained in two simple words: cheapness and google.
Cheapness, 'cos obviously nae bugger in the Party is prepared to pay for the New Statesman regularly, and thus never caught the jibe from Redgrave fresh, and google 'cos some members have a tendency to type 'SPGB' into search engines to see if we get a passing mention somewhere, anywhere**** with the same regularity that (half of) the rest of the world will type Nude pictures of Johnny Depp into a search engine.
I will end this (too long) post with a partial cut and paste from a post I sent to our email discussion list on the matter. Any old excuse to bash the vanguard (our elders and betters) and mention Trevor Griffith's brilliant play, The Party, in the same post:
Hi Wiiliam,when I first became aware of Corin Redgrave's comments in the New Statesman - a couple of weeks after it appeared - I sent an email to the letters page of the New Statesman on the matter but it wasn't published. For the record a member of the Ashbourne Court Group,***** Richard Lloyd, had a letter published in the New Statesman in response to Corin Redgrave's comments about the Party.
I guess the lesson learned is that some of us should spend less time scanning the pages of the Weekly Worker for the latest policy statement from the Revolutionary Democratic Group (don't ask ;-) and a bit more time keeping track of what appears in the New Statesman, which unfortunately has never been a choice of reading for me.
I think Adam is right when he mentions previously that Corin Redgrave was being deliberately disingenuous in his comments about us. As someone so steeped in the theatre, Redgrave knows how to use a stage prop when he needs to - and I think that is the role we were assigned in his piece.
To be semi-serious for a minute, it has to be said that Corin Redgrave was a leading member of the Workers Revolutionary Party - and the Socialist Labour League before it - for nigh on twenty years. Though you could cynically argue that his sister Vanessa was more of a figure head for the organisation, using her much higher profile for propaganda purposes, Corin was always much more than a poster boy for the Workers Revolutionary Party. To remind members, this was an organisation that:
*Used violence against opponents of its leadership both within and outside its organisation.
*Suggested that Britain was both moving towards a fascist dictatorship and on the brink of a Socialist Revolution in the mid-seventies.
*Took money from Arab dictatorships in the seventies and eighties as its anti-Zionist propaganda in the pages of its press chimed in with the policy of these various dictatorships, and there was perhaps an even more sinister role played by the WRP, suggested by Robin Blick in the pages of the since defunct Libertarian Socialist journal, Solidarity, in the eighties, of the WRP's relationship with these Arab regimes and that perhaps on occasion they took on the role in this country of sometimes collecting evidence on political opponents and dissidents of the regimes active in this country. (Blick himself being a former member of the WRP in the mid-seventies and later the author of the book, 'Seeds of Evil'.)
*Had as its leader for nigh on thirty years - from 'the Club' of the fifties through to the WRP in the mid-eighties, until a palace coup, Gerry Healy. The personification of all that was thuggish, cultish and authoritarian in the WRP - the Pope expelled from his own Vatican when it was disclosed by his former allies (who were aware of the allegations for over twenty years)of his use of physical violence against both male and female members of the WRP and the use of sexual violence against a number of female WRP members.
*The Marxist Party that Adam mentions was one of the shards of political groupings that emerged from the implosion that took place in the WRP soon after the expulsion of Healy. Rather than Redgrave condemning the practice of Healy, the Marxist Party was the grouping around Healy and the Redgraves that appeared in this period. Apparently, the revelations against Healy were all a state plot to destabilise the one true revolutionary party that could challenge the capitalist state (mmm - that sounds familar.)I must correct Adam's impression that I am the only left anorak geek in the Party who has heard of the Marxist Party. I remember Dave Flynn mentioning that the Marxist Party had a branch in Lancaster connected to the Dukes Theatre in the town, when he was a member of Lancaster Branch in the mid-nineties. I get the impression that Branches of the Marxist Party seems to spring up in any town that Corin Redgrave happens to be doing Rep or Panto that particular season.
The WRP and the Marxist Party have always had a disprortionately large number of actors and other assorted television bods within its ranks, and with the exception of Alan Thornett at the Cowley Car Factory in the mid-seventies (until he and those around him were summarily expelled by Healy and co in the mid-seventies for getting too big for his boots), Equity, the Actors union, was the the only Trade Union where the WRP had any serious influence. Writer, directors and actors such as Tony Garnett, Ken Loach,David Mercer, Jim Allen, Roy Battersby, Francis De La Tour, Timothy West, Prunella Scales, Kika Markham - as well as the Redgraves - all had varying relationships of sorts with the SLL/WRP to a lesser or greater extent.
On the acting profession, Healy and the left, if anyone has the opportunity, check out the text of Trevor Griffiths brilliant play from the early seventies, 'The Party'.
This is a fictionalised account of lefty types having a political discussion/party in the sitting room of a succesful TV producer's flat. The TV producer is on the fringes of the fictionalised SLL/WRP and wants to be a player on the left. (I think the TV producer is a thinly veiled Tony Garnett).
The play is set at the time of Paris'68, (nice line from one of characters: "Ernest Mandel has been seen on the streets of Paris cheering the burning of an overturned car and shouting: ' La Revolution - C'est belle, c'est belle'" - half remembered line from the play - apologies if the line and the french is garbled) and the play has such stock characters as the two Internationalist Socialist LSE student types; the New Left academic spouting jargon of how class struggle as a motor for revolution in the *cough* advanced industrialised world has been been supplanted by struggles in to the third world, and the role of the first world left intellectuals now is to lend support to these struggles (echoes of Regis Debray?); a pissed up playwright disllusioned by his experience of the left, stumbling around the Producer's flat in varying states of drunkeness whilst the rest of them are playing 'Generals without Armies' games, acting as the conscience and comic foil for the play (supposedly based on the sixties playwright David Mercer); and a character called 'Jock Tagg', supposedly based on Healy and originally played by Laurence Olivier when the play premiered at the National Theatre in the early seventies. (It would have been good if the ads for the play at the time had been along the lines of 'From Heathcliff to Healy!';-)
There was a TV version of the play that I saw in the late eighties but if you get the chance, check out Griffiths text - any of Griffiths plays are recommended.
Erm - I think I've gone off the topic a bit - aye, the Marxist Party, Bill claims to have seen the villain from the old tv series, 'Lovejoy', selling their journal, 'The Marxist' outside a Globalise Resistance event a year back.
* Other nicknames include Simon Pure's Good Brand and the Small Party of Glesga' Bookies ( Glasgow Branch in the thirties had a few street bookies in its ranks - aye, we were petty bourgeois even back then ;-)
** Tommy ain't that bad, despite the reformist politics. A couple of comrades who knew him in Militant Labour in Pollock in the late eighties, early nineties, despite now disagreeing with him politically said he was an ok bloke.. The link to a pic of John MacLean is my wee joke:
Matthew Kelly: "Tommy, who are you going to be tonight."
Tommy Sheridan: "Tonight, tomorrow and yesterday, Matthew, I want to be John Maclean."
(From a future series of 'R-r-revolutionary Stardust In Their Eyes' Channel 1904)
*** When saying this line, it is important that you say it with a heavy duty fake prole accent, fist and arm upturned in a 'Do You Want to smell our new range of perfume, madam?' kind of way. To top it off it is preferable to be wearing a beret and afghan coat.
**** Philosophy 101 - If someone slags off the SPGB and an SPGBer is not around to hear it, does the insult make a sound?
***** Look the link up yourself you cheeky bastard! ;-)
