"The last speaker from the platform was Alan Woods, a close collaborator of Ted Grant for more than forty years . . . He opened his speech with a joke: "Do you know what the biggest political party in Britain is? It is the party of ex-Militant members", referring to the sizeable amount of old comrades from the Militant days present at the meeting". [Quoted from a report of the Ted Grant Memorial Meeting held in London this past weekend.]
Christ, I first heard read a variation on that joke about twenty years ago in a scaremongering book about the far left in Britain by some bloke called Blake Baker. Except, in the original version, it was not the Millies but the old Communist Party of Great Britain, and - I think, but don't quote me on this - the bloke telling the joke was Denis Healey.
Surely the SWP have the *cough* bragging rights to using up and spitting out more activists down the years?
UPDATE #1
I failed in my revolutionary duty by neglecting to mention that there is an article on Ted Grant in this month's Socialist Standard.UPDATE #2
Best joke I ever heard about the SPGB was the first joke I ever heard about the SPGB. As a callow youth - same taste in music as now, same haircut as now but I now fall into the category of calloused middle age - I was a member of the Labour Party. Attending a Young Socialists branch meeting in Watford, I got to chatting to a couple of Millies who controlled the branch, and getting around to the subject of political reading I mentioned that I had recently read some SPGB literature:
"The SPGB? The only meetings they attend are each other's funerals."
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