Remember the Euston Manifesto? Of course you do. Harry's Place never seem to mention it much these days, but I'm sure that's because they're too busy making anniversary plans for marking its 5th anniversary in 2011.
Splintered Sunrise blog pops up to put the EM in a nutshell in his latest blog.
"It may be best to go back to the Euston Manifesto. You remember the Euston Manifesto, one of the defining documents of this century, yes? No? Well, the Reader’s Digest condensed version goes like this: Norman Geras and Nick Cohen go to the pub. Nick bitches and moans about what a shower of bastards the left are. Norm scribbles a manifesto on the back of a beer mat. (Eustonians like to say there was Serious discussion involved, but I’m sticking with the beer mat theory. It’s the best explanation for the combination of windy truisms with weirdly specific stuff on the Middle East and, er, Linux.) Alan (Not The Minister) Johnson then sets up another one of his thousands of websites, and invites punters to sign the document."Ah, O'Neills pub on Euston Road. Halfway between the Housmans Bookshop of their past, and the British Museum of their future.
3 comments:
That is a great description of those tossers. And I like your last sentence too.
The Euston Manifesto = bombing our way round the world in the name of peace and social democracy. Cunts!
I may be a simple oik eking out a provincial existence in Stoke, but as far as I know the Euston Manifesto didn't register on the radar of anyone but the left-liberal blogerati of the time. I remember seeing postage stamp articles in Socialist Worker and The Socialist, but no one gave a toss. If memory serves not even the curmudgeonly comrades on the UKLN could be arsed with it!
No British museum for the Eustonites. Perhaps a brief footnote in the history of the left, nothing more.
Well Alan Johnson is an academic up at Edge Hill College, and Norman Geras is an Emeritus Professor at Manchester Uni, so it was never just a metropolitan fad, though I do agree it was a bit of a willo the wisp.
The British Museum line? What can I say, I was struggling with a appropriate bookend to match up with Housmans Bookshop. I thought it would have been geographically stretching it a bit to use Department of War Studies at Kings College. ;-)
Post a Comment