'Is St Marks Bookshop that way?'

Where?: The East Village

When?: Now

Why?: The July Socialist Standard is now available at St Marks Bookshop.

1968 Revisited: the classic that failed to start

May 2008 Socialist Standard

Editorial

Food security

Regular Columns

Pathfinders Look down there, and tell me what you see...

Cooking the Books #1 Are prices real?

Cooking the Books #2 Anyone for coal?

Material World Iraq: Violence without end or purpose?

Pieces Together Good News For Some

Greasy Pole Winners and losers: One law for the poor, and another for MPs.

50 Years Ago To busmen—and others

Main Articles

1968 Recalled A reprint of what the Socialist Standard said on some of the events of 1968.

The Revolution that wasn’t What might have happened if, forty years ago, workers in France had taken over the factories and tried to keep production going.

Bubble Troubles The intoxicating US housing boom has come to an end. Now the economic hangover has arrived.

Who wants a referendum on Europe? The argument about a referendum over the EU Treaty is not about democracy, but about politicians trying to control decision-making.

How they decided to have (and keep) the Bomb We look at what a collection of declassified official documents reveal about the nuclear weapons policy of successive British governments, Labour and Tory.

Britain: An “Endemic Surveillance Society” The control freaks in power who would monitor our every movement, conversation and transaction have had a busy time of late.

Ire of the Irate Itinerant Cartoon strip

Letters, Reviews & Meetings

Letters to the Editor: 'More Basic Income'

Book Reviews: 'Empire of the Periphery: Russia and the World System.' By Boris Kagarlitsky.; 'The Battle for China’s Past' By Mobo Gao

Socialist Party Meetings: Norwich, Salisbury, Birmingham, Glasgow

Voice From The Back

The Gap Widens; Double Standards; American Illusions; This is Progress?; A Grim Future

Degsy Goes Down - History Part II

Reidski in the comments box below reminded me that June 12th was also the date the Derek Hatton was expelled from the Labour Party. Wasn't 1986 also the year that Liverpool won the double, beating Everton in the FA Cup final? That really was an annus horriblus for the Pierre Cardin section of the old Militant Tendency.

Fascinating to read that the vote on the Labour NEC to expel Hatton was only won by 12 votes to 6. Six people voted against Hatton's expulsion? OK, I'm guessing that Benn (Tone) and Skinner (Dennis) were on the NEC in '86, but who were the other four who were prepared to give so much slack to the most prominent member of the 'It's just a newspaper, honest' reading circle?

Maybe the Parcel of Jonahs over at Dave Osler's comment boxes are right when they opine that the Labour Left's strength is but a shadow of its heyday in the eighties, and there's no way back. If a decent and straightforward bloke like John McDonnell can't muster up sufficient numbers to even ensure that there is a token leadership challenge against Gordon Brown then the Labour Left really has done a Captain Oates these last ten years.

I remember encountering the old Millies in the Labour Party Young Socialists, and even then there seemed something amiss about them, but from this point in time it's weird to think that someone like Hatton was ever taken seriously. I can't help but smile when I think of Steve Coleman's words when he was reviewing Alan Bleasdale's drama, GBH, in the pages of the Socialist Standard:

"Militant renamed it BGH: Bleasdale Gets Hatton. Hatton himself went on Channel Four's Right To Reply to say that Michael Murray must have been based on him because the fictional character was a bullying, corrupt council leader." [The Eileen Critchley Show, August 1991 Socialist Standard]

Whatever did happen to Degsy?