Borat (2006)

 

Do They Mean Us? #6

Missed this mention of the unofficial Socialist Standard MySpace page at the time - though I note that Alan J got his fourpenneth in . . . good lad:

"Late last year, while preparing for a lecture on politics & online communities for a 3rd-year module Communities On-line (which I taught on with Janet Finlay) I had a look in MySpace and did some searches on political terms. I searched for the major UK parties and found a small number of Lib Dem and New Labour MPs, all with derisory numbers of 'friends' . . . The term 'socialist' was a cracker, though, turning up the Socialist Standard page with around 13,000 friends (as of today, ranking it behind only Obama and Clinton on the technpresident table). Socialist Standard is the organ of the rather wonderful Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) who, as well as arguing for the abolition of money, only have one form of political intevention - the debate. (I've had a soft spot for them ever since one of their number engaged in a year-long correspondence with a rather spotty 16 year old who had written a letter to the local newspaper in the 1970s. The letters I received weren't formulaic, but long, detailed responses to the points I had raised in my letters. ) This raises the question though: what is it about the SPGB and MySpace that generated this number of 'friends', and what might it signify?

It's good to know that as well the page reaching out to a new generation of readers, it also has cause to occasionally drop into the cyber-lap of the former subscriber/last century reader/yesterday's political adversary.

As the author of the quote, Steve Walker, teaches at Leeds Metropolitan University, perhaps he has been known to break biscuits with that well known ex-SPGBer at the other ivory tower in Leeds?

And, in answer to his closing question: "What might it signify?"

Probably sod all . . . except that with the innovation of publicising the Standard on MySpace, we've hopefully pushed the average age of the magazine's readership down to 71 years . . . and, for the casual peruser of the myspace page, forever associated revolutionary socialism with an impeccable taste in music.

Class

Che'st Chic

Canny design from Morgan M. of the WSPUS to advertise the WSM. You can click on the pic of Che for access to the website.

Should be a T shirt . . . or at least a key ring.

"Boris Johnson is in Class War?"*

It would have been memorable.

Little known factoid . . . an ex-member of Birmingham branch of the SPGB was once invited to appear on the BBC reality show, 'Living With The Enemy', and was all up for it - you know, getting the case for socialism into a million living rooms, etc etc - until they realised it would have entailed them having to live for a week with a member of Glasgow branch.

*No, I'm not suggesting that Boris Johnson is practising entryism into the Tory Party at the behest of Class War. There is - or was - a member of Class War who is the spitting image of BJ. Strange but true.

The Falklands War Remembered

A couple of links:

From the SPGB blog, Socialism Or Your Money Back: The Falklands War Remembered

From the archives of the Socialist Standard: 'Doing the Bulldog Thing'

Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the Falklands/Malvinas conflict, when Argentina invaded those islands that Adrian Mole's dad thought were off the coast of Scotland.

Perhaps in light of more recent - and more bloody conflicts - it is a minor footnote in a world always seemingly at war, but for those of us of a certain generation (and nationality) it remains seared in the memory for the Sun's 'Gotcha' headline, the return of respectable jingoism to mainstream British politics and for supplying one of the major reasons that Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives secured a landslide majority at the 1983 General Election despite the fact that Britain was in the midst of its severest depression since the 1930s.

"They're selling Class War lighters in Woolworth's, Squire"

Canny - christ, I have to buy a thesarus - letter in this month's Socialist Standard from Ben Malcolm about the review of Ian Bone's biog in last month's Standard:

Dear Editors
I read the review of Ian Bone’s Bash the Rich (March Socialist Standard) with interest as a few years back I had a couple of pints with the author in a pub in Bristol. And until recently he could be found selling the excellent community news-and-scandal sheet The Bristolian in that same fair city.

Indeed, one of the most interesting sections in his “confessions” deals with his involvement in a similar publication in Swansea during the late 1970s called Alarm. Populist, pro-working class publications are evidently what he does best, and the mother of them all of course turned out to be Class War.

Here’s my “confession” . . . I always had a bit of a soft spot for CW. Their political positions (such as they were) were always closer to the Socialist Party’s than most anarchists and any lefties. And the paper in its heyday was something to behold. But - and it’s a big but - their avowed methods were, and are, different from ours in the extreme. Bone quotes a comrade of his criticising elitist violence (as opposed to political mob violence) by stating ‘petrol bombs are far more democratic than dynamite’. OK then, but isn’t democratic political action even more democratic still? And, of course, CW famously developed a veritable obsession with the “middle class” that they saw as standing between us and the ruling class.

As his memoirs end abruptly around 1985 we can presumably await further fond rememberings, no doubt featuring tales of the anti-Poll Tax conflict of the early 1990s. Until then, Ian, if you’re reading this, where on Earth did the bloody Bristolian vanish to?

BEN MALCOLM, Bath.

Nice, 'cos I thought Ben had disappeared off the map, and it's always heartening to see one of the nineties - 1990s, that is, we aren't all old commie curmudgeons - contingent still plugging away.

I'd love to read the Bone biog but I baulked at the twenty dollar price tag in Bluestockings bookstore. Christ, you need a chargecard at Seers these days to buy into the revolution.

I'll have to settle for a re-read of Paddy Shannon's excellent article, Class War No More?, from the October 1997 Socialist Standard.

April Socialist Standard - 'A Meeting of Minds?'

Editorial

It's Election Time Again

Regular Columns

Pathfinders 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' Swindle

Cooking the Books #1 Market Failure

Cooking the Books #2 A Stroke of the Pen

Greasy Pole The fall of the House of Lords

50 Years Ago 400 pounds for a slave

Main Articles

The Shadow of the Bigot Capitalist normality could have come to Northern Ireland forty years ago, but religion and politics combined to put the clock back.

Same Old Story Following the takeover of their employer, Port Talbot steelworkers face an unsure future but the shareholders are happy.

Bogdanov, Technocracy and Socialism Alexander Bogdanov was a non-Leninist Bolshevik who also wrote science-fiction.

Paying For Air - Why Not? We examine a “Thought Paper” by a junior economist at the Centre for Research,Analysis and Policy.

History As Propaganda There’s probably more history published today than ever before. As with every genre sold as a commodity most of it is of little value.

Sound bites and Soldiers

Letters, Reviews & Meetings

Letters to the Editors "Class War'; 'Capitalism'; 'War' & 'The Death Penalty'

Book Review The Rebel Sell: How the Counterculture Became Consumer Culture by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter

Meetings Glasgow, Birmingham, London, Manchester & East Anglia.

Voice From The Back

Horror Story (1); Free People?; Horror Story (2); A Whale of a Time; A Sprat of a Time

I Like Monday Morning Updates

Rejoice, rejoice, part two of the 'A to Z of Marxism' - F thru' K - is now online.

Further to this post on anarcho-footballism, stumbled across this article on Znet about Argentina's soccer passion. Interesting stuff, but I think the author commits a bit of a howler when she writes: "Until the 60's South America’s soccer teams remained inferior to Western European teams." Erm, 1930 . . . 1950 . . . 1958.

John Counago beat me to the publish button last month when he blogged about what a brilliant bloke Niall Quinn is, but Quinny is giving me a second chance with this story from the online Guardian. Ross Wallace, Liam Miller and Roy Keane? Celtic Sunderland for the championship.

The Lost Boys (1987)