BERNARD HUGHES spends an entertaining evening with a group of ex-Commies-cum-carping columnists The title of the meeting asked, ‘Where do ex-Communists go?’ Well, about 70 of them went to London’s Institute for Contemporary Arts to listen to the opinions of five figures on this question. The composition of the panel, indeed, might also have...
A challenge remaining
Judging by the Compass conference in June, the left has yet to develop a coherent political strategy, says WILL BROWN Lenin is not a figure one immediately associates with the soft left yet there he was on a giant screen at the front of a packed conference hall proclaiming ‘The victory of ideas needs...
Critical times in a back to front world
BARRY WINTER went to the Critical Politics conference in November, and found a Left still confused about how to respond to new times. Organised by the Signs of the Times collective, the intellectual heirs of Marxism Today, this conference was really back to front. It concluded where it might, more usefully, have begun, with...
Theatres of conflict
JONATHAN TIMBERS rallies to remember the October revolution and spends a day at Millbank and Number 10 – all in one very bizarre week in November. When Harold Wilson said ‘a week is a long time in politics’, perhaps he should have added that sometimes an hour can seem even longer when you’re stuck...
Defective permanent revolutionary
MIKE WADSWORTH reviews the autobiography of SWP founder Tony Cliff. Tony Cliff’s autobiography was published shortly after his death last year. It is written in an almost conversational manner and shows that, as Paul Foot writes in the introduction, “Tony Cliff was not a humble man and his account (which he started only because...
An activist’s life
MIKE WADSWORTH reviews the recent biography of lifetime communist Edmund Frow, written by his wife. Ruth Frow points out that this biography of Eddie Frow is largely anecdotal and is not the detached recital of a life that would have been produced by a biographer less closely involved with the subject. In this regard...
Hobbes, socialism and human nature
MARTIN JENKINS re-examines the work of Thomas Hobbes to counter the popular prejudice that humans are naturally competitive and aggressive isolationists. Will human nature act as an impediment to socialistic political change? Are we naturally greedy or selfish in seeking to gratify our desires and needs? Thinking people on the ‘left’ maintain that human...
The left, the war and the obligations of the oppressed
In the wake of September 11th, and opposition to the war on terrorism, WILL BROWN calls for the left to re-examine its knee-jerk responses to international conflict. Writing in the left-wing American magazine, Dissent, Michael Walzer has issued a stark indictment of the left’s response to the events of September 11th and the war...
In search of the good society
Jonathan Timbers skirted the fringes of Labour Party conference in September listening to versions of the good society The Good Society is the first of three short books from Compass following its consultations with members, left-wing academics and experts on policy priorities for radical social democrats in Britain today. I perused its 100-or-so pages...
Shaking up the left
HARRY BARNES finds Nick Cohen’s book, What’s Left?, a stimulating yet flawed polemic. Love it or hate it, this is a readable and serious political romp. In What’s Left? How liberals lost their way, Nick Cohen wishes to shake up wide elements of left and liberal opinion which he feels ignore some clear home...
Still pulling them in
The inaugural Victor Grayson memorial lecture in Saddleworth was a great success, reports Paul Fryer It took two years to put together, but in November 2004, members of the Saddleworth Labour Party organised an event to celebrate one of the area’s most famous MPs, Victor Grayson. The memorial lecture was held in one of...