# What's the Spartacist League up to these days?



## Idris2002 (Apr 2, 2010)

The last time I was in Books Upstairs I noticed that they had a new set of [i
_Spartacist_ for sale. I looked more closely, and saw it was dated this time last year. That's the last issue on their website as well . . . Which makes me wonder, is the Spartacist League, which has contributed so much to the gaiety of nations, on its last legs?


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## Pickman's model (Apr 2, 2010)




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## Idris2002 (Apr 2, 2010)

Pickman's model said:


>



Don't worry Pickman's, there'll be other loony far left sects.


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## spawnofsatan (Apr 2, 2010)

Didn't they get crucified?


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## scottythedog (Apr 2, 2010)

Whats the sparticist league?


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## audiotech (Apr 2, 2010)

Love 'em. or hate 'em, the Sparts and their _Workers Hammer_ are entertaining when they intervene to speak at meetings. They dress smartly too.


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## Pickman's model (Apr 2, 2010)

and they all have chicago accents


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## belboid (Apr 2, 2010)

The _Hammer_ only comes out quarterly, so about due for a newie.  _Vanguard_ is fortnightly.


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## ernestolynch (Apr 3, 2010)

scottythedog said:


> Whats the sparticist league?



The belligerent mormons of trotskyism. Good entertainment value.


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## Idris2002 (Apr 4, 2010)

ernestolynch said:


> Good entertainment value.



In a hammer horror sort of way.


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## Mrs Magpie (Apr 4, 2010)

I didn't realise they were real  I thought it was people running with the Private Eye Dave Spart joke


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## barney_pig (Apr 4, 2010)

I once sent off for the entire back catalogue of their "hate Trotskyism, Hate the spartacist league" magazines, these were brilliant, with loads of articles from other lefty rags attacking the sparts and their replies.
  The sparts carryied on calling me for over a year afterwards, eventually coming round to recruit/ berate me- they brought beer. which I drank, then I threw them out.


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## Jeff Robinson (Apr 4, 2010)

barney_pig said:


> The sparts carryied on calling me for over a year afterwards, eventually coming round to recruit/ berate me- they brought beer. which I drank, then I threw them out.



That sounds scary as fuck!


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## likesfish (Apr 4, 2010)

had a friend who was a sprat he complained there Mi5 agent used to pull the speaker at the meetings arguement apart in the Bar afterwards 
  thought it was a bit rich that the states secret policeman was better at marxist thought than they were


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## barney_pig (Apr 4, 2010)

likesfish said:


> had a friend who was a sprat he complained there Mi5 agent used to pull the speaker at the meetings arguement apart in the Bar afterwards
> thought it was a bit rich that the states secret policeman was better at marxist thought than they were


 I think this is interesting but I cannot tell


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## cogg (Apr 7, 2010)

likesfish said:


> had a friend who was a *sprat *he complained there Mi5 agent used to pull the speaker at the meetings arguement apart in the Bar afterwards
> thought it was a bit rich that the states secret policeman was better at marxist thought than they were



That's amazing, you had a friend who was a fish!

Sell your story. You'll make millions. 

Oh, you can't spell...


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## JHE (Apr 7, 2010)

Spartery in the 21st Century:



> Down with age of consent laws!
> Government out of the bedroom!
> Hands off Roman Polanski!
> No extradition!


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## aylee (Apr 8, 2010)

I'm the Sparticist League!


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## Ungrateful (Apr 8, 2010)

I am the Spartacist League (and so's my wife)


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## behemoth (Apr 8, 2010)

Pickman's model said:


> and they all have chicago accents


Texas (showing my age).


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## Idris2002 (Apr 9, 2010)




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## frogwoman (Apr 9, 2010)

Mrs Magpie said:


> I didn't realise they were real  I thought it was people running with the Private Eye Dave Spart joke



So did I


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## Idris2002 (Apr 9, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> So did I



I think we're more or less done here.


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## belboid (Apr 9, 2010)

nice bit from the _Hammer_ on the BA strikes:

With an election for Unite general secretary in the offing, the supposed “left” candidate is Jerry Hicks, formerly union convenor at Rolls Royce, who outdid Unite bureaucrats Simpson and Woodley in his support for the protectionist strikes for “British jobs for British workers” last year. Hicks stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Socialist Party [affiliated with Socialist Alternative in the U.S.], which was part of the leadership of the anti-foreigner strikes at Lindsey oil refinery. The Lindsey strike launched a crusade that saw foreign workers removed from a site in Wales and being denied jobs at many other building sites in a racist climate that has been a gift to the fascist BNP.


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## frogwoman (Apr 9, 2010)

more pseudo controversialist "lefties" a bit like the AWL, trying so hard to be ultra left wing and purist that they've popped right round to the other side.


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## frogwoman (Apr 9, 2010)

> With an election for Unite general secretary in the offing, the supposed “left” candidate is Jerry Hicks, formerly union convenor at Rolls Royce, who outdid Unite bureaucrats Simpson and Woodley in his support for the protectionist strikes for “British jobs for British workers” last year. Hicks stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Socialist Party [affiliated with Socialist Alternative in the U.S.], which was part of the leadership of the anti-foreigner strikes at Lindsey oil refinery. The Lindsey strike launched a crusade that saw foreign workers removed from a site in Wales and being denied jobs at many other building sites in a racist climate that has been a gift to the fascist BNP.



Yeah of course because these strikes are just like 20s South africa all over again.  No wonder the left is in such a fucking state.


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## belboid (Apr 9, 2010)

I don't think we can really blame the sparts for that, the only peopleaware of their existence is other lefites


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## frogwoman (Apr 9, 2010)




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## ajdown (Apr 9, 2010)

belboid said:


> I don't think we can really blame the sparts for that, the only people aware of their existence is other lefites



... and others that happen to read Urban75.

Never heard of them before, but all I could think of was "I'm Spartacus" too.


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## belboid (Apr 9, 2010)

have they put you off 'the left' forever yet?


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## frogwoman (Apr 9, 2010)

I thought they were just a private eye invention


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## Idris2002 (Apr 9, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> I thought they were just a private eye invention



I actually don't know if the PE 'Dave Spart' character was inspired by our Chicago friends - though Paul Foot would surely have been aware of their unique perspective on things.

Can anyone out there shed more light on this fascinating question?


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## Idris2002 (Apr 9, 2010)

belboid said:


> have they put you off 'the left' forever yet?



Let's hope so, we don't want just anyone joining the movement.


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## Idris2002 (Apr 19, 2018)




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## Nigel (Apr 19, 2018)

Surely these days the IBT have out Sparted the Sparts !


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## Grump (Apr 19, 2018)

Never mind the Sparts, anyone remember Big Flame?


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## Nigel (Apr 19, 2018)

Grump said:


> Never mind the Sparts, anyone remember Big Flame?


Didn't they have a meeting in Fleet Street recently as commemoration !


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## belboid (Apr 19, 2018)

Grump said:


> Never mind the Sparts, anyone remember Big Flame?


Yes


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## Idris2002 (Apr 20, 2018)

likesfish said:


> had a friend who was a sprat



Wow, you really do like fish.


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## charlie mowbray (Apr 23, 2018)

To compare the Sparts to Big Flame is crass and ludicrous.


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## Grump (Apr 23, 2018)

charlie mowbray said:


> To compare the Sparts to Big Flame is crass and ludicrous.


Who has done that?


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## mx wcfc (Apr 23, 2018)

When I was first at uni I was on the SWP stand at the first years' student fair (I was a first year too, but already hardened SWP).  For whatever reason a Spart came over and started giving us grief.  He was shouting and hammering his fist down on our table.  "Oi" I said "Don't you dare break that copy of Mike Carver's "Ordinary People/Brixton" single"  "I'm really sorry" he said, quite genuinely concerned, and wandered off.  The Sparts always amused me after that.  I used to love taking the piss, I mean they had to be even more CIA than the comrades we thought were CIA, but their line on Ireland was fucking shameful.


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## chilango (Apr 23, 2018)

I've two, no three, fave Spart stories. All of which I've no doubt shared on here before.

3) At an SWP MayDay rally at Ally Pally in 1992ish the Spart who thought he could argue with the Warsaw Ghetto veteran.

2) Neath or Llanelli or Camarthen or somewhere the American Spart taken completely aback by Earth First!s appearance this side of the Atlantic. Completely ruined his planned polemical intervention into some local protest.

3) The American (again) Spart I found trying to do a paper sale at the (in)famous El Chopo "punk market" in Mexico City. Except he was two blocks away in a Walmart carpark and clearly petrified.


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## chilango (Apr 23, 2018)

I also once went in a Spart organised march in London. A "Free Mumia" thing. Give ''em their due the Sparta and Earth First! were the only orgs I remember pushing the Mumia campaign over here.

Their red armbanded security detail were a bit wtf though. I also have some vague memories of a kerfuffle over flag burning on that march. Damn memory


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## LDC (Apr 24, 2018)

chilango said:


> I also once went in a Spart organised march in London. A "Free Mumia" thing. Give ''em their due the Sparta and Earth First! were the only orgs I remember pushing the Mumia campaign over here.
> 
> Their red armbanded security detail were a bit wtf though. I also have some vague memories of a kerfuffle over flag burning on that march. Damn memory



The Mumia campaign didn't half attract some bonkers political sects (and not just EF! ). In London there was a women who used to sport a black beret and over whatever else she was wearing a tshirt with 'WE NEED HIM MAO MORE THAN EVER!' around a pic of the man himself.


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## chilango (Apr 24, 2018)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> The Mumia campaign didn't half attract some bonkers political sects (and not just EF! ). In London there was a women who used to sport a black beret and over whatever else she was wearing a tshirt with 'WE NEED HIM MAO MORE THAN EVER!' around a pic of the man himself.


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## LDC (Apr 24, 2018)

IIRC correctly the mayor of Oakland during Occupy Oakland Jean Quan was an ex-Maoist - assuming the photo was during that and the placard was about her.


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## imposs1904 (Apr 24, 2018)

I remember encountering a couple of Spart paper sellers outside Brooklyn College in 2006. Naturally, they were both German.


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## butchersapron (Apr 25, 2018)

They did have the foresight to run a series of bulletins in the 90s with the fantastic title of  

*Hate Trotskyism – Hate the Spartacist League*

which is an absolute treasure trove of bonkers doctrinal and sectarian invective.


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## The39thStep (Apr 25, 2018)

Many many moons ago when I was at North London Poly in the Harrington Out Campaign the Sparts used to send about four or five members ( there were two Americans and a couple of well meaning but clearly barmy new recruits ) to any meeting we had. As they had some people working on the Tubes their slogan was something like  'Only the organised power of the London  Underground Workers can stop fascism by a General Strike' . Which a) wasnt true and b) very unlikley to happen. After a while people occupying began to get fed up with them and put a motion up for them to leave. I put a counter motion up for them to stay and join the occupation but that they had to join in a play a full and equal part not just come to meetings. They said they would agree to this no doubt dreaming that they would play a leading role .They did .We put them on toilet cleaning duty. 'Cleanliness is next to Trotskyism ' I told the meeting. They loved it.


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## Idris2002 (Apr 25, 2018)

Imagine being the Trots other Trots think are weird.

That's like Keith Richards coming up to you and saying "you alright mate? you don't look too good".


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## Idris2002 (Apr 25, 2018)

butchersapron said:


> They did have the foresight to run a series of bulletins in the 90s with the fantastic title of
> 
> *Hate Trotskyism – Hate the Spartacist League*
> 
> which is an absolute treasure trove of bonkers doctrinal and sectarian invective.


"Irish Workers Group calls on Pope to expel Chinese Ambassador"


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## chilango (Apr 25, 2018)

Idris2002 said:


> Imagine being the Trots other Trots think are weird.
> 
> That's like Keith Richards coming up to you and saying "you alright mate? you don't look too good".



Imagine being these guys then. Too Sparty even for the Sparts. The Super Sparts they were known as.


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## butchersapron (Apr 25, 2018)

chilango said:


> Imagine being these guys then. Too Sparty even for the Sparts. The Super Sparts they were known as.


I think they left because the proper sparts were too sparty. 5 members in 2016 according to the new book Contemporary Trotskyism.


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## chilango (Apr 25, 2018)

butchersapron said:


> I think they left because the proper sparts were too sparty. 5 members in 2016 according to the new book Contemporary Trotskyism.



you got a link to the book?


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## butchersapron (Apr 25, 2018)

Yes


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## chilango (Apr 25, 2018)

butchersapron said:


> Yes


Ta


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## The39thStep (Apr 25, 2018)

My fave are The Communist League. The Militant - March 6, 2017 -- UK: Communist League says workers need political power
First of all I'm not quite sure why a Candidate for the Manchester Mayor is canvassing in Huddersfield but I tell you what he changed some peoples minds in a flash once he patiently explained . If I ever become a travelling salesman by the way  I am going to straight to Eric Abones house, he'll buy anything.


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## andysays (Apr 25, 2018)

chilango said:


> Imagine being these guys then. Too Sparty even for the Sparts. The Super Sparts they were known as.



Reading this post has left me imagining a Trotskyite version of the Spice Girls which includes a member called Sparty Spice...


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## The39thStep (Apr 25, 2018)

Ken Macleod, the author, was in the Sparts. He got kicked out of the IMG but I think there was always a question as to whether he was recruited to the Sparts whilst in the IMG or whether he was already a Spart and went into the IMG to recruit their members.
Here the Sparts take on the explusion of the 'Communist Tendency' https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/spartacist-uk/033_1981_06_Bristish-spart.pdf


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## Idris2002 (Apr 25, 2018)

The39thStep said:


> Ken Macleod, the author, was in the Sparts. He got kicked out of the IMG but I think there was always a question as to whether he was recruited to the Sparts whilst in the IMG or whether he was already a Spart and went into the IMG to recruit their members.
> Here the Sparts take on the explusion of the 'Communist Tendency' https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/spartacist-uk/033_1981_06_Bristish-spart.pdf


They were right about Khomeini, to give them their due. Not bad for a group that were like something out of the 1930s, and not in a good way.


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## rekil (Apr 25, 2018)

I can't find their Hands Off Michael Jackson stuff. I thought I saw it on here spartacist | Search Results  | Irish Election Literature 

This is how half the twitterleft talk now isn't it.


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## belboid (Apr 25, 2018)

copliker said:


> I can't find their Hands Off Michael Jackson stuff. I thought I saw it on here spartacist | Search Results  | Irish Election Literature


That was the World's Shittest WebSite lot, wasn't it?


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## The39thStep (Apr 25, 2018)




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## rekil (Apr 25, 2018)

belboid said:


> That was the World's Shittest WebSite lot, wasn't it?


I don;t know. Where else would you find copies of Young Fine Gael's bafflingly titled newsletter "The Informer"


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## The39thStep (Apr 25, 2018)

copliker said:


> I can't find their Hands Off Michael Jackson stuff. I thought I saw it on here spartacist | Search Results  | Irish Election Literature



Its in this edition (dont know how to just show the page perhaps someone can assist ) .Theres also a quite bizarre defence of a teacher who had sex with a pupli of !5 .
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workershammer-uk/208_2009_autumn_workers-hammer.pdf


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## belboid (Apr 25, 2018)

The39thStep said:


> Its in this edition (dont know how to just show the page perhaps someone can assist ) .Theres also a quite bizarre defence of a teacher who had sex with a pupli of !5 .
> https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workershammer-uk/208_2009_autumn_workers-hammer.pdf


"the reactionary state-enforced stigma against intergenerational sex" who could argue with that?

"There's Nothing Wrong With A Little Bump and Grind: Defend R Kelly!" must be their classic


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## chilango (Apr 25, 2018)

Oh my


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## The39thStep (Apr 25, 2018)

Socialist Fight ( who take some beating on the loony tunes front) had a similar position on the Goddard case. In fact after a speed read of Socilaist Fight they are worth a closer look, Barking.


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## mx wcfc (Apr 25, 2018)

The39thStep said:


> Many many moons ago when I was at North London Poly in the Harrington Out Campaign the Sparts used to send about four or five members ( there were two Americans and a couple of well meaning but clearly barmy new recruits ) to any meeting we had. As they had some people working on the Tubes their slogan was something like  'Only the organised power of the London  Underground Workers can stop fascism by a General Strike' . Which a) wasnt true and b) very unlikley to happen. After a while people occupying began to get fed up with them and put a motion up for them to leave. I put a counter motion up for them to stay and join the occupation but that they had to join in a play a full and equal part not just come to meetings. They said they would agree to this no doubt dreaming that they would play a leading role .They did .We put them on toilet cleaning duty. 'Cleanliness is next to Trotskyism ' I told the meeting. They loved it.



Blimey.  That takes me back.  I wasn't at NLP, but came along a couple of times with my uni crowd.  It got quite lively one day when the bailiffs came in iirc.

That same day, I was called over by some comrades to check out a bunch of likely looking guys lurking nearby - people couldn't decide whether they were NF or Red Action, and I was the only one there who knew the Red Action guys.  It was Red Action.  They left us students to it when it became clear that the NF were a no show.


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## JuanTwoThree (Apr 25, 2018)

Grump said:


> Never mind the Sparts, anyone remember Big Flame?



I remember them in Leeds in the mid 70s. In the left's alphabet soup of the time they stood out by having a name that wasn't initials.


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## Grump (Apr 25, 2018)

When I was member of the SWP (shudder) I went to a community centre to book it for a meeting. I got chatting to the lovely, white haired old lady who was the caretaker, looking like the sort of person who plays the sweet old granny in an ad. She then announced she was a member of the New Communist Party and told me quite fiercely that Stalin was misunderstood and following his principles had guided her life. Despite being about 80 I think she was one of the NCPs youngest members which is why they folded shortly afterwards.


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## belboid (Apr 25, 2018)

Grump said:


> When I was member of the SWP (shudder) I went to a community centre to book it for a meeting. I got chatting to the lovely, white haired old lady who was the caretaker, looking like the sort of person who plays the sweet old granny in an ad. She then announced she was a member of the New Communist Party and told me quite fiercely that Stalin was misunderstood and following his principles had guided her life. Despite being about 80 I think she was one of the NCPs youngest members which is why they folded shortly afterwards.


I went in holiday with them. They ran cheap coach tours to Eastern Europe and Italy. Fine times were had, until the tour leader announced the discussion night on why the invasion of Afghanistan was a revolutionary act.


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## Grump (Apr 25, 2018)

belboid said:


> I went in holiday with them. They ran cheap coach tours to Eastern Europe and Italy. Fine times were had, until the tour leader announced the discussion night on why the invasion of Afghanistan was a revolutionary act.


Was that 'Yorkshire Tours'? I went with them on a coach/ train trip to Moscow. It was run by a couple from Huddersfield who used their links to East European states to book cheap travel.


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## Idris2002 (Apr 26, 2018)

belboid said:


> I went in holiday with them. They ran cheap coach tours to Eastern Europe and Italy. Fine times were had, until the tour leader announced the discussion night on why the invasion of Afghanistan was a revolutionary act.


I used to listen to Radio Moscow on shortwave, and I remember their broadcast the night the Red Army left Afghanistan - they focussed on the women's militias that were (apparently) forming up in Kabul.


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## belboid (Apr 26, 2018)

Grump said:


> Was that 'Yorkshire Tours'? I went with them on a coach/ train trip to Moscow. It was run by a couple from Huddersfield who used their links to East European states to book cheap travel.


I didn’t think it was called Yorkshire Tours, but could well have been. Huddersfield definitely sounds right.

(Progress Tours springs to mind)


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## RD2003 (Apr 26, 2018)

belboid said:


> I didn’t think it was called Yorkshire Tours, but could well have been. Huddersfield definitely sounds right.
> 
> (Progress Tours springs to mind)


Seem to remember that it was Progressive Tours, but may have also gone under the name of Yorkshire Tours for some reason. Although I could be wrong. 

I tried to get on one of their trips to the USSR around 1990-ish, as they were incredibly cheap, but they'd gone bust. I think that when the old couple either died or got too old some of their kids tried to keep it going for a short while.


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## The39thStep (Apr 26, 2018)

I knew a bloke who went to Albania with them. The company's advice was no beards allowed and bring a table tennis ball as there were no sink plugs. I think visiting a carpet factory was one of the excursions.


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## Idris2002 (Apr 26, 2018)

The39thStep said:


> I knew a bloke who went to Albania with them. The company's advice was no beards allowed and bring a table tennis ball as there were no sink plugs. I think visiting a carpet factory was one of the excursions.


One of my supervisors went on a tour of Albania - the highlight of her tour was a visit to a collective farm milking station where the cows were played Scarlatti, to increase milk yields.


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## belboid (Apr 26, 2018)

RD2003 said:


> Seem to remember that it was Progressive Tours, but may have also gone under the name of Yorkshire Tours for some reason. Although I could be wrong.
> 
> I tried to get on one of their trips to the USSR around 1990-ish, as they were incredibly cheap, but they'd gone bust. I think that when the old couple either died or got too old some of their kids tried to keep it going for a short while.


Progressive!  That's the buggers


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## Grump (Apr 26, 2018)

The39thStep said:


> I knew a bloke who went to Albania with them. The company's advice was no beards allowed and bring a table tennis ball as there were no sink plugs. I think visiting a carpet factory was one of the excursions.


A friend did a very similar tour except he got an excursion to a cement factory.


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## mx wcfc (Apr 26, 2018)

For those of us of a certain age.....



what were the Albanian's known as?  We had one at LSE. Can't for the life of me remember.


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## rekil (Apr 26, 2018)

The39thStep said:


> I knew a bloke who went to Albania with them. The company's advice was no beards allowed and bring a table tennis ball as there were no sink plugs. I think visiting a carpet factory was one of the excursions.


In 2009, the Guardian recommended going to Syria to look at carpets.


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## Nigel (Apr 26, 2018)

Grump said:


> When I was member of the SWP (shudder) I went to a community centre to book it for a meeting. I got chatting to the lovely, white haired old lady who was the caretaker, looking like the sort of person who plays the sweet old granny in an ad. She then announced she was a member of the New Communist Party and told me quite fiercely that Stalin was misunderstood and following his principles had guided her life. Despite being about 80 I think she was one of the NCPs youngest members which is why they folded shortly afterwards.


New Communist Party is still going !
It does, as far as I am aware have 'younger' members; an old associate who now works for CWU is a supporter, he must be in his early 50yrs now !
www.newworker.org | The New Communist Party of Britain | 13th April 2016


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## The39thStep (Apr 27, 2018)

copliker said:


> In 2009, the Guardian recommended going to Syria to look at carpets.
> 
> View attachment 133743



They also did a fantastic article on how good the shopping malls were in Qatar


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## Grump (Apr 27, 2018)

Nigel said:


> New Communist Party is still going !
> It does, as far as I am aware have 'younger' members; an old associate who now works for CWU is a supporter, he must be in his early 50yrs now !
> www.newworker.org | The New Communist Party of Britain | 13th April 2016


Well I never, I was convinced they had gone the way of Moskvich and Wartburg cars.


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## charlie mowbray (Apr 27, 2018)

No such luck


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## Idris2002 (Apr 28, 2018)

The39thStep said:


> Socialist Fight ( who take some beating on the loony tunes front) had a similar position on the Goddard case. In fact after a speed read of Socilaist Fight they are worth a closer look, Barking.


Isn't Socialist Fight just one aged loon, though?


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## planetgeli (Apr 28, 2018)

Speaking of “one loon” parties...this thread has confused me so far (as far as I can be bothered to read it) because...when I was a student, circa 1984-1985, I had a lot of friends at PNL and in the anti-fascist campaign centred around Patrick Harrington. On all the demos down Holloway Road there was always, always, one nutty man with a HUGE Spartacist League banner. Does this ring bells with anyone? Anyone know who he was? I always assumed Spartacist League were this one nutty guy. IIRC he also might have connected himself, via another banner (or maybe the same one) with ASLEF.

Anyone an expert on Spartacist history?


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## planetgeli (Apr 28, 2018)

The39thStep said:


> Many many moons ago when I was at North London Poly in the Harrington Out Campaign the Sparts used to send about four or five members ( there were two Americans and a couple of well meaning but clearly barmy new recruits ) to any meeting we had. As they had some people working on the Tubes their slogan was something like  'Only the organised power of the London  Underground Workers can stop fascism by a General Strike' . Which a) wasnt true and b) very unlikley to happen. After a while people occupying began to get fed up with them and put a motion up for them to leave. I put a counter motion up for them to stay and join the occupation but that they had to join in a play a full and equal part not just come to meetings. They said they would agree to this no doubt dreaming that they would play a leading role .They did .We put them on toilet cleaning duty. 'Cleanliness is next to Trotskyism ' I told the meeting. They loved it.




And, woo fuck, having now read the thread I’ve come across this. I swear there was only one not five but you’re right about the LT thing. 

Out of interest, feel free to PM me, or not, with who you are. My long term partner now was either VP Kentish Town or Women’s Officer back then if you remember. My best mate was Fuse editor, then VP Ladbroke House.


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## The39thStep (Apr 28, 2018)

Idris2002 said:


> Isn't Socialist Fight just one aged loon, though?


Gerry Downing ? Years and years ago he was the Convenor for Direct Works at Brent Council . He was in the WRP and was always on about Libya or Trotskys death mask , useless as a trade union rep.


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## The39thStep (Apr 28, 2018)

planetgeli said:


> And, woo fuck, having now read the thread I’ve come across this. I swear there was only one not five but you’re right about the LT thing.
> 
> Out of interest, feel free to PM me, or not, with who you are. My long term partner now was either VP Kentish Town or Women’s Officer back then if you remember. My best mate was Fuse editor, then VP Ladbroke House.


Done but don't complain about the length of the PM lol. I used to write for Fuse under the name of Dr Chuck Wilson .


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## belboid (Apr 29, 2018)

The39thStep said:


> Gerry Downing ? Years and years ago he was the Convenor for Direct Works at Brent Council . He was in the WRP and was always on about Libya or Trotskys death mask , useless as a trade union rep.


expelled (Tony Greenstein led) by Labour Against the Witchhunt for anti-semitism. He's that bad.


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## The39thStep (Apr 30, 2018)




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## Dom Traynor (May 2, 2018)

belboid said:


> expelled (Tony Greenstein led) by Labour Against the Witchhunt for anti-semitism. He's that bad.


The other person in Socialist Fight is Ian Donovan kicked out of the CPGB Weekly Worker for anti semitism.


----------



## Voley (May 14, 2018)

They were out in force  on Saturday.


----------



## TopCat (May 15, 2018)

I puched a spart in the 80's over some peado loony line they had taken. I think I asserted the paper seller was a paedo too and if not, certainly looked like one. Then whack to head. His mate trod on him in his haste to run away.


----------



## Idris2002 (May 15, 2018)

TopCat said:


> I puched a spart in the 80's over some peado loony line they had taken. I think I asserted the paper seller was a paedo too and if not, certainly looked like one. Then whack to head. His mate trod on him in his haste to run away.


Seems rather inconsistent with that macho image they liked to project.


----------



## Wilf (May 15, 2018)

TopCat said:


> I puched a spart in the 80's over some peado loony line they had taken. I think I asserted the paper seller was a paedo too and if not, certainly looked like one. Then whack to head. His mate trod on him in his haste to run away.


----------



## Shechemite (May 15, 2018)

TopCat said:


> I puched a spart in the 80's over some peado loony line they had taken. I think I asserted the paper seller was a paedo too and if not, certainly looked like one. Then whack to head. His mate trod on him in his haste to run away.



Nice one


----------



## emanymton (May 15, 2018)

TopCat said:


> I puched a spart in the 80's over some peado loony line they had taken. I think I asserted the paper seller was a paedo too and if not, certainly looked like one. Then whack to head. His mate trod on him in his haste to run away.


You let one get away?


----------



## Grump (May 15, 2018)

TopCat said:


> I puched a spart in the 80's over some peado loony line they had taken. I think I asserted the paper seller was a paedo too and if not, certainly looked like one. Then whack to head. His mate trod on him in his haste to run away.


I got into a fight with some WRP in the early 80s, they objected to us selling our paper on 'their' pitch at the loca shopping centre. As those in the WRP who weren't clinically mad were undercover police I was probably lucky not to get arrested.


----------



## MrSpikey (May 18, 2018)

andysays said:


> Reading this post has left me imagining a Trotskyite version of the Spice Girls which includes a member called Sparty Spice...


This nonsense about "Sparty Spice" just reveals your doctrinal deficiencies, comrade. 

Any proper analysis reveals the singular truth - that there ain't no Sparty like an S Club Sparty.


----------



## Idris2002 (May 18, 2018)

One of the saddest things I've ever seen was at a Socialist Party meeting on the Good Friday Agreement, about, oh 20 years ago.

A whole _family _of Sparts - mother, father, _and _teenage daughter - turned up to heckle. I had to feel some sympathy for the poor eejit who'd been born into the cult.


----------



## rekil (May 18, 2018)

Sparty, Whinger, Posh, Posher and Poshest.


----------



## Pickman's model (Sep 3, 2018)

Grump said:


> When I was member of the SWP (shudder) I went to a community centre to book it for a meeting. I got chatting to the lovely, white haired old lady who was the caretaker, looking like the sort of person who plays the sweet old granny in an ad. She then announced she was a member of the New Communist Party and told me quite fiercely that Stalin was misunderstood and following his principles had guided her life. Despite being about 80 I think she was one of the NCPs youngest members which is why they folded shortly afterwards.


rumours of their demise premature. http :/ /ww  w.ne  ww  orker.or g/


----------



## Favelado (Sep 3, 2018)

Grump said:


> the loca shopping centre.



Sounds like a crazy place.


----------



## Pickman's model (Sep 4, 2018)

The39thStep said:


> Socialist Fight ( who take some beating on the loony tunes front) had a similar position on the Goddard case. In fact after a speed read of Socilaist Fight they are worth a closer look, Barking.


yeh they are on the looniest end of the loony left


----------



## Pickman's model (Sep 4, 2018)

planetgeli said:


> Speaking of “one loon” parties...this thread has confused me so far (as far as I can be bothered to read it) because...when I was a student, circa 1984-1985, I had a lot of friends at PNL and in the anti-fascist campaign centred around Patrick Harrington. On all the demos down Holloway Road there was always, always, one nutty man with a HUGE Spartacist League banner. Does this ring bells with anyone? Anyone know who he was? I always assumed Spartacist League were this one nutty guy. IIRC he also might have connected himself, via another banner (or maybe the same one) with ASLEF.
> 
> Anyone an expert on Spartacist history?


sparts moved their chicago branch to the uk, hence the preponderance of americans within the group


----------



## Pickman's model (Sep 4, 2018)

Idris2002 said:


> Isn't Socialist Fight just one aged loon, though?


gerry downing, expelled from the labour party for anti-semitism.

and his acolyte i believe.


----------



## M Testa (Sep 21, 2018)

what are the spartacists doing? dredging the canal.


----------



## Idris2002 (Sep 21, 2018)

copliker said:


> In 2009, the Guardian recommended going to Syria to look at carpets.
> 
> View attachment 133743


There used to be an Irish woman who posted on urban, and who was doing a PhD in Arabic (until her house burned down taking all her notes with it). She told me that Syria was where you'd go if you wanted to learn the lingo, because even if people could speak French or English, they would make a point of not doing so - because of their national pride, you see.


----------



## belboid (Apr 11, 2019)

tragic news. James Roberston, founder of the Spartacist League has passed on.

Never more will we hear his rants about Albanian goat fuckers, or praise for the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.  

The world of far left politics is richer for his no longer being a part of it.


----------



## imposs1904 (Apr 11, 2019)

belboid said:


> tragic news. James Roberston, founder of the Spartacist League has passed on.
> 
> Never more will we hear his rants about Albanian goat fuckers, or praise for the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
> 
> The world of far left politics is richer for his no longer being a part of it.



They also just lost their Polish section, which translates as 'they expelled two blokes for not adhering to democratic centralism'.

PS - Somebody made - what I thought was - the funny joke on Facebook that he hung on another week so that he could witness the ISO dying before he did.


----------



## charlie mowbray (Apr 11, 2019)

Disturbing reading:
The Road to Jimstown
Will the Real Political Bandits Please Stand Up? - Truth or 		Consequences
especially Robertson's hot tub and "playroom"


----------



## charlie mowbray (Apr 11, 2019)

Ian Donova, Downing's sidekick is also an ex-Spart


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 24, 2020)

Still holding on for dear life:


----------



## butchersapron (Jan 24, 2020)

A step, as they note, _not taken lightly._


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 24, 2020)

butchersapron said:


> A step, as they note, _not taken lightly._


Walk on gilded splinters.


----------



## butchersapron (Jan 24, 2020)

Guilded slippers more like from that exhausted moan above,


----------



## JimW (Jan 24, 2020)

"Such a party, formed by splitting..." You can't leave us hanging there, Idris. Splitting a taxi to the Marx Memorial Library?


----------



## The39thStep (Jan 24, 2020)

butchersapron said:


> A step, as they note, _not taken lightly._


Historical trough


----------



## steeplejack (Jan 24, 2020)

Like the last Japanese soldier found in the Borneo jungle in the mid 1970s.


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 24, 2020)

butchersapron said:


> Guilded slippers more like from that exhausted moan above,



_Guild socialism, _you might say.



steeplejack said:


> Like the last Japanese soldier found in the Borneo jungle in the mid 1970s.


The war situation has developed, not necessarily to Japan's advantage.


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jan 25, 2020)

I think the death of their leader James Robertson is having its effects. We won't know what's going on in this secretive grouping for some time, but eventually Robertson's behaviour and control of the group will be revealed , including the frolics in the hot tub and "playroom", just as Gerry Healy's behaviour in the WRP was revealed.


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jan 25, 2020)

Don't know if it's been mentioned on here already, but the International Bolshevik Tendency, which split from the Sparts in the late 80s, also itself split over a year ago, with one group departing to found the Bolshevik Tendency (BT)
Here's their obit of Robertson:








						Jim Who? - Bolshevik Tendency
					

There is something a bit odd going on with the Spartacist League (SL), a group I joined at the tender age of 22 and have since maintained an interest in. In the 1960s and 70s…




					bolsheviktendency.org


----------



## The39thStep (Jan 25, 2020)

charlie mowbray said:


> Don't know if it's been mentioned on here already, but the International Bolshevik Tendency, which split from the Sparts in the late 80s, also itself split over a year ago, with one group departing to found the Bolshevik Tendency (BT)
> Here's their obit of Robertson:
> 
> 
> ...


There's some good stuff in that article but clicking on somelinks in there I found the answer to a question that used to puzzle me ie how come there  was always an American amongst them when you had the misfortune to bump into them,



> “Robertson was always good at sizing up people and was attuned to detecting human weakness. He generally took a conservative approach to building the Spartacist tendency; tended to avoid taking too many chances and preferred to avoid risk rather than pursue opportunity. He wanted to scale up the operation, but was very reluctant to lose tight personal control. This is why, even in its best period, every foreign section of the iSt had one or more trusted American cadres in its top leadership.



I was also more than pleased to find out the Sparts had also had a look at the 'interpenetrated peoples' issue



> “In its best period the SL under Robertson’s leadership not only defended the Trotskyist program, but also made some important contributions to it, including the now repudiated approach to the national question, particularly the difficult and complicated challenges posed by situations of ‘interpenetrated peoples*.*’ The renunciation of much of this history cannot detract from the clarity of the analysis put forward by the revolutionary SL in the 1970s.



And a Spart library Prometheus Research Library


----------



## kenny g (Jan 25, 2020)

In the early 1990's the only Sparts I met were  extremely attractive females with US accents and flirt mode turned up to 101%. Pretty scary to be honest considering it would be in some Coventry Trade Union council meeting with various teacher trots and "disillusioned labour" people.


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 31, 2020)

It's OK, kenny g, I also get the Fear when fit birds try to flirt with me.

Anyway, back when Jeffrey Epstein (didn't) kill himself last summer, all the talk centred around the breaking of his hyoid bone, this being the tell-tale sign that another hand was behind that one.

This reminded me of an Irish Times thing I'd read back in the early 90s about an American Spart in Moscow who'd been sent to organise the post-Communist proletariat, but was instead found dead in her apartment. She'd been stabbed, but her hyoid bone was also broken. . .

Here's an LA Times article about the poor woman: Who Killed Martha Phillips? : Was it an assassin, a former lover or a thief? The death of the onetime Oakland activist is a Moscow mystery.

The whole thing is desperately sad, and a terrible waste.


----------



## eoin_k (Jan 31, 2020)




----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 31, 2020)




----------



## mx wcfc (Jan 31, 2020)

On a slightly less serious point. when I was SWP, at the LSE freshers week thing the Sparts came over and "engaged us in comradely discourse".  This involved an American Spart thumping our table and shouting at us.  I pointed out that he was in danger of breaking a copy of Mike Carter's double A side single "Brixton/Ordinary People" that we had for sale at which point he apologised profusely and went away.

I was 19.  It was my first "interaction" with Sparts, and I won!


----------



## Shechemite (Feb 1, 2020)

mx wcfc said:


> On a slightly less serious point. when I was SWP, at the LSE freshers week thing the Sparts came over and "engaged us in comradely discourse".  This involved an American Spart thumping our table and shouting at us.  I pointed out that he was in danger of breaking a copy of Mike Carter's double A side single "Brixton/Ordinary People" that we had for sale at which point he apologised profusely and went away.
> 
> I was 19.  It was my first "interaction" with Sparts, and I won!



But you were in the SWP. So you lost


----------



## Shechemite (Feb 1, 2020)

Freshers fair is when you leave the SWP rape cult, not where you go back to to promote the fucking thing


----------



## Idris2002 (Feb 11, 2020)

Sparts get a namecheck in this Guardian review of a "gay in Thatcher's Britain" novel:









						A Small Revolution in Germany by Philip Hensher review – a rebel’s tale
					

Youthful radicals shed their convictions in a novel that moves between Thatcher’s Britain and the present




					www.theguardian.com


----------



## Fedayn (Feb 11, 2020)

The39thStep said:


> There's some good stuff in that article but clicking on somelinks in there I found the answer to a question that used to puzzle me ie how come there  was always an American amongst them when you had the misfortune to bump into them,



Even in Coatbridge, just outside of Glasgow, there was a yank Spart.


----------



## Fedayn (Feb 11, 2020)

If they appeared now they would probably demand International Proletarian Defence for Derek Mackay.


----------



## Idris2002 (Feb 11, 2020)

The39thStep said:


> Ken Macleod, the author, was in the Sparts. He got kicked out of the IMG



Did he refuse to get divorced?


----------



## Idris2002 (Feb 11, 2020)

Fedayn said:


> If they appeared now they would probably demand International Proletarian Defence for Derek Mackay.


Is that the SNP groomer?


----------



## Fedayn (Feb 11, 2020)

Idris2002 said:


> Is that the SNP groomer?



It is mate aye.


----------



## The39thStep (Feb 11, 2020)

Idris2002 said:


> Did he refuse to get divorced?



No he just came out as a Spart


----------



## The39thStep (Feb 11, 2020)

Fedayn said:


> Even in Coatbridge, just outside of Glasgow, there was a yank Spart.


I remember doing a Sat morning papersale and we went to the offy to get some cans, as we were going round someone house for a barbecue late afternoon , and some Yank spart selling their paper came up and says 'you guys gonna partry at this time of day, wheres your political commitment to revolutionary politics?'


----------



## Fedayn (Feb 11, 2020)

The39thStep said:


> I remember doing a Sat morning papersale and we went to the offy to get some cans, as we were going round someone house for a barbecue late afternoon , and some Yank spart selling their paper came up and says 'you guys gonna partry at this time of day, wheres your political commitment to revolutionary politics?'



😂😂😂


----------



## CNT36 (Feb 11, 2020)

cogg said:


> That's amazing, you had a friend who was a fish!


To be fair it's his entire identity.


----------



## Idris2002 (Feb 11, 2020)

CNT36 said:


> To be fair it's his entire identity.


"It's a furry - don't let it touch you"


----------



## Idris2002 (Feb 11, 2020)

Ah lads.

"The Sparts built their organisation in Britain on splits engineered firstly in the WSL, and then the IMG.   Prior to these, they relied upon good old “primitive accumulation of cadre”.   For reasons which have always escaped me, I was the subject of two such approaches, both (as I recall) in 1976/77.


The first occurred when I was introduced in London to an American woman doing post-grad research into rank-and-file movements in the building trade.   This having been my field of activity for several years, I was invited to interview and assist with research.   I was happy to do so and found we got on well at both the working and personal levels.   Arrangements were made for me to come down to London for a weekend and stay with her to continue work.


We had an enjoyable supper and then retired, whereupon my companion revealed herself to be a plenipotentiary of the International Spartacist Tendency, authorised to bring me into its ranks.   An uncomfortable night concluded with the end of our research and relationship."









						Expulsion of the Communist Faction
					

Ian Parker’s amusing take on the Spartacist League reminded us that this organisation’s British section was largely built, in the late 1970s through stimulating splits in other revoluti…




					redmolerising.wordpress.com


----------



## Fedayn (Feb 11, 2020)

The US Sparts sent a fella called  Tom Crean to the 26 Counties to recruit for them. Ostensible amongst the CWI etc. Tom ended up joining the CWI and is now a leading figure I believe


----------



## Idris2002 (Feb 11, 2020)

Fedayn said:


> The US Sparts sent a fella called  Tom Crean to the 26 Counties to recruit for them. Ostensible amongst the CWI etc. Tom ended up joining the CWI and is now a leading figure I believe


Mrs. Idris has run into him a few times, and seemed to find him one of the good guys - and she normally takes a dim view of all things Trot (esp. the SWP and its Irish branch).


----------



## imposs1904 (Feb 11, 2020)

Fedayn said:


> The US Sparts sent a fella called  Tom Crean to the 26 Counties to recruit for them. Ostensible amongst the CWI etc. Tom ended up joining the CWI and is now a leading figure I believe



I remember seeing him speak in New York for Socialist Alternative about 10/11 years ago. 

I remember encountering a couple of Sparts outside Brooklyn College when my wife was a student there. Both Sparts were German.


----------



## Fedayn (Feb 11, 2020)

imposs1904 said:


> I remember seeing him speak in New York for Socialist Alternative about 10/11 years ago.
> 
> I remember encountering a couple of Sparts outside Brooklyn College when my wife was a student there. Both Sparts were German.



I met him a few times, liked him.


----------



## eoin_k (Feb 17, 2020)

A Spart once branded me a demagogue for accusing him of behaving like a parasite for selling his paper outside a squat in east London.


----------



## Idris2002 (Mar 17, 2020)

eoin_k said:


> A Spart once branded me a demagogue for accusing him of behaving like a parasite for selling his paper outside a squat in east London.


In fairness, the man had a point.


----------



## likesfish (Jun 15, 2020)

CNT36 said:


> To be fair it's his entire identity.


check your privilege some people have very little  brain and seldom use it


----------



## PTK (Aug 18, 2020)

mx wcfc said:


> On a slightly less serious point. when I was SWP, at the LSE freshers week thing the Sparts came over and "engaged us in comradely discourse".  This involved an American Spart thumping our table and shouting at us.  I pointed out that he was in danger of breaking a copy of Mike Carter's double A side single "Brixton/Ordinary People" that we had for sale at which point he apologised profusely and went away.
> 
> I was 19.  It was my first "interaction" with Sparts, and I won!


That was me! I am not American. I hope that I did not damage the record. I wish I had bought a copy of it some time, as it was a good record


----------



## PTK (Aug 18, 2020)

Idris2002 said:


> It's OK, kenny g, I also get the Fear when fit birds try to flirt with me.
> 
> Anyway, back when Jeffrey Epstein (didn't) kill himself last summer, all the talk centred around the breaking of his hyoid bone, this being the tell-tale sign that another hand was behind that one.
> 
> ...


I think that it was a disgrace to send this comrade into such a potentially dangerous situation.


----------



## PTK (Aug 18, 2020)

Idris2002 said:


> Did he refuse to get divorced?


Most of his books are well worth reading. I recommend particularly The Star Fraction and The Execution Channel.


----------



## Idris2002 (Aug 18, 2020)

JimW said:


> "Such a party, formed by splitting..." You can't leave us hanging there, Idris. Splitting a taxi to the Marx Memorial Library?


Splitting the base of the Labour party from its leadership. 



			Reducing Workers Hammer frequency


----------



## Idris2002 (Aug 18, 2020)

PTK said:


> Most of his books are well worth reading. I recommend particularly The Star Fraction and The Execution Channel.


Son, have you ever kissed a girl?


----------



## JimW (Aug 18, 2020)

Idris2002 said:


> Splitting the base of the Labour party from its leadership.
> 
> 
> 
> Reducing Workers Hammer frequency


The utter dastards!


----------



## Idris2002 (Aug 18, 2020)

JimW said:


> The utter dastards!


Brendan Behan had a story about his da reading something from the paper which described certain people as "dastards".

Behan: "I suppose they wanted to write bastards, but had to change it?"

Behan's da: "no, anyone can be born a bastard, but to be a dastard you have to work at it".


----------



## mx wcfc (Aug 18, 2020)

PTK said:


> That was me! I am not American. I hope that I did not damage the record. I wish I had bought a copy of it some time, as it was a good record


I still have the sleeve, but can't find the record.  What year was that?


----------



## PTK (Aug 18, 2020)

mx wcfc said:


> I still have the sleeve, but can't find the record.  What year was that?


I think that it was 1982, but it could have been 1981. It was not at the Freshers Fare, I think. The SWP had a lunchtime stall in a kind of foyer area.


----------



## PTK (Aug 18, 2020)

Idris2002 said:


> Splitting the base of the Labour party from its leadership.
> 
> 
> 
> Reducing Workers Hammer frequency


As opposed to the current situation, in which the leadership of the Labour Party is splitting from its base; or should that be, spitting on its base?


----------



## PTK (Aug 18, 2020)

Idris2002 said:


> Splitting the base of the Labour party from its leadership.
> 
> 
> 
> Reducing Workers Hammer frequency


I was perusing an online edition of Workers Hammer a few months ago, (I think that such activities may be a side-effect of the pandemic) and I was disgusted to read that it called for an abstention in the December 2019 General Election. It argued that it could not call for a vote for the Labour Party because Labour was not anti-EU, being in favour of a second referendum. This line, of course, leaves those members of the Labour Party who opposed EU membership high and dry.

It is interesting that the paper admits that there are very few members left, and that they are getting too old to be very active. If they actually interacted with the real world, perhaps they might discover why their position was unviable.


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 25, 2020)

PTK said:


> That was me! I am not American. I hope that I did not damage the record. I wish I had bought a copy of it some time, as it was a good record


That was a fairly regular occurrence. By a certain point people expected to hear American accents and so heard them, whether they were American or not. One Italian member was mightily chuffed upon being told he was an American - he had worked for years to improve his English! Most of the 'Americans', especially in the early days were Anglo-Canadian.

Admittedly, the Spartacists did rely on the musical chair principle of party-growing, but the 'accusations' of being an American also reflected anti-American views on the British left. For my part, one of the things that attracted me to them was that they were American communists.


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 25, 2020)

PTK said:


> As opposed to the current situation, in which the leadership of the Labour Party is splitting from its base; or should that be, spitting on its base?


hardly the first time


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 25, 2020)

Fedayn said:


> Even in Coatbridge, just outside of Glasgow, there was a yank Spart.


She was Irish . . .


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 25, 2020)

PTK said:


> I think that it was a disgrace to send this comrade into such a potentially dangerous situation.


I visited her in Moscow and we had to count thousands of Rubles in coins of paper sales money to deposit in a bank. Probably worth at least €10. Every time her dormitory flatmate came into her room we had to jump on the bed because she was an extremely right-wing woman from Orange County getting Russian lessons on the cheap from some US Government agency. And I agree, she should have been better looked after, though it was her idea to go there to work off the political disgrace she had accumulated in the US section.


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 25, 2020)

imposs1904 said:


> They also just lost their Polish section, which translates as 'they expelled two blokes for not adhering to democratic centralism'.
> 
> PS - Somebody made - what I thought was - the funny joke on Facebook that he hung on another week so that he could witness the ISO dying before he did.


They accuse the pair of antisemitism. However, that isn't what got them expelled, it was their alleged breach of 'democratic centralism' as you say.


----------



## Shechemite (Aug 25, 2020)

Matt Kelly said:


> to go there to work off the political disgrace she had accumulated in the US section.



Do you understand how grim that sounds?


----------



## nogojones (Aug 25, 2020)

Matt Kelly said:


> I visited her in Moscow and we had to count thousands of Rubles in coins of paper sales money to deposit in a bank. Probably worth at least €10. Every time her dormitory flatmate came into her room we had to jump on the bed because she was an extremely right-wing woman from Orange County getting Russian lessons on the cheap from some US Government agency. And I agree, she should have been better looked after, though it was her idea to go there to work off the political disgrace she had accumulated in the US section.


Wow. What sort of political disgrace gets you exiled to Russia?


----------



## PTK (Aug 26, 2020)

Matt Kelly said:


> They accuse the pair of antisemitism. However, that isn't what got them expelled, it was their alleged breach of 'democratic centralism' as you say.


"What's your line on Poland?" was once regarded as a biting criticism of ex-members in the 1980s. The SL/B had a very American attitude to resignations. People were never described as "resigning" but as "quitting". The term implies that everything in life is some sort of competition, and if you do not want to play any more than you are deficient in some way.

I remember once, when I was a member, that another member told me that a comrade had quit because he was "afraid of being tortured" should there be a revolutionary situation, and he was arrested by the other side. I pointed out that being frightened of being tortured was a quite unexceptional fear.


----------



## PTK (Aug 26, 2020)

Matt Kelly said:


> That was a fairly regular occurrence. By a certain point people expected to hear American accents and so heard them, whether they were American or not. One Italian member was mightily chuffed upon being told he was an American - he had worked for years to improve his English! Most of the 'Americans', especially in the early days were Anglo-Canadian.
> 
> Admittedly, the Spartacists did rely on the musical chair principle of party-growing, but the 'accusations' of being an American also reflected anti-American views on the British left. For my part, one of the things that attracted me to them was that they were American communists.


Have you any information on the current political stance of any ex-members of the SL/B.?  I still regard myself as a Marxist, and am a member of the Labour Party. Have any become Tories?


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 26, 2020)

MadeInBedlam said:


> Do you understand how grim that sounds?


Indeed I do, but it remains an accurate statement of fact.


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 26, 2020)

PTK said:


> "What's your line on Poland?" was once regarded as a biting criticism of ex-members in the 1980s. The SL/B had a very American attitude to resignations. People were never described as "resigning" but as "quitting". The term implies that everything in life is some sort of competition, and if you do not want to play any more than you are deficient in some way.
> 
> I remember once, when I was a member, that another member told me that a comrade had quit because he was "afraid of being tortured" should there be a revolutionary situation, and he was arrested by the other side. I pointed out that being frightened of being tortured was a quite unexceptional fear.


I don't believe that they were a cult, but there were some cult-like elements to them. For instance, their attitude to 'quitting'. Many 'quitters' were later reported to have gone off the rails, having lost the stability to their lives brought by membership. One member who quit quickly started to believe in the presence of UFOs - her brother (who remained a member) told me years later that this was crap. Another member went off to campaign against a gypsy site near his housing estate. Again this turned out to be a lie. One American ex-comrade, who I have no good thoughts about quit to pursue homeopathic medicine as opposed to vaccination. As bad as he was, I do not believe this is true.

Seeing a pattern?


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 26, 2020)

nogojones said:


> Wow. What sort of political disgrace gets you exiled to Russia?


From memory it was some infringement of internal democracy, such as not allowing someone to speak in an internal meeting. I wouldn't swear to that, though.

She was learning Russian in the US, she was under some pressure to go to the USSR anyway where the Sparts were carrying out political work, and finally she agreed to go. In that respect, it wasn't exile.


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 26, 2020)

PTK said:


> Have you any information on the current political stance of any ex-members of the SL/B.?  I still regard myself as a Marxist, and am a member of the Labour Party. Have any become Tories?


I'm in regular contact with a number of ex-members spread over a few countries, all of whom remain Marxists and broadly agreeing with Trotskyism. I'm not aware of anyone joining the Conservative Party. That franchise seems to have been bought by the RCP.

If you tell me when and where you were a member I can probably diagnose your political sins!

I was on my way out for a long time before finally quitting during the miners' strike. Despite carrying on working with them for years afterwards as a sympathiser, I was diagnosed as someone who had no faith in the ability of the working class to struggle (since a quit has to teach a lesson to remaining members and has nothing to do with the reason(s) for quitting).


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 26, 2020)

Idris2002 said:


> They were right about Khomeini, to give them their due. Not bad for a group that were like something out of the 1930s, and not in a good way.


Internally, the Communist Faction in the IMG was considered a disaster, whatever the SL/B might have said in public. I know a number of ex-members of that group who went on to join the SL/B. Ken Macleod was never a member of the SL/B, nor was he a member of the Communist Faction. The latter was so badly run that he may have had the impression that he was a member, but he wasn't!


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 26, 2020)

rekil said:


> In 2009, the Guardian recommended going to Syria to look at carpets.
> 
> View attachment 133743


Alexei Sayle once said that Syria was like East Germany with hummus . . .


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 26, 2020)

Idris2002 said:


> Ah lads.
> 
> "The Sparts built their organisation in Britain on splits engineered firstly in the WSL, and then the IMG.   Prior to these, they relied upon good old “primitive accumulation of cadre”.   For reasons which have always escaped me, I was the subject of two such approaches, both (as I recall) in 1976/77.
> 
> ...


The American woman you refer to is still a member, though the PhD was never completed - possibly your withdrawal didn't help. They did have some 'unique' recruitment practices, but setting up a PhD programme was generally not among them . . .


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## Matt Kelly (Aug 26, 2020)

imposs1904 said:


> I remember seeing him speak in New York for Socialist Alternative about 10/11 years ago.
> 
> I remember encountering a couple of Sparts outside Brooklyn College when my wife was a student there. Both Sparts were German.


Tom was a decent bloke, all the more surprising that he joined a group who think that cops and prison guards should be in unions.

He was an ex-member from Boston when he fetched up at Trinity in Dublin, but he attracted a group of people at the university who went on to form the short-lived Dublin Spartacist Supporters Group later morphing into the Dublin Spartacist Group.

At one point the German group was in disgrace and members were exiled to the four corners of the Earth to learn what Spartacism was all about.


----------



## Idris2002 (Aug 26, 2020)

Matt Kelly said:


> The American woman you refer to is still a member, though the PhD was never completed - possibly your withdrawal didn't help. They did have some 'unique' recruitment practices, but setting up a PhD programme was generally not among them . . .


Quotation marks are important in this post. See how many you can spot.


----------



## PTK (Aug 27, 2020)

Matt Kelly said:


> Internally, the Communist Faction in the IMG was considered a disaster, whatever the SL/B might have said in public. I know a number of ex-members of that group who went on to join the SL/B. Ken Macleod was never a member of the SL/B, nor was he a member of the Communist Faction. The latter was so badly run that he may have had the impression that he was a member, but he wasn't!


Ken was a member of both the CF and the SL/B. I attended a number of SL meetings with him.


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## charlie mowbray (Aug 27, 2020)

PTK, you're very forthcoming on the past of the Sparts, but provide no information on the state of them post-Robertson.


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## PTK (Aug 27, 2020)

An ex-member of the Spartacist League known as Ian Donovan became Judeophobic, and for the past five or six years has been publishing articles claiming that the “Zionist” members of the bourgeoisie are a vanguard of that class that is responsible for neo-liberalism, and other such crap. Jewish people who form anti-Zionist groups are, according to Ian, demonstrating a belief in their own moral superiority. So the anti-Zionist Jews are bad too., according to this reprobate.

Ian D was driven to a mental breakdown by the Spartacist League, but that was back in the late 1980s, and does not explain his current political position, and is not mitigation for his political crimes.


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## PTK (Aug 27, 2020)

charlie mowbray said:


> PTK, you're very forthcoming on the past of the Sparts, but provide no information on the state of them post-Robertson.


I cannot provide information about that which I do not know.


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## charlie mowbray (Aug 27, 2020)

A very evasive answer.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 27, 2020)

PTK said:


> I cannot provide information about that which I do not know.


that's not a very urban attitude


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## PTK (Aug 27, 2020)

Pickman's model said:


> that's not a very urban attitude


I have no more information on the current state of the Spartacist League/Britain than is available in Workers Hammer, which I perused a while back. As previously mentioned, I was dismayed that it called for an abstention in the last General Election, on the basis that the Labour Party was calling for a second referendum on the EU.


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## PTK (Aug 27, 2020)

Pickman's model said:


> that's not a very urban attitude


There is a rumour (which I initiate here) that Robertson's daughter is trying to become the new Chair of the US section, but that she is being opposed by Robertson's widow.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 27, 2020)

PTK said:


> I have no more information on the current state of the Spartacist League/Britain than is available in Workers Hammer, which I perused a while back. As previously mentioned, I was dismayed that it called for an abstention in the last General Election, on the basis that the Labour Party was calling for a second referendum on the EU.


ah yes, corbyn - running dog of the eu


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## Pickman's model (Aug 27, 2020)

PTK said:


> There is a rumour (which I initiate here) that Robertson's daughter is trying to become the new Chair of the US section, but that she is being opposed by Robertson's widow.


that's more like it. now you only need to embellish it and you'd have something worth reading.


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## PTK (Aug 27, 2020)

Pickman's model said:


> that's more like it. now you only need to embellish it and you'd have something worth reading.


A member of the Spartacist League/US once addressed a convention of the National Rifle Association, as it agreed with their opposition to gun control. Now that the NRA is under criminal investigation in New York State, then perhaps the SL/US will be forming a defence committee.


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## Matt Kelly (Aug 27, 2020)

PTK said:


> There is a rumour (which I initiate here) that Robertson's daughter is trying to become the new Chair of the US section, but that she is being opposed by Robertson's widow.


Robertson had no daughter to my knowledge. He has two sons, one of whom is pre-harem and so far as I know was never involved in politics. The other, Kenneth, was in politics and was in the Mexican section some years ago. Present whereabouts unknown to me. The woman currently in charge of the SL/US is Skye W, a forty-something acolyte who seems to have gotten on his good side by praising Robertson's early Byzantine coin collection and taking used cans to him for recycling. Bizarre, but reported by the woman herself in her obituary statement to the Great Leader in their esteemed organ.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 27, 2020)

Matt Kelly said:


> Robertson had no daughter to my knowledge.


PTK's rumour improves with every minute


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## Matt Kelly (Aug 27, 2020)

PTK said:


> A member of the Spartacist League/US once addressed a convention of the National Rifle Association, as it agreed with their opposition to gun control. Now that the NRA is under criminal investigation in New York State, then perhaps the SL/US will be forming a defence committee.


I think that they are correct in their position on gun control - in places like England it has historically been used to make sure the lower classes are unarmed in the face of repression. So far as I am concerned that's just fact.

The National Rifle Association is a separate question.

Supposedly Bob Mandel once 'disrespected' workers' democracy in a public meeting of another left group in the Bay Area. On reporting his escapades in the office, Al Nelson put him in a headlock and pulled a handgun on him. When the assembled comrades threatened to disarm him for a period of time, he complained that he needed the weapon to defend his family.


----------



## JimW (Aug 27, 2020)

Matt Kelly said:


> ...Robertson's early Byzantine coin collection...


Interest in the Byzantine must have come in handy


----------



## PTK (Aug 27, 2020)

Matt Kelly said:


> I think that they are correct in their position on gun control - in places like England it has historically been used to make sure the lower classes are unarmed in the face of repression. So far as I am concerned that's just fact.


. . . although the Bill of Rights gives Protestants in England the right to bear arms. The US Constitution only gives people the right to belong to a militia, not to hold arms for personal use. Perhaps the SL/US should campaign for the abolition of the standing army, and its replacement with a militia.


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## PTK (Aug 27, 2020)

JimW said:


> Interest in the Byzantine must have come in handy


I have been trying to entice people since the `1970s with my etchings, without success. It seems clear to me that I have should have invested instead in Byzantine coins. I saw a couple of Byzantine coins once, but could not make any sense of the writing on them; it was all Greek to me.


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 27, 2020)

charlie mowbray said:


> PTK, you're very forthcoming on the past of the Sparts, but provide no information on the state of them post-Robertson.


Robertson had a very delayed and low-key sending off by his erstwhile comrades. This was unexpected - I half-imagined his ashes being distributed and carried round the various sections with pieces of cloth which had touched the great man being sold to the believers. He was active in the ongoing factional infighting over the national rights of various white nationalities, etc, right up until he died.

Could they have discovered something about his past after his demise? Here's an intriguing page from Clare Cowen's 2019 book "My Search for Revolution".

Anyone have anything constructive to say other than sarcastic comments about the old goat?


----------



## Matt Kelly (Aug 27, 2020)

PTK said:


> . . . although the Bill of Rights gives Protestants in England the right to bear arms.


I wouldn't try exercising that right today if I were you - Her Majesty's Constabulary would probably take a dim view.


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## PTK (Aug 27, 2020)

Matt Kelly said:


> I wouldn't try exercising that right today if I were you - Her Majesty's Constabulary would probably take a dim view.


Because I'm not a Protestant? The British Bill of Rights also forbids a standing army in peacetime. According to one source, Parliament has to pass an Armed Forces Bill every five years because of this, although I am doubtful of that claim.


----------



## PTK (Aug 27, 2020)

Matt Kelly said:


> Robertson had a very delayed and low-key sending off by his erstwhile comrades. This was unexpected - I half-imagined his ashes being distributed and carried round the various sections with pieces of cloth which had touched the great man being sold to the believers. He was active in the ongoing factional infighting over the national rights of various white nationalities, etc, right up until he died.
> 
> Could they have discovered something about his past after his demise? Here's an intriguing page from Clare Cowen's 2019 book "My Search for Revolution".
> 
> ...



Now that I am older and wiser (or a traitor to the beliefs of my youth, if you prefer) I cannot see the justification for ostensible [good Spart-type word-usage there] Marxists being fragmented into all these different groups.

If you can set up your own group, you can create quite a nice life for yourself and some of your comrades. Most of us do politics in our spare time, but the full-timers are able to get paid for indulging in their hobby full-time. Most full-timers in these groups do not get a huge income, but that is not the point. Robertson appears to have had a very privileged life.

I think that the low-key approach to Robbo’s demise may be because the followers do not know what to do now that their guru has gone. The French group known as Lutte Ouvrière, seemed to have an extremely low-key approach to the death of their numero uno. His death was apparently not announced for more than a year after it occurred.


----------



## Idris2002 (Sep 11, 2020)

JimW said:


> Interest in the Byzantine must have come in handy


Only 1453 kids will get this.


----------



## PTK (Oct 9, 2020)

Does anyone who ever had any contact with the Spartacist League of Britain remember a “Barry Tompkins”? It was claimed a few years ago that a police officer infiltrated the Spartacist League using this “nom de cop” between 1979 and 1983.

The name “Barry” did not ring any bells when first I read of the “revelation”, but there is one person who was a candidate member for a few months who I think, upon consideration, may fit the bill. He may have been called Barry, but I am not sure if my memory is playing tricks.

It may be a double bluff, and perhaps the Sparts never were infiltrated. Perhaps the cop got paid per group he infiltrated, and over claimed.


----------



## Larry O'Hara (Oct 9, 2020)

Having crossed paths with (American) Spartacists in the Midlands many years ago, I thought they were more likely infiltrators themselves. Their presence certainly seemed to be at least an abstract argument for immigration controls...I was in the too sophisticated for its own good Big Flame at the time, indeed remained till it sadly dissolved.


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## PTK (Oct 9, 2020)

Larry O'Hara said:


> Having crossed paths with (American) Spartacists in the Midlands many years ago, I thought they were more likely infiltrators themselves. Their presence certainly seemed to be at least an abstract argument for immigration controls...I was in the too sophisticated for its own good Big Flame at the time, indeed remained till it sadly dissolved.


How do we know that you are not an agent, whose aim is to spread lies about other left-wing groups?


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## Larry O'Hara (Oct 9, 2020)

PTK said:


> How do we know that you are not an agent, whose aim is to spread lies about other left-wing groups?


To paraphrase the great Brian Labone, those who know, know. Those who don’t know, don’t matter. You might start by glancing at my website & extensive back catalogue. Though it does deal with ideas that were gestated after 21/8/1940 so might be a bit taxing for you.
Oh, one other thing: while I have no problem with U75 people using pseudonyms, I am one of the few on here who doesn’t.


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## PTK (Oct 11, 2020)

Larry O'Hara said:


> To paraphrase the great Brian Labone, those who know, know. Those who don’t know, don’t matter. You might start by glancing at my website & extensive back catalogue. Though it does deal with ideas that were gestated after 21/8/1940 so might be a bit taxing for you.
> Oh, one other thing: while I have no problem with U75 people using pseudonyms, I am one of the few on here who doesn’t.





Larry O'Hara said:


> To paraphrase the great Brian Labone, those who know, know. Those who don’t know, don’t matter. You might start by glancing at my website & extensive back catalogue. Though it does deal with ideas that were gestated after 21/8/1940 so might be a bit taxing for you.
> Oh, one other thing: while I have no problem with U75 people using pseudonyms, I am one of the few on here who doesn’t.


Where is the evidence for your claim that members of the Spartacist League were state agents?

 -�|k�h"�Ȉ�ǭ>����o�ٌ0�E�r��OǠ�x��we������f�q%���


----------



## Larry O'Hara (Oct 12, 2020)

PTK said:


> Where is the evidence for your claim that members of the Spartacist League were state agents?
> 
> -�|k�h"�Ȉ�ǭ>����o�ٌ0�E�r��OǠ�x��we������f�q%���





PTK said:


> Where is the evidence for your claim that members of the Spartacist League were state agents?
> 
> -�|k�h"�Ȉ�ǭ>����o�ٌ0�E�r��OǠ�x��we������f�q%���


Not got a sense of irony or humour have you? I was referring to the fact that the Sparts I met (who happened to be American not that I dislike Americans) were so tedious, sectarian and humourless they certainly had the effect of alienating all they met from progressive politics. Hence the quip about immigration controls. God, I bet you’re a dull fucker in real life as well as online. Get a life.


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## PTK (Oct 13, 2020)

Larry O'Hara said:


> Not got a sense of irony or humour have you? I was referring to the fact that the Sparts I met (who happened to be American not that I dislike Americans) were so tedious, sectarian and humourless they certainly had the effect of alienating all they met from progressive politics. Hence the quip about immigration controls. God, I bet you’re a dull fucker in real life as well as online. Get a life.


That you find your own words amusing is no guarantee that others will. You clothe a serous allegation as a jok,e which I call out as being two-faced.


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## Larry O'Hara (Oct 13, 2020)

PTK said:


> That you find your own words amusing is no guarantee that others will. You clothe a serous allegation as a jok,e which I call out as being two-faced.


You have no sense of irony, humour, or discernment. So no point in engaging with you: in fact you illustrate why you are/were a typical Trotskyist, a sub-standard epigone. Just do one


----------



## Carl Steele (Dec 5, 2020)

> I don't believe that they were a cult, but there were some cult-like elements to them. For instance, their attitude to 'quitting'. Many 'quitters' were later reported to have gone off the rails, having lost the stability to their lives brought by membership. One member who quit quickly started to believe in the presence of UFOs - her brother (who remained a member) told me years later that this was crap. Another member went off to campaign against a gypsy site near his housing estate. Again this turned out to be a lie. One American ex-comrade, who I have no good thoughts about quit to pursue homeopathic medicine as opposed to vaccination. As bad as he was, I do not believe this is true.



True enough, they always came up with a reason why someone quit (always a betrayal) ... except when NW committed suicide. Then they said they had no idea why he'd killed himself. It took them six weeks to write an obituary, and in those days they were a functioning organisation with a prolific editorial board. I wasn't  a member at the time, but I was in contact with them and sometimes went on demos with them. Given the ferocious internal regime, the routine trashing of those considered to have failed, the abject failure in the DDR where NW played a central role, it seemed to me that they had something to cover up. I never went near them again. They are and were a repellent cult.


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## likesfish (Jan 2, 2021)

Matt Kelly said:


> I wouldn't try exercising that right today if I were you - Her Majesty's Constabulary would probably take a dim view.


Their was somebody attempting to challenge the prohibition on arming yourself was before soverign citizens


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## Larry O'Hara (Jan 10, 2021)

Nigel said:


> Didn't they have a meeting in Fleet Street recently as commemoration !



wish I’d known!


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## Larry O'Hara (Jan 10, 2021)

Grump said:


> Never mind the Sparts, anyone remember Big Flame?


Yes: I was a member from c1979 to the bitter end, even wrote for the paper. Proud to have been a member: too clever for their own good, and not sectarian enough to prosper. Some of their analysis still relevant today.


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## Idris2002 (Apr 22, 2021)

AAAAND THEY'RE BACK!



			Down With the Lockdowns!     -     The Working Class Must Defend Itself
		


You can't keep a good Spart down. Or something.


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## Shechemite (Apr 23, 2021)

No lockdowns in Belarus. Which country is the real dictatorship eh?


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## hitmouse (Apr 23, 2021)

Idris2002 said:


> AAAAND THEY'RE BACK!
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I liked this bit/thought it could do with a bit of expansion:



			
				the ICL said:
			
		

> For the last year, the position of the ICL was to accept the lockdowns as necessary. We repudiate this position. It was a capitulation to the “national unity” rallying cry that all classes should support the lockdowns because they save lives.


Has there been a coup by one section of the ICL against another? Or has the one guy who writes their materials just had a Damascene conversion after watching a particularly convincing youtube video or something? I feel like the international proletariat needs more clarification on this vital point.


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## Idris2002 (Apr 23, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> I liked this bit/thought it could do with a bit of expansion:
> 
> Has there been a coup by one section of the ICL against another? Or has the one guy who writes their materials just had a Damascene conversion after watching a particularly convincing youtube video or something? I feel like the international proletariat needs more clarification on this vital point.


I think the head guy's daughter was fighting with the rest of them for the right to succession. I presume that's where the change of line comes from, though I don't know if she won or not. Or maybe it's the FBI having  a bit of fun?


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## belboid (Apr 23, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> I liked this bit/thought it could do with a bit of expansion:
> 
> Has there been a coup by one section of the ICL against another? Or has the one guy who writes their materials just had a Damascene conversion after watching a particularly convincing youtube video or something? I feel like the international proletariat needs more clarification on this vital point.


A different bloke has the password to the website this month. 

I do like such self awareness though and am glad they got it in before they made their (completely justified) inspired critique of those barely walking lapdogs of imperialism the wsws


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## hitmouse (Apr 23, 2021)

Idris2002 said:


> I think the head guy's daughter was fighting with the rest of them for the right to succession.


HBO will probably be looking for a new prestige drama, I might pitch Game of Sparts to them.


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## hitmouse (Apr 23, 2021)

The previous article on the website is about the hunger strike of Dimitris Koufontinas, and contains an inspired bit of completely pointless lefty-one-upmanship:


> The left groups (SEK [Socialist Workers Party], NAR [New Left Current], the rest of Antarsya etc.), wringing their hands over an unjust, anti-democratic policy, complain about violation of the penal code and discriminatory provisions for revenge and fight for the rule of law. They not only refuse to demand freedom for Koufontinas but ask only that he be returned to a *different* dungeon, that of Korydallos.


Those reformist bastards! Except:


> Dimitris Koufontinas has been on hunger strike since 8 January, demanding, as he writes in his letter, “to be returned to the basement of Korydallos [Prison], to the special wing built by the minister of repression himself, M. Chrysochoidis, to bury 17N, and where I spent 16 of the 18 years I have been in prison”.


How dare they, um, support the thing that he's on hunger strike for, and not ask for a completely different demand that Koufontinas does not appear to be raising?


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## belboid (Apr 23, 2021)

Idris2002 said:


> I think the head guy's daughter was fighting with the rest of them for the right to succession. I presume that's where the change of line comes from, though I don't know if she won or not. Or maybe it's the FBI having  a bit of fun?


Big fight against Skye Williams who, it turns out, was a vacillating non-Trotskyist liquidationist.  Or possibly he said she was.  

a brilliant analysis in The Internationalist discussing this tragic downfall


			http://www.internationalist.org/icl-flip-flopping-toward-oblivion-inter-58-web.pdf


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## Carl Steele (Apr 24, 2021)

How many more of these "we've been completely wrong for the last year but now we've figured it out" articles are the Sparts going to write? The insanity of the internal meetings must be quite intense. And it's interesting how close the new "uniquely correct" analysis comes to Covid denial.


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## BK_Double_Stack (Apr 24, 2021)

Does anyone know more about Skye Williams? Or about the Spart succession and "heir apparents" over the years and how they fell from grace? 

For instance, I heard a rumor that Skye's family is very wealthy. I also remember Allison Spencer being called the heir apparent by the BT shortly after they split from the sparts. I have no idea what happened to her. A couple years ago, they seemed to have a fight about repudiating Joseph Seymour's writings. My guess is that Robertson wanted that to happen before he died so Seymour couldn't take over. Any more info? Unsubstantiated gossip? Wild guesses?


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## Carl Steele (Apr 24, 2021)

Can't help you with the specifics here, but I think Robertson's attention was focused on what happened while he was alive. I don't think he cared too much about his legacy (which he assumed would be no more than a footnote in someone's book and actually it's not even that). The Sparts were Robertson's only means of physical survival, they put a roof over his head and paid the bills and more. He lived a lot longer than he thought he would and had to keep the Sparts functioning (and putting food on his table), otherwise he would have died a pauper. Who he chose to anoint at any one time was a function of how he believed the organisation could be preserved. In the year since his death the Sparts have imploded, because without him they have no reason to exist.


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## imposs1904 (Apr 24, 2021)

Well, if nothing else, we've discovered who has the "Spartacist League" on google alert.


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## BK_Double_Stack (Apr 25, 2021)

Bruv if it only went that deep, I'd be sane.


imposs1904 said:


> Well, if nothing else, we've discovered who has the "Spartacist League" on google alert.


----------



## Carl Steele (Apr 26, 2021)

BK_Double_Stack said:


> Bruv if it only went that deep, I'd be sane.



The psychological/emotional impact of a few years in the sparts is not much discussed, or even acknowledged. It was a dark, abusive place which messed with peoples' sanity. Robertson was a serial abuser. There's good reason to believe he covered up his part in driving someone to suicide. He used his unquestioned authority to get or coerce (depending on how you look at it) younger female comrades into his bed. The organisation was an expression of Robertson's warped psyche. The politics - the insane claim of being the last best hope for humanity and the guilt which resulted from failure (or even just misunderstanding) - were his means of manipulation.

Robertson's behaviour was mimicked down through the ranks. Many who left the sparts were unwilling to face what is was that took them into the madhouse in the first place, and unable to acknowlege how they had behaved while inside. Nobody left the sparts with their hands clean. Those who didn't actually dish out the abuse (a fortunate minority) went along with it. This is why the BT concocted a story of a healthy organisation which went wrong shortly before they were kicked out, and the Internationalist group told the same story, but ten years later. It's an alibi for what they did, and what they turned a blind eye to.


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## Shechemite (Apr 26, 2021)

Liked but not liked


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## Dystopiary (Apr 26, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Has there been a coup by one section of the ICL against another? Or has the one guy who writes their materials just had a Damascene conversion after watching a particularly convincing youtube video or something? I feel like the international proletariat needs more clarification on this vital point.



"For the last year, the position of the ICL was to accept the lockdowns as necessary. We repudiate this position. It was a capitulation to the “national unity” rallying cry that all classes should support the lockdowns because they save lives."

I hate this. Like you're not proper wc if you don't support X, Y or Z, no matter how bullshit. I'm sure it works on some people.


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## BK_Double_Stack (Apr 26, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> The psychological/emotional impact of a few years in the sparts is not much discussed, or even acknowledged. It was a dark, abusive place which messed with peoples' sanity. Robertson was a serial abuser. There's good reason to believe he covered up his part in driving someone to suicide. He used his unquestioned authority to get or coerce (depending on how you look at it) younger female comrades into his bed. The organisation was an expression of Robertson's warped psyche. The politics - the insane claim of being the last best hope for humanity and the guilt which resulted from failure (or even just misunderstanding) - were his means of manipulation.
> 
> Robertson's behaviour was mimicked down through the ranks. Many who left the sparts were unwilling to face what is was that took them into the madhouse in the first place, and unable to acknowlege how they had behaved while inside. Nobody left the sparts with their hands clean. Those who didn't actually dish out the abuse (a fortunate minority) went along with it. This is why the BT concocted a story of a healthy organisation which went wrong shortly before they were kicked out, and the Internationalist group told the same story, but ten years later. It's an alibi for what they did, and what they turned a blind eye to.



I should clarify I wasn't a member of the sparts or even a sympathizer, so fortunately I didn't have to experience the abuse first hand. I was half-joking in my other comment. I went to school where the sparts most prominent author (Jacob Zumoff) was a teacher. Zumoff is a very smart guy, and I'd recommend reading his book. I was in a CWI (now ISA) club at my school, and Zumoff and other sparts disrupted all our meetings. So I read lots of their material and found it funny / interesting. The US left in the late 90s / early 2000s was a small world, so this made a certain impact on me.

Then later an ex-spart (who's been mentioned in this thread) worked closely with me in the CWI / ISA. I still talk with him regularly. So I'll admit to having a weird sectologist leftist trainstpotting thing going on, but sparts are also a personal interest of mine despite never having been through the abuse that Carl talks about and my friend confirms. He doesn't like talking about it, but when he does, he says stuff like "you have no idea how abusive and toxic it was at every level," etc.


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## imposs1904 (Apr 26, 2021)

BK_Double_Stack said:


> I should clarify I wasn't a member of the sparts or even a sympathizer, so fortunately I didn't have to experience the abuse first hand. I was half-joking in my other comment. *I went to school where the sparts most prominent author (Jacob Zumoff) was a teacher.* Zumoff is a very smart guy, and I'd recommend reading his book. I was in a CWI (now ISA) club at my school, and Zumoff and other sparts disrupted all our meetings. So I read lots of their material and found it funny / interesting. The US left in the late 90s / early 2000s was a small world, so this made a certain impact on me.
> 
> Then later an ex-spart (who's been mentioned in this thread) worked closely with me in the CWI / ISA. I still talk with him regularly. So I'll admit to having a weird sectologist leftist trainstpotting thing going on, but sparts are also a personal interest of mine despite never having been through the abuse that Carl talks about and my friend confirms. He doesn't like talking about it, but when he does, he says stuff like "you have no idea how abusive and toxic it was at every level," etc.



Wow, I thought I was a proper Left Trainspotter and I've never heard of this guy. Didn't know they had a "prominent author" in their ranks (except an ex-member in Britain who's a well known sci-fi writer). It even turns out that I have his book on my hard drive. Just had a glance at it and noticed that there is only one brief mention of the Proletarian Party, and he actually spells the name of one the members incorrectly. Ouch.


----------



## BK_Double_Stack (Apr 26, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> Wow, I thought I was a proper Left Trainspotter and I've never heard of this guy. Didn't know they had a "prominent author" in their ranks (except an ex-member in Britain who's a well known sci-fi writer). It even turns out that I have his book on my hard drive. Just had a glance at it and noticed that there is only one brief mention of the Proletarian Party, and he actually spells the name of one the members incorrectly. Ouch.


I wouldn't exactly call Zumoff prominent in the real world, but having a featured title at Haymarket is a real accomplishment over here, especially if you never spent time in the ISO. Sorta like a step below getting published by Verso but a step up from getting published by AK Press. So definitely the sparts most prominent author. It will likely be the only long book he ever writes because he literally worked on it for twenty years. When I knew him in the late 90s he was working on it and _obsessed_ with the topic, and it didn't get published until like 2015 or something like that. Its worth a read if you're interested at all in the Comintern or the US left. Zumoff wasn't a very effective disrupter of meetings though; he came across as someone you'd never want to talk to afterwards. Arrogant, rude, shouty, annoying, etc. Was actually fun to argue with one-on-one tho.


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## Idris2002 (Apr 26, 2021)

Idris2002 said:


> One of the saddest things I've ever seen was at a Socialist Party meeting on the Good Friday Agreement, about, oh 20 years ago.
> 
> A whole _family _of Sparts - mother, father, _and _teenage daughter - turned up to heckle. I had to feel some sympathy for the poor eejit who'd been born into the cult.


Carl Steele, BK_Double_Stack (and PTK if he ever comes back): Was it common for Spartist families to appear among the rank and file of the sect? And how did they manage the abusive toxicity? (not well, I'd imagine)


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## BK_Double_Stack (Apr 26, 2021)

In Boston, no. No families. Their longest standing member in Boston had a daughter who was active in a teachers union and the very reasonable left group called "Solidarity" which is now part of DSA. Another ex-Spart in Boston had a kid who was an ultra left (IMO) but had no interest in the Sparts and ended up in "Left Voice" a sorta-Morenoite group. I don't think the sparts had a conscious policy of trying to recruit their kids unlike PLP who are just as much a cult though likely not as abusive. I saw a small sample size though because their now-defunct Boston group wasn't very big. Maybe things were different in NYC or the Bay Area.


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## imposs1904 (Apr 26, 2021)

BK_Double_Stack said:


> I wouldn't exactly call Zumoff prominent in the real world, but having a featured title at Haymarket *is a real accomplishment over here*, especially if you never spent time in the ISO. Sorta like a step below getting published by Verso but a step up from getting published by AK Press. So definitely the sparts most prominent author. It will likely be the only long book he ever writes because he literally worked on it for twenty years. When I knew him in the late 90s he was working on it and _obsessed_ with the topic, and it didn't get published until like 2015 or something like that. Its worth a read if you're interested at all in the Comintern or the US left. Zumoff wasn't a very effective disrupter of meetings though; he came across as someone you'd never want to talk to afterwards. Arrogant, rude, shouty, annoying, etc. Was actually fun to argue with one-on-one tho.



I'm an ex-pat who now lives in the States. I can't remember the exact year (I'd have to look it up) but I remember when the Sparts turned up _cough_ en masse to a Bryan Palmer meeting at the Tamiment Library to heckle him about one of his books about James Cannon. I should have brought popcorn. It was funny.

I probably already mentioned it on this thread but I remember being shocked when I stumbled across a couple of Sparts outside Brooklyn College selling their wares. It must have been about 12 or 13 years. It was funny 'cos they were both German. (Funny 'cos when you stumbled across Sparts in London more often than not, they'd be American.)

*Edit:

Apologies to the Sparts.* I'd totally misremembered that Bryan Palmer meeting. The acrimony from them to him was after the meeting out of his earshot (I heard it though). They were as good as gold during the meeting itself.

And it turns out the meeting was in 2007. Fuck, where have all the bastard years gone? (Two pain in the arse kids, that's where they've gone). I only knew the year 'cos it turned out I blogged about it at the time. Blogs, now I'm really showing my age. 

Cut and pasted below is said blog post. Apologies in advance for the shit jokes and the sawdust prose. I'm not a writer:

*Tuesday, October 30, 2007

New York Stories

Bryan Palmer speaks at NYU* Louis Proyect carries a report of a meeting that I attended at the Tamiment library a few weeks back. I did take some notes at the meeting but being the lazy bastard that I am, I never got round to writing them up. In truth, the notes were more for my personal use, as it's not a period or political tradition I pretend to know a lot about.

Bryan Palmer, a Canadian Labor Historian, has recently published the first volume in what will be a major biography of James P. Cannon, the father of American Trotskyism. Speaking with ease before an audience of about 160/170 people, Palmer's central point for Trotskyist activists today was that Cannon was at his best when he engaged in broad work and the Leninist left in America that is covered in this volume [the book finishes in 1928 when Cannon was expelled from the American CP and the CI for his siding with Trotsky] was at its most productive when undertaking labor defence work in the mid to late twenties that allowed itself to break out of the self-imposed ghetto that the American Comminust movement had placed itself because of the warring factions disagreeing on the question of an open versus an underground party in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the Palmer raids.

As I say there was an impressive turnout of about 160/170 people at the meeting on what was a cold Friday night. The majority of the audience could be loosely termed as being part of the '68 generation and, believe it or not, I was one of the younger ones in attendance.

Naturally being a meeting on Cannon in the labor history library at NYU it was anything but a dry academic lecture. The meeting had been sponsored by - I think - five different Leninist organizations, ranging from the Sparts to the Freedom Socialist Party to the International Bolshevik Tendency through to Socialist Action (I will have missed someone out), and after Palmer's talk part of the meeting was made up of prepared statements from those groups sponsoring the meeting on why they alone were the true Trotskyist organization in the room _cough, I'm saying nothing_, and why all the other groups were attending under false pretences. These contributions were quickly followed by prepared speeches from the floor delivered in an equally acerbic fashion from those groups and individuals who hadn't got around to co-sponsoring the event.

It actually didn't get as bitter or as acrimonious as I was expecting [they were pussycats in comparison to the current political punch up between Galloway and the SWP], but that's perhaps because the Sparts were actually the most heavily represented in the audience and were therefore on their best behaviour during the course of the meeting, and because - as Louis mentions - the audience fell in love with the contribution from 91 year old Lillian Pollak.

Pollak joined the Trotskyist movement in the early thirties and worked alongside Cannon, Bert Cochran and other 'names' from the early movement. You just knew that if she had wanted to she could have taken the meeting over with her stories of the movement from that period.

This half-baked Menshevik enjoyed the meeting for all its denunciations and vanguardist verbiage, and it was nice that it ended on the warm fuzzy feeling of the IBT, the Sparts and Jan Norden's Internationalist Group briefly reuniting around the warm glow of the political memories of someone from the thirties, talking of a period untainted by Third Campism and Pabloism.

One final thought, though: what was with the six busts of Eugene Debs in the library? Did the library not get the memo with that quote* from Debs?


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## mx wcfc (Apr 26, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> (Funny 'cos when you stumbled across Sparts in London more often than not, they'd be American.)


That was certainly my experience in the mid 80s, although they did have Brit members - (was it further up this thread or on PM that an ex-Spart remembered an "encounter" I'd had with them in 1982?)

In those days, ignoring the Sparts (there were none at my Uni), the game was trying to identify which lefties at LSE were either CIA or BOSS.


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## petee (Apr 27, 2021)

nice to see the IBT mentioned above. i used to go to St Mark's Books to stock up on my communist periodicals and would buy _1917_ there. it was value for money, I'll say that.


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## Carl Steele (Apr 27, 2021)

BK_Double_Stack said:


> sparts are also a personal interest of mine despite never having been through the abuse that Carl talks about and my friend confirms. He doesn't like talking about it, but when he does, he says stuff like "you have no idea how abusive and toxic it was at every level," etc.



This is often the case because everybody's implicated. Talking about it means looking at your dark side because it's not like one or two leaders were dishing it out and everybody else was a victim. It was very democratic, everybody was under the spotlight at some point, nobody escaped being told what a useless piece of shit they were, and everybody got the opportunity to unload onto someone else. Everybody except Robertson of course.  And now he's dead it's hardly surprising they are ripping each other's throats out. And btw there is money at stake in the form of property.



Idris2002 said:


> Was it common for Spartist families to appear among the rank and file of the sect? And how did they manage the abusive toxicity? (not well, I'd imagine)



No, they didn't do the family recruitment thing, though sometimes members of the same family were involved. I was in the British franchise and one time a mother, daughter, and son joined together (and left together) but this was unusual. In the US there were a few family connections, red diaper babies who got parents involved and such like.


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## hitmouse (May 19, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> Having crossed paths with (American) Spartacists in the Midlands many years ago, I thought they were more likely infiltrators themselves. Their presence certainly seemed to be at least an abstract argument for immigration controls...I was in the too sophisticated for its own good Big Flame at the time, indeed remained till it sadly dissolved.





PTK said:


> Where is the evidence for your claim that members of the Spartacist League were state agents?


Well, we now have evidence that Barry Tompkins/HN106 was involved in infiltrating the Sparts, along with an apparent crossover into the Furedi RCT lot:





						Barry Tompkins (alias) - Powerbase
					






					powerbase.info
				












						UCPI Daily Report, 12 May 2021
					

The spycops public inquiry hears details of 3 officers from the late 1970s, plus testimony from 'Paul Gray' who spied on antifascists & kids




					campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com
				






			https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/MPS-0745735.pdf


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## Larry O'Hara (May 19, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Well, we now have evidence that Barry Tompkins/HN106 was involved in infiltrating the Sparts, along with an apparent crossover into the Furedi RCT lot:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks for that: interesting


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## Carl Steele (May 19, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Well, we now have evidence that Barry Tompkins/HN106 was involved in infiltrating the Sparts, along with an apparent crossover into the Furedi RCT lot



I really don't get this idea that the Sparts were "infiltrators". They got themselves excluded from public meetings and made no attempt to even socialise with other leftists. Hardly the behaviour of infiltrators. And besides, I was a member for several years. The Sparts were many things, but infiltrators they were not.

According to the UCPI report Barry Tompkins was never a member of the Sparts, and that seems right because I was a member at the time and don't recall anyone of that name. He seems to have been more involved with the RCP. There is mention of a three person group which had some relationship with the Sparts. I have a vague memory of something like this but I can't recall any names. This would have been around 1982 (we talked about the Falklands/Malvinas war which was either recent or ongoing). The leader, who may or may not have been called Barry, was an obnoxious prick who said he might join the Sparts and take over the group.  He never did! Pity, it would have been fun to watch him try.


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## hitmouse (May 19, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> I really don't get this idea that the Sparts were "infiltrators". They got themselves excluded from public meetings and made no attempt to even socialise with other leftists. Hardly the behaviour of infiltrators. And besides, I was a member for several years. The Sparts were many things, but infiltrators they were not.
> 
> According to the UCPI report Barry Tompkins was never a member of the Sparts, and that seems right because I was a member at the time and don't recall anyone of that name. He seems to have been more involved with the RCP. There is mention of a three person group which had some relationship with the Sparts. I have a vague memory of something like this but I can't recall any names. This would have been around 1982 (we talked about the Falklands/Malvinas war which was either recent or ongoing). The leader, who may or may not have been called Barry, was an obnoxious prick who said he might join the Sparts and take over the group.  He never did! Pity, it would have been fun to watch him try.


I mean, I don't think the Sparts were "infiltrators" in the sense that the group was consciously directed by the state or anything, it'd be silly to claim that. But if you can be bothered to dig through the documentation associated with Tompkins/HN106, he was definitely providing the state with details on members of the SL among others:








						Special Branch report enclosing a photograph of the Treasurer of the London Branch of the Spartacus League - Undercover Policing Inquiry
					






					www.ucpi.org.uk
				












						Special Branch report providing details of an Oxford University Professor who subscribes to two Spartacus League publications - Undercover Policing Inquiry
					






					www.ucpi.org.uk
				












						Special Branch report on a 'Fusion Meeting' of the Spartacus League and Lenin Faction - Undercover Policing Inquiry
					






					www.ucpi.org.uk
				












						Special Branch report providing the temporary address of two member of the Spartacist League - Undercover Policing Inquiry
					






					www.ucpi.org.uk
				












						Special Branch report enclosing a photograph of a member of the Spartacus League - Undercover Policing Inquiry
					






					www.ucpi.org.uk
				












						Special Branch report stating that an Oxford University Professor receives copies of Spartacist Britain and Workers Vanguard - Undercover Policing Inquiry
					






					www.ucpi.org.uk
				




Along with this one, which has a pretty great title:








						Special Branch report stating that the Revolutionary Communist Tendency are disappointed by the lack of impact made by the Smash the Prevention of Terrorism Act Campaign amongst the working class - Undercover Policing Inquiry
					






					www.ucpi.org.uk


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## Carl Steele (May 19, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> I mean, I don't think the Sparts were "infiltrators" in the sense that the group was consciously directed by the state or anything, it'd be silly to claim that. But if you can be bothered to dig through the documentation associated with Tompkins/HN106, he was definitely providing the state with details on members of the SL among others:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Thanks for the links. I can't make much sense of the documents. I have no idea who these RLL people are. I don't remember the group at all. 

The Leninist Faction/Spart fusion was reported in Spartacist Britain - maybe this is why AG and MH are named in the otherwise redacted report - so it was public knowledge for the few who were interested. But the report reads as if it were written by someone inside the meeting.

If Tompkins was not a member (which the ucpi report says) I don't know how he would get the details of Sparts changing addresses, or how he would have got a photo of the treasurer of the London Branch and her biographical details. And then there's another photo of a member. This could only come from inside the organisation. Back in 1980 taking a photo of someone was not an inconspicuous or normal thing to do.


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## Larry O'Hara (May 20, 2021)

I notice with interest that both here and to the inquiry, Spartacist League members are in denial about themselves being infiltrated, despite the primary source evidence.  This truly confirms that many Trotskyists are  the political equivalent of Bourbons, only worse: have forgotten everything & learnt nothing.  No wonder they are in the dustbin of history.  If Victor Serge (what every socialist should know about state repression) is a bit libertarian for them, how about the excellent 1860 book by Karl Marx, Herr Vogt.  Engels thought this book "better than the Eighteenth Brumaire", Lassalle thought it "a masterpiece" (for a detailed analysis see David Pegg's article in Notes From the Borderland issue 2).  As Trotsky himself might say "epigones, don't you just love em?"


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## PTK (May 20, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> This is often the case because everybody's implicated. Talking about it means looking at your dark side because it's not like one or two leaders were dishing it out and everybody else was a victim. It was very democratic, everybody was under the spotlight at some point, nobody escaped being told what a useless piece of shit they were, and everybody got the opportunity to unload onto someone else. Everybody except Robertson of course.  And now he's dead it's hardly surprising they are ripping each other's throats out. And btw there is money at stake in the form of property.
> 
> 
> 
> No, they didn't do the family recruitment thing, though sometimes members of the same family were involved. I was in the British franchise and one time a mother, daughter, and son joined together (and left together) but this was unusual. InI the US there were a few family connections, red diaper babies who got parents involved and such like.


I think I remember this family group joining! I did not even know that I had this memory, until I saw your comment. I cannot remember much about them. Did they not all move to London from a smalll town? It is amazing, to me, the forgotten memories that can surface with an appropriate prompt.


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## Carl Steele (May 20, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> I notice with interest that both here and to the inquiry, Spartacist League members are in denial about themselves being infiltrated, despite the primary source evidence.



I am not in denial about the Sparts being infiltrated, but the "primary source evidence" as you call it doesn't make sense. Perhaps you expect the cops to be up front and honest when they give evidence to an enquiry. Barry Tompkins was not a member of the Sparts, and probably not even a sympathiser, nobody who was around at the time remembers the name. Somebody though was passing info to the cops, we just don't have a name, and we're not going to get one. It's called "freedom of information".

You are right though, I like nothing more than a couple of bourbons with my cup of tea.



PTK said:


> I think I remember this family group joining! I did not even know that I had this memory, until I saw your comment. I cannot remember much about them. Did they not all move to London from a smalll town? It is amazing, to me, the forgotten memories that can surface with an appropriate prompt.



Yes, I think they came from a small town in Wales. They were nice people as I recall. Not surprisingly they didn't last long in the hellhole that was the London branch.


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## Larry O'Hara (May 20, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> I am not in denial about the Sparts being infiltrated, but the "primary source evidence" as you call it doesn't make sense. Perhaps you expect the cops to be up front and honest when they give evidence to an enquiry. Barry Tompkins was not a member of the Sparts, and probably not even a sympathiser, nobody who was around at the time remembers the name. Somebody though was passing info to the cops, we just don't have a name, and we're not going to get one. It's called "freedom of information".
> 
> You are right though, I like nothing more than a couple of bourbons with my cup of tea.
> 
> ...


typical fatuous non-response: have you idiots not considered he might have used a false name.  You think I expect police honesty?  Ludicrous.  See you've ignored comments on Serge/Marx. Typical epigone


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## Carl Steele (May 20, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> typical fatuous non-response: have you idiots not considered he might have used a false name. You think I expect police honesty? Ludicrous. See you've ignored comments on Serge/Marx. Typical epigone



Try to stop beating the horse, it's been dead for a while. Barry Tompkins was the false name, supposedly. Have you read the UCPI documents? It looks very much like the cops have attributed documents to Tompkins which were written by others, to obscure what actually happened.

I'm sure being in Big Flame was a much more pleasant than being a Spart, but Big Flame are right there in the dustbin alongside the Sparts.


----------



## Pickman's model (May 20, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> I notice with interest that both here and to the inquiry, Spartacist League members are in denial about themselves being infiltrated, despite the primary source evidence.  This truly confirms that many Trotskyists are  the political equivalent of Bourbons, only worse: have forgotten everything & learnt nothing.  No wonder they are in the dustbin of history.  If Victor Serge (what every socialist should know about state repression) is a bit libertarian for them, how about the excellent 1860 book by Karl Marx, Herr Vogt.  Engels thought this book "better than the Eighteenth Brumaire", Lassalle thought it "a masterpiece" (for a detailed analysis see David Pegg's article in Notes From the Borderland issue 2).  As Trotsky himself might say "epigones, don't you just love em?"


I'll have to look this HV put, never heard of it before


----------



## Larry O'Hara (May 20, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Try to stop beating the horse, it's been dead for a while. Barry Tompkins was the false name, supposedly. Have you read the UCPI documents? It looks very much like the cops have attributed documents to Tompkins which were written by others, to obscure what actually happened.
> 
> I'm sure being in Big Flame was a much more pleasant than being a Spart, but Big Flame are right there in the dustbin alongside the Sparts.


Do you really believe they only used one false name? I forgot: it was you accusing me of believing what the police say.  You can't even keep to a simple script.

As for reading, have you read Serge and Marx on Vogt?


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## Larry O'Hara (May 20, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> I'll have to look this HV put, never heard of it before


Its an excellent book but usually excluded from the orthodox canon.  Shouldn't be


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## Larry O'Hara (May 20, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Try to stop beating the horse, it's been dead for a while. Barry Tompkins was the false name, supposedly. Have you read the UCPI documents? It looks very much like the cops have attributed documents to Tompkins which were written by others, to obscure what actually happened.
> 
> I'm sure being in Big Flame was a much more pleasant than being a Spart, but Big Flame are right there in the dustbin alongside the Sparts.


Rather not be in the same dustbin as Trotskyist bores thanks.


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## Carl Steele (May 20, 2021)

Tompkin's main focus was the RCP (and related splinters). There are probably some ex-RCPers who remember Barry Tompkins. I'd be interested to hear from them. 

His cover job was as a delivery driver for garden supplies in London. He had a van supplied by the cops. There was nobody in the Sparts in the early 80s in London who drove a van (either for a living or privately). Nobody owned a car. It doesn't matter what his name was, this guy was never a Spart.


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## hitmouse (May 20, 2021)

Fwiw, what he says in his statement is:





Did the sparts really have a regular attendance of 50-60 at their meetings?


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## Larry O'Hara (May 20, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Fwiw, what he says in his statement is:
> View attachment 269388
> View attachment 269389
> View attachment 269390
> ...


58/59 show how utterly lax SL security was, that he could gather intelligence without having to recite the Transitional Programme from memory....


----------



## belboid (May 20, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> 58/59 show how utterly lax SL security was, that he could gather intelligence without having to recite the Transitional Programme from memory....


Don’t be daft.  They had be able to recite the seventeen errors falsehoods and slanders made by the American SWP in _their_ interpretation of the Transitional Programme.


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## Larry O'Hara (May 20, 2021)

belboid said:


> Don’t be daft.  They had be able to recite the seventeen errors falsehoods and slanders made by the American SWP in _their_ interpretation of the Transitional Programme.


yes, that as well (for lower-level membership).  Meanwhile, the SB were busy hoovering up membership details without even paying a sub.  You've got to laugh...


----------



## PTK (May 21, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> 58/59 show how utterly lax SL security was, that he could gather intelligence without having to recite the Transitional Programme from memory....


I am not sure that it is lax to allow someone to come to the office of your organisation, as long as that person is not allowed to look at files.


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## PTK (May 21, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Tompkin's main focus was the RCP (and related splinters). There are probably some ex-RCPers who remember Barry Tompkins. I'd be interested to hear from them.
> 
> His cover job was as a delivery driver for garden supplies in London. He had a van supplied by the cops. There was nobody in the Sparts in the early 80s in London who drove a van (either for a living or privately). Nobody owned a car. It doesn't matter what his name was, this guy was never a Spart.


I have not been following the Spycops saga closely. Was not the SDS distinct from the Special Branch? When are we going to learn the truth about SB infiltration? 

I think that there may have been someone called Barry who joined, but who was expelled because he chose to stay at home one Saturday afternoon to watch the footie on the telly, rather than attend an event for which he had been signed up.


----------



## Carl Steele (May 21, 2021)

PTK said:


> I am not sure that it is lax to allow someone to come to the office of your organisation, as long as that person is not allowed to look at files.



It wasn't unusual for non-members to be in the office, particularly after a demonstration. The office had two floors and non-members would be in the larger meeting room. It wasn't a security risk, and there wasn't much to look at anyway. The famous filing system was a joke. The accounts of people moving into other people's apartments, above a restaurant etc. could only come from an established if not senior member. This kind of detail was not recorded.


Tompkin's statement is over 50 pages long and very muddled. He disowns quite a lot of the reports attributed to him, says he couldn't have handed over addresses because his relationship was too distant to get this info (sometimes he implies differently), and often confuses the Sparts and RCP (by which I mean any of RCP/RCT/RMT/RLL; alphabet soup!). I don't think the Sparts had many East London events beyond a few paper sales. The RCP were active in East London with their front organisation ELWAR, which he mentions several times and at one point says the Sparts sent him into it (didn't happen). At times he claims the Sparts and the RCP were close organisations, he even uses the phrase "sister organisations" to describe the relationship (which couldn't be further from the truth). 

He's created a narrative from muddled memories - no shame in that, we all do it, but the report is a sham which provides no real information beyond the fact that someone was passing info to the cops.



PTK said:


> I think that there may have been someone called Barry who joined, but who was expelled because he chose to stay at home one Saturday afternoon to watch the footie on the telly, rather than attend an event for which he had been signed up.



Now you've jogged my memory. I recall a young guy (younger than the rest of us) who habitually wore a shirt and tie and always seemed to be grinning. I don't remember his name or the expulsion.  He took up with an older woman, sometimes they'd sit on the stairs locked together in a passionate embrace. Is this who you're thinking of?

Barry Tompkins was a van driver with a heavy beard apparently.


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## imposs1904 (May 21, 2021)

PTK said:


> I have not been following the Spycops saga closely. Was not the SDS distinct from the Special Branch? When are we going to learn the truth about SB infiltration?
> 
> I think that there may have been someone called Barry who joined, but who was expelled *because he chose to stay at home one Saturday afternoon to watch the footie on the telly*, rather than attend an event for which he had been signed up.



Unless it was a FA Cup final, there wasn't a lot of footie on the telly on a Saturday afternoon back in the day.


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## hitmouse (May 21, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> Unless it was a FA Cup final, there wasn't a lot of footie on the telly on a Saturday afternoon back in the day.


Of all the possible turns this thread could take, I was not expecting it to turn into a discussion of early 80s TV football schedules, well done.


----------



## The39thStep (May 21, 2021)

belboid said:


> Don’t be daft.  They had be able to recite the seventeen errors falsehoods and slanders made by the American SWP in _their_ interpretation of the Transitional Programme.


There was a month or so , back in the day, when if you had the misfortune to bump into a Spart you'd be greeted with' What do you think about Tony Cliff advocating workers cross picket lines?'


----------



## imposs1904 (May 21, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Of all the possible turns this thread could take, I was not expecting it to turn into a discussion of early 80s TV football schedules, well done.



Am I wrong, though?


----------



## hitmouse (May 21, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> Am I wrong, though?


I wasn't around then so I dunno. I'm hoping someone will now cross-check the dates of FA Cup finals against important Spart events, like that time when someone worked out the precise date when Ice Cube had a good day.


----------



## belboid (May 21, 2021)

I recall a demo being organised n Tottenham (around Winston Silcott, iirr) for the same day as the fa cup final.  That wasn’t till 2001 tho, Arsenal v Liverpool.  The demo was crap


----------



## Pickman's model (May 21, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Of all the possible turns this thread could take, I was not expecting it to turn into a discussion of early 80s TV football schedules, well done.


on threads here you must always expect the unexpected. anything can happen and usually will.


----------



## hitmouse (May 21, 2021)

belboid said:


> I recall a demo being organised n Tottenham (around Winston Silcott, iirr) for the same day as the fa cup final.  That wasn’t till 2001 tho, Arsenal v Liverpool.  The demo was crap


The FLA once had a demo in Manchester on the same day as Manchester United were playing in the cup final AND the same day as a royal wedding, which seemed like amazingly shit scheduling for a group whose entire base consists of patriotic/nationalist football fans.


----------



## Larry O'Hara (May 21, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> Am I wrong, though?


no


----------



## Larry O'Hara (May 21, 2021)

belboid said:


> I recall a demo being organised n Tottenham (around Winston Silcott, iirr) for the same day as the fa cup final.  That wasn’t till 2001 tho, Arsenal v Liverpool.  The demo was crap


there is of course the classic moment in 1919 I think when Scottish militants hatched a plan to seize power...on the same day as a Celtic-Rangers match.


----------



## Larry O'Hara (May 21, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> I wasn't around then so I dunno. I'm hoping someone will now cross-check the dates of FA Cup finals against important Spart events, like that time when someone worked out the precise date when Ice Cube had a good day.


Cup Finals always held historically mid-May (after regular season had ended).  That the Spart apologist should make such a casual and egregious error shows the fundamental dishonesty of this tendency.  And none of them have, or will, even read Marx on Vogt/Serge on state repression (or indeed the Cointelpro papers).  Waste of space


----------



## Carl Steele (May 21, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> Cup Finals always held historically mid-May (after regular season had ended). That the Spart apologist should make such a casual and egregious error shows the fundamental dishonesty of this tendency. And none of them have, or will, even read Marx on Vogt/Serge on state repression (or indeed the Cointelpro papers). Waste of space



Really strange, but oddly entertaining. The egregious error is perhaps misremembering a trivial incident that took place 40 years ago?! But how do you know the incident in question didn't occur in mid May on the very day of the FA Cup final. Perhaps the expellee's team were playing in said Cup Final, and this accounts for his aberrant behaviour. Of course maybe it was actually a Sunday and he was watching ITV's Big Match, or maybe it was summer and he was watching the cricket (which even in those far off days was televised live), in which case the error is indeed egregious. And to make matters worse the Spart apologist has never read, nor will he ever read, Marx on Vogt/Serge on state repression.


----------



## Larry O'Hara (May 21, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Really strange, but oddly entertaining. The egregious error is perhaps misremembering a trivial incident that took place 40 years ago?! But how do you know the incident in question didn't occur in mid May on the very day of the FA Cup final. Perhaps the expellee's team were playing in said Cup Final, and this accounts for his aberrant behaviour. Of course maybe it was actually a Sunday and he was watching ITV's Big Match, or maybe it was summer and he was watching the cricket (which even in those far off days was televised live), in which case the error is indeed egregious. And to make matters worse the Spart apologist has never read, nor will he ever read, Marx on Vogt/Serge on state repression.


Says it all really; Spartacists claimed to be Marxists I believe, yet here we have an apologist boasting he will never read anything, even by Karl himself, that might have expanded his comprehension.  And now drags in cricket too/changes the day etc.  Something straight out of the 'Spartacist School of Falsification' to coin a phrase.  I'm done here, but hope to have proved my points adequately to those capable of comprehending them.  And I don't think all followers of Trotsky are brain-dead: eg the late IMG did some interesting stuff (Mandel/Blackburn/Ali), and even today the post-Trotskyist Counterfire is often worth listening to.  But Spartacists never were, ever, and aren't now...


----------



## Carl Steele (May 21, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> Says it all really; Spartacists claimed to be Marxists I believe, yet here we have an apologist boasting he will never read anything, even by Karl himself, that might have expanded his comprehension. And now drags in cricket too/changes the day etc. Something straight out of the 'Spartacist School of Falsification' to coin a phrase. I'm done here, but hope to have proved my points adequately to those capable of comprehending them. And I don't think all followers of Trotsky are brain-dead: eg the late IMG did some interesting stuff (Mandel/Blackburn/Ali), and even today the post-Trotskyist Counterfire is often worth listening to. But Spartacists never were, ever, and aren't now...



Actually I left the Sparts in 1986. I don't apologise for them. I loathe them. Ironically your reasoning and selective misreading of a few posts is every bit as unhinged as the Sparts at their worst. And fyi, I am neither a Marxist nor a Trotskyist. My interest in the Barry Tompkins saga is purely a matter of personal history.


----------



## The39thStep (May 21, 2021)

Just on the question of football and Trotskyism , my mind went back to Italia 90 and the intervention of the SWPs Central Committee in Harlesden Branch . A very concerned Sheila McGregor phoned me and some other comrades expressing concern about key and experienced members non attendance at some educational meeting which the district had organised failing to take into consideration the World Cup fixtures . I think we were into game 2 or 3 if the group staged . She got a sort of verbal shrug of the shoulders . Cometh the branch meeting and cometh Chris Bamberry who talked passionately about the necessary of routine , commitment to the struggle and pointed out that Scottish comrades had had full attendance , glut of new members and record paper sales .’Why?’ He asked , ‘was this branch different ‘.One new comrade wearing an England shirt ( oblivious to Bamberry’s position partly due to him not being familiar with the great and the good and partly because we’d met for a pre branch drink ) patiently explained that Scotland were going out in the group stage so it didn’t really matter to those comrades but England were still in it . Bamberry wasn’t as impressed as the new comrade thought he might be and immediately denounced the need to ‘Stamp out the Terry Butcher faction’ that was clearly holding back building the party in North West London .


----------



## DaveCinzano (May 21, 2021)

PTK said:


> I have not been following the Spycops saga closely. Was not the SDS distinct from the Special Branch? When are we going to learn the truth about SB infiltration?


The SDS was a unit within MPSB. It was set up in 1968 and was initially an autonomous silo reporting directly to the HSB (Head of Special Branch) or to the DAC responsible for SB. It then came under the control of the 'counter subversion'/anti-communist C Squad, and later still the 'specialist' S Squad. 

It was formally wound up in 2008, that is well after the creation of NPOIU, which performed a similar function nationally after morphing out of Essex Police's ARNI in the 1990s, and after the 2006 merger of MPSB and Anti-Terrorist Branch (itself the formalisation of an ad hoc squad formed in the 1970s with both MPSB and CID personnel, and permeated from the start with SDS-experienced and adjacent officers) into Counter Terrorism Command.


----------



## planetgeli (May 21, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> Says it all really; Spartacists claimed to be Marxists I believe, yet here we have an apologist boasting he will never read anything, even by Karl himself, that might have expanded his comprehension.  And now drags in cricket too/changes the day etc.  Something straight out of the 'Spartacist School of Falsification' to coin a phrase.  I'm done here, but hope to have proved my points adequately to those capable of comprehending them.  ..



Don't go.   

This thread is my favourite thing on Urban atm.


----------



## Carl Steele (May 21, 2021)

planetgeli said:


> This thread is my favourite thing on Urban atm.



Do Larry's posts make sense to you? Genuine question.


----------



## planetgeli (May 21, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Do Larry's posts make sense to you? Genuine question.



I'm used to Larry on here.

To the bit I quoted from him there, my response when I read it was this



> Ironically your reasoning and selective misreading of a few posts is every bit as unhinged as the Sparts



It's interesting to hear perspectives from people like yourself who were in SL. What first attracted you to this particular abusive tiny lefty sect? Genuine question, I know you left in 86.


----------



## Carl Steele (May 21, 2021)

planetgeli said:


> It's interesting to hear perspectives from people like yourself who were in SL. What first attracted you to this particular abusive tiny lefty sect? Genuine question, I know you left in 86



I went on a journey through the left and ended up in the Sparts. It had much more to with psychology than politics. In fact I don't think it's terribly useful to try to analyse the Sparts as a political phenomena. They were very much an extension of Jim Robertson's psyche. The abusive, angry environment was somewhat familiar, and therefore attractive. That's the short story, flash fiction I suppose. IMO all of the political analyses of the Sparts (by the IBT and others) are complete bullshit.


----------



## Serge Forward (May 22, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> there is of course the classic moment in 1919 I think when Scottish militants hatched a plan to seize power...on the same day as a Celtic-Rangers match.


Obviously jags supporters.


----------



## Larry O'Hara (May 22, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Actually I left the Sparts in 1986. I don't apologise for them. I loathe them. Ironically your reasoning and selective misreading of a few posts is every bit as unhinged as the Sparts at their worst. And fyi, I am neither a Marxist nor a Trotskyist. My interest in the Barry Tompkins saga is purely a matter of personal history.


reasoning you haven't replied to, but your use of the word "unhinged" instead shows while you have left the Spartacists they haven't left you.  By claiming your interest is merely "personal history" you avoid answering political questions.  Nice. Though not sure pleading the Fifth works on urban.

To be fair, if you are now as apolitical as you claim to be then I suppose you must find incomprehensible posts about...politics and the ideology of the group you wandered in and out of.  That said, your confused denials about police infiltrating the group, though perhaps emotionally-derived, are still political whether you know it or not. The Sparts were a political phenomenon even though you deny it: and a bloody annoying destructive one.


----------



## PTK (May 22, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> It wasn't unusual for non-members to be in the office, particularly after a demonstration. The office had two floors and non-members would be in the larger meeting room. It wasn't a security risk, and there wasn't much to look at anyway. The famous filing system was a joke. The accounts of people moving into other people's apartments, above a restaurant etc. could only come from an established if not senior member. This kind of detail was not recorded.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


No, not the bloke in the tie. He was not actually that much younger, but he was very immature. Funnily enough, he had been a contact of the RCP before he joined th Sparts. The bloke I was thinking of was older than that, and I think that he may have been married.


----------



## PTK (May 22, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> Cup Finals always held historically mid-May (after regular season had ended).  That the Spart apologist should make such a casual and egregious error shows the fundamental dishonesty of this tendency.  And none of them have, or will, even read Marx on Vogt/Serge on state repression (or indeed the Cointelpro papers).  Waste of space





Carl Steele said:


> Really strange, but oddly entertaining. The egregious error is perhaps misremembering a trivial incident that took place 40 years ago?! But how do you know the incident in question didn't occur in mid May on the very day of the FA Cup final. Perhaps the expellee's team were playing in said Cup Final, and this accounts for his aberrant behaviour. Of course maybe it was actually a Sunday and he was watching ITV's Big Match, or maybe it was summer and he was watching the cricket (which even in those far off days was televised live), in which case the error is indeed egregious. And to make matters worse the Spart apologist has never read, nor will he ever read, Marx on Vogt/Serge on state repression.



The bloke I was thinking of may have had some other excuse for not turning up on the assignment. It may not have been a football match on the television. I could not swear to it.  Come to think of it. I think his excuse may have been that his name was Larry O'Hara.


----------



## Carl Steele (May 22, 2021)

I do find Larry's posts incomprehensible, but this has nothing to do with politics. He ignores whatever doesn't fit his argument and invents stuff which does.


----------



## Carl Steele (May 22, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> To be fair, if you are now as apolitical as you claim to be then I suppose you must find incomprehensible posts about...politics and the ideology of the group you wandered in and out of. That said, your confused denials about police infiltrating the group, though perhaps emotionally-derived, are still political whether you know it or not. The Sparts were a political phenomenon even though you deny it: and a bloody annoying destructive one.



Here we go again. I didn't say I was apolitical. You just made that up. Read the post again, and pay attention. It's only two lines.

For the record, I do think the Sparts were infiltrated by the police - is that clear enough for you?



Larry O'Hara said:


> That said, your confused denials about police infiltrating the group, though perhaps emotionally-derived, are still political whether you know it or not.



This, again ironically, is pure Jim Robertson. Beneath every utterance is a political thought, whether you know it or not. It was his main means of manipulation.

You only saw the Sparts from the outside. They were on the political scene true enough, but had they been preaching religion their behaviour (internal and external) would have been the same. Only their victims would have been different. The political ideology was merely a means to an end for Robertson. He wanted to preserve the group, at first for its own sake, it was an exercise in purity, and then he became financially dependent upon the group. The Sparts gave Robertson an income, an apartment, a retirement home in the bay area, and no doubt paid his funeral costs.


----------



## tim (May 22, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> on threads here you must always expect the unexpected. anything can happen and usually will.


So always expect the expected. And on threads about ancient tiffs and infiltration of in leftwing groups always expect the Mad Larry (Larry O'Hara ) Inquisition.


----------



## Pickman's model (May 22, 2021)

tim said:


> So always expect the expected. And on threads about ancient tiffs and infiltration of in leftwing groups always expect the Mad Larry (Larry O'Hara ) Inquisition.


If only Larry O'Hara had access to all the tools of the Spanish inquisition


----------



## PTK (May 22, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> If only Larry O'Hara had access to all the tools of the Spanish inquisition


Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. It is one of its two main weapons.


----------



## PTK (May 22, 2021)

tim said:


> So always expect the expected. And on threads about ancient tiffs and infiltration of in leftwing groups always expect the Mad Larry (Larry O'Hara ) Inquisition.


Is the same Larry O'Hara who befriended fascists in the name of academic research?


----------



## tim (May 22, 2021)

PTK said:


> Is the same Larry O'Hara who befriended fascists in the name of academic research?


You might day so, I couldn't possibly comment.

However, I'm sure Larry O'Hara, himself, will be able to enlighten you.


----------



## Larry O'Hara (May 23, 2021)

tim said:


> You might day so, I couldn't possibly comment.
> 
> However, I'm sure Larry O'Hara, himself, will be able to enlighten you.


I see as usual this thread has descended into the gutter with ad hominem abuse/slander/psychiatric labels, rather than addressing actual arguments.  Sad bastards, not worth wasting my time on.  Anybody reading my posts with an open mind can have made up their own mind.  The rest can fuck off.


----------



## PTK (May 23, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> I see as usual this thread has descended into the gutter with ad hominem abuse/slander/psychiatric labels, rather than addressing actual arguments.  Sad bastards, not worth wasting my time on.  Anybody reading my posts with an open mind can have made up their own mind.  The rest can fuck off.


"Fuck off" is a rather reactionary term of abuse, is it not?


----------



## tim (May 23, 2021)

PTK said:


> "Fuck off" is a rather reactionary term of abuse, is it not?


He was reacting to me winding him up.


----------



## tim (May 23, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Do Larry's posts make sense to you? Genuine question.


They do after you've been reading them for a decade or so, although I doubt that it is the sense that was intended.


----------



## Carl Steele (May 23, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> I see as usual this thread has descended into the gutter with ad hominem abuse/slander/psychiatric labels, rather than addressing actual arguments. Sad bastards, not worth wasting my time on. Anybody reading my posts with an open mind can have made up their own mind. The rest can fuck off.



You've spent the entire thread (at least while I've been here) throwing around baseless ad hominem accusations. We could have had a useful discussion about the nature of police infiltration and the enquiry, but you've sabotaged the conversation with your personal attacks. 



PTK said:


> Is the same Larry O'Hara who befriended fascists in the name of academic research?



This is bad stuff. Really poisonous. You don't bother to provide any real info or context. What are we supposed to make of this?



tim said:


> They do after you've been reading them for a decade or so, although I doubt that it is the sense that was intended.



Some of them make sense if read as irony, and I half expected him to say much of it was  joke, particularly the bizarre comment about the guy watching a football match.


----------



## Pickman's model (May 23, 2021)

PTK said:


> "Fuck off" is a rather reactionary term of abuse, is it not?


A reactionary term of abuse?  Fuck off!


----------



## imposs1904 (May 23, 2021)

Larry O'Hara said:


> there is of course the classic moment in 1919 I think when Scottish militants hatched a plan to seize power...on the same day as a Celtic-Rangers match.



I have to ask: who were these militants? I've never heard this story before. Half of me wants to believe it because historically one of the Celtic Rangers games in 1919 would have been on January 1st, so it would have been a perfect time 'cos most people would have been either hungover or still pissed.


----------



## Carl Steele (May 23, 2021)

Thanks for the responses in this thread. Particularly the links to the enquiry. The Sparts were infiltrated by the police, but the enquiry seems to be an exercise in obscuring what happened. I have my suspicions about who was passing info to the cops, but I'll never know for sure.

Trying to understand the Sparts as a political phenomena is akin to thinking of Jimmy Saville as a TV personality who raised money for charity. The Sparts politics were a cover for abusive behaviour, a convenient rationale for driving at least two people to their deaths, and damaging the emotional/psychological health of many others. Robertson was a sociopath who found a way to support himself financially while indulging his perverse emotional desires. This is the story of the Spartacist League.


----------



## DaveCinzano (May 23, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Robertson was a sociopath who found a way to support himself financially while indulging his perverse emotional desires. This is the story of the Spartacist League.


I heard that in the deep voice of the _Law & Order_ intro


----------



## rekil (May 23, 2021)

The39thStep said:


> Just on the question of football and Trotskyism , my mind went back to Italia 90 and the intervention of the SWPs Central Committee in Harlesden Branch . A very concerned Sheila McGregor phoned me and some other comrades expressing concern about key and experienced members non attendance at some educational meeting which the district had organised failing to take into consideration the World Cup fixtures . I think we were into game 2 or 3 if the group staged . She got a sort of verbal shrug of the shoulders . Cometh the branch meeting and cometh Chris Bamberry who talked passionately about the necessary of routine , commitment to the struggle and pointed out that Scottish comrades had had full attendance , glut of new members and record paper sales .’Why?’ He asked , ‘was this branch different ‘.One new comrade wearing an England shirt ( oblivious to Bamberry’s position partly due to him not being familiar with the great and the good and partly because we’d met for a pre branch drink ) patiently explained that Scotland were going out in the group stage so it didn’t really matter to those comrades but England were still in it . Bamberry wasn’t as impressed as the new comrade thought he might be and immediately denounced the need to ‘Stamp out the Terry Butcher faction’ that was clearly holding back building the party in North West London .


For some reason this reminded me of ISIS's description of French football in spy hokum show The Bureau.


----------



## imposs1904 (May 24, 2021)

The39thStep said:


> Just on the question of football and Trotskyism , my mind went back to Italia 90 and the intervention of the SWPs Central Committee in Harlesden Branch . A very concerned Sheila McGregor phoned me and some other comrades expressing concern about key and experienced members non attendance at some educational meeting which the district had organised failing to take into consideration the World Cup fixtures . I think we were into game 2 or 3 if the group staged . She got a sort of verbal shrug of the shoulders . Cometh the branch meeting and cometh Chris Bamberry who talked passionately about the necessary of routine , commitment to the struggle and pointed out that Scottish comrades had had full attendance , glut of new members and record paper sales .’Why?’ He asked , ‘was this branch different ‘.One new comrade wearing an England shirt ( oblivious to Bamberry’s position partly due to him not being familiar with the great and the good and partly because we’d met for a pre branch drink ) *patiently explained that Scotland were going out in the group stage so it didn’t really matter to those comrades* but England were still in it . Bamberry wasn’t as impressed as the new comrade thought he might be and immediately denounced the need to ‘Stamp out the Terry Butcher faction’ that was clearly holding back building the party in North West London .



You've misremembered.

Up until the 80th minute of Scotland's final game, they were in position to go through to the knockout stage (to, of course, be knocked out). Then that fucker Müller scored in the 81st minute.

PS - I still maintain that World Cup was so fucking overrated. 

PPS - No apologies on my part for discussing football in this thread.


----------



## Carl Steele (May 28, 2021)

For those interested in this sort of thing here is the Sparts analysis of the Jim Jones Guyana mass suicide in 1978. It's quite remarkable and compelling. The article appeared on December 1st 1978, the mass suicide occurred on November 18th. So it's not like they had time to investigate. But obviously they didn't need to. At the time someone observed to me, "this is about their fear of what they are becoming."



			https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workersvanguard/1978/0220_01_12_1978.pdf


----------



## belboid (May 28, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> For those interested in this sort of thing here is the Sparts analysis of the Jim Jones Guyana mass suicide in 1978. It's quite remarkable and compelling. The article appeared on December 1st 1978, the mass suicide occurred on November 18th. So it's not like they had time to investigate. But obviously they didn't need to. At the time someone observed to me, "this is about their fear of what they are becoming."
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workersvanguard/1978/0220_01_12_1978.pdf


Whoever was in charge of layout there needs shooting.   Pages 1, 4, 5 & 11?  No


----------



## Mike1988 (Jul 1, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> True enough, they always came up with a reason why someone quit (always a betrayal) ... except when NW committed suicide. Then they said they had no idea why he'd killed himself. It took them six weeks to write an obituary, and in those days they were a functioning organisation with a prolific editorial board.


What year and section did the NW suicide occur?


----------



## Carl Steele (Jul 1, 2021)

Mike1988 said:


> What year and section did the NW suicide occur?



The announcement of the suicide is here, page 3:


			https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workersvanguard/1990/0501_04_05_1990.pdf
		


You will see that they say an obituary will appear in the next issue, in fact it was published three issues later here, starting on page 8. 


			https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workersvanguard/1990/0504_15_06_1990.pdf


----------



## Carl Steele (Jul 30, 2021)

This is the Spycop podcast episode on Barry Tompkins for anyone interested. The stuff about the exam required to join the Sparts is nonsense. Maybe the RCP did something like that, I don't know.


----------



## mx wcfc (Jul 30, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> This is the Spycop podcast episode on Barry Tompkins for anyone interested. The stuff about the exam required to join the Sparts is nonsense. Maybe the RCP did something like that, I don't know.



I remember hearing that the WRP did.  I got the impression the RCP took anyone.


----------



## belboid (Jul 30, 2021)

mx wcfc said:


> I remember hearing that the WRP did.  I got the impression the RCP took anyone.


Christ no, they were very strict with their ‘cells’


----------



## Carl Steele (Jul 30, 2021)

The Sparts had a system called "candidate" membership. The candidate had all the obligations of a full member but didn't get to vote on anything, but since all the votes were unanimous (I do not exaggerate) this was no great loss. After a couple of months, when the candidate had demonstrated their mulish submissiveness, they got to raise their hand alongside everyone else whenever called upon to do so. Knowledge of any sort was not a requirement for a wannabe Spart.


----------



## The39thStep (Jul 30, 2021)

belboid said:


> Christ no, they were very strict with their ‘cells’


A couple of ex members told me there was an unofficial two class membership in the RCP. The IMG had a candidate membership system , had to read loads of Ernest Mandel.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jul 30, 2021)

The39thStep said:


> The IMG had a candidate membership system , had to read loads of Ernest Mandel.


Looking back I think probably the post- Red Weekly (known as Red Dictionary) IMG was the most fun Trot group to be in. Endless factions, people mis-typing incomprehensible opposition documents directly onto inky stencils, botched unity campaigns, Grogan going to Tehran and shouting Allah Akbar. A great time was had by all.


----------



## PTK (Sep 6, 2021)

I found this article about the Spartacist League interesting. It seems it is dying. The comments are very interesting, one of the contributors being one of the contributors to this forum.









						Whatever Happened to the Spartacist League ?
					

Years ago when I was a member of the Toronto branch of the Bolshevik Tendency, the assignment I hated most was having to go to Trotskyist League forums. We were banned from meetings of the Internat…




					fischerzed.wordpress.com


----------



## charlie mowbray (Sep 6, 2021)

There were quite a few of them at the last Kill the Bill demo in London complete with stall emblazoned with their usual dingbat slogans.


----------



## Idris2002 (Sep 6, 2021)

charlie mowbray said:


> There were quite a few of them at the last Kill the Bill demo in London complete with stall emblazoned with their usual dingbat slogans.


What was the average age profile like?


----------



## charlie mowbray (Sep 6, 2021)

Mostly old, 60s-70s but one young woman also


----------



## andysays (Sep 6, 2021)

The39thStep said:


> A couple of ex members told me there was an unofficial two class membership in the RCP. The IMG had a candidate membership system , had to read loads of Ernest Mandel.


I was briefly involved with the RCP for about six months in the mid eighties. 

There was certainly a distinction made between full "members" and mere "supporters".

"Supporters" were still expected to pay some sort of subscription and sell a certain number of papers each week. 

Most those who would have been members in other groups were only classed as supporters in the RCP, including those given the responsibility of mentoring new recruits like me.

I wasn't involved for long enough to find out if any supporters ever made the leap to be proper members.


----------



## nogojones (Sep 6, 2021)

andysays said:


> I was briefly involved with the RCP for about six months in the mid eighties.
> 
> There was certainly a distinction made between full "members" and mere "supporters".
> 
> ...


Did you get to wear the trendy clothes? Or was that reserved for full members?


----------



## Serge Forward (Sep 6, 2021)

All the blokes had flat tops, as I recall.


----------



## PTK (Sep 6, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> All the blokes had flat tops, as I recall.


Ah, the flattop! Whatever happened to the flattop?
Where is the hair gel of yesteryear?


----------



## andysays (Sep 6, 2021)

nogojones said:


> Did you get to wear the trendy clothes? Or was that reserved for full members?





Serge Forward said:


> All the blokes had flat tops, as I recall.


I wasn't involved for long enough to get the wardrobe/hairstyle makeover.


----------



## PTK (Sep 6, 2021)

charlie mowbray said:


> There were quite a few of them at the last Kill the Bill demo in London complete with stall emblazoned with their usual dingbat slogans.


Are you sure that it was the Spartacist League on the Kill the Bill demo?
They have not published a new issue of Workers Hammer since Spring 2020; what were they selling?


----------



## Serge Forward (Sep 6, 2021)

Workers Teaspoon.


----------



## hitmouse (Sep 6, 2021)

PTK said:


> I found this article about the Spartacist League interesting. It seems it is dying. The comments are very interesting, one of the contributors being one of the contributors to this forum.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


And a postscript:








						Whatever Happened to the Spartacist League? (Final thoughts)
					

For someone who’s not a Trotskyist, I talk about this current a lot. I wasn’t planning to write another piece about the Spartacist League, but after the recent interest in the last piec…




					fischerzed.wordpress.com


----------



## charlie mowbray (Sep 7, 2021)

PTK said:


> Are you sure that it was the Spartacist League on the Kill the Bill demo?
> They have not published a new issue of Workers Hammer since Spring 2020; what were they selling?


No, I imagined it all. Jeez.


----------



## charlie mowbray (Sep 7, 2021)

They were handing out the anti-lockdown Spartacist Supplement published in April and the slogan 
Down With the Lockdowns!The Working Class Must Defend ItselfBreak with the Labor Traitors—Reforge the Fourth International! and other bizarre stuff was posted at the front of their stall


----------



## PTK (Sep 7, 2021)

charlie mowbray said:


> They were handing out the anti-lockdown Spartacist Supplement published in April and the slogan
> Down With the Lockdowns!The Working Class Must Defend ItselfBreak with the Labor Traitors—Reforge the Fourth International! and other bizarre stuff was posted at the front of their stall


Thanks. I have now found the Supplement on their website. So, reports of the death of the Spartacist League have been exaggerated. It is like a zombie - it will not die.


----------



## Carl Steele (Sep 7, 2021)

PTK said:


> So, reports of the death of the Spartacist League have been exaggerated.


It appears they are fighting over the money, in the form of real estate in New York (office building) and the Bay Area (Robertson's retirement home). They are barely even bothering to feign an interest in politics these days - the Supplements are probably a part of the legal battle, evidence of the organisation still functioning so those in control can get their hands on the money.

As far as the exchange on the fischerzed blog went, I suppose I should be surprised that some long-time ex-members have never really got to grips with how batshit-crazy it all was, but actually I'm not. The emotional investment was just too great, and if you can't see how preposterous the claim to be the last best hope of humanity was, how can you make any sense of what happened?


----------



## PTK (Sep 8, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> It appears they are fighting over the money, in the form of real estate in New York (office building) and the Bay Area (Robertson's retirement home). They are barely even bothering to feign an interest in politics these days - the Supplements are probably a part of the legal battle, evidence of the organisation still functioning so those in control can get their hands on the money.
> 
> As far as the exchange on the fischerzed blog went, I suppose I should be surprised that some long-time ex-members have never really got to grips with how batshit-crazy it all was, but actually I'm not. The emotional investment was just too great, and if you can't see how preposterous the claim to be the last best hope of humanity was, how can you make any sense of what happened?



Where is the evidence that the Spartacist League is fighting internally over the disposal of its assets?


----------



## Carl Steele (Sep 8, 2021)

PTK said:


> Where is the evidence that the Spartacist League is fighting internally over the disposal of its assets?



There isn't any hard evidence I'm aware of - it's educated speculation by Tom Riley (of the BT). Seems the most reasonable explanation for what's going on. They do have valuable property assets which belong to the organisation and since May 2020 the American Sparts have produced a grand total of two leaflets (aka supplements). The way they present the wacky lockdown leaflet (translated into half a dozen languages)  is a facade meant to suggest a functioning organisation but clearly they have no press. They didn't even bother to comment on the George Floyd/BLM protests, so what are they doing?


----------



## petee (Sep 8, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> As far as the exchange on the fischerzed blog went



thanks for mentioning that blog, I'll read that post later, but i see there that mac intosh psssed recently. i may have met him once or twice at public meetings of the IP and ICC.


----------



## A380 (Sep 8, 2021)

Real Estate in New York snd SF up for grabs you say?


I am Spartacist!


----------



## kebabking (Sep 8, 2021)

A380 said:


> al Estate in New York snd SF up for grabs you say?
> 
> 
> I am Spartacist!



No, I'm a Spartacist, and so is my Wife.

As are my Spartacist children, for whom we have set up Spartacist Trusts for Spartacist tax purposes.


----------



## imposs1904 (Sep 8, 2021)

Via Splits & Fusions, fill your boots.


----------



## PTK (Sep 8, 2021)

kebabking said:


> No, I'm a Spartacist, and so is my Wife.
> 
> As are my Spartacist children, for whom we have set up Spartacist Trusts for Spartacist tax purposes.


If you are Spartacist, then you will be able to state the Spartacist League line on the contest for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in 1981?


----------



## belboid (Sep 8, 2021)

PTK said:


> If you are Spartacist, then you will be able to state the Spartacist League line on the contest for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in 1981?


do you mean the initial one or the one they changed to after the vote had happened?


----------



## planetgeli (Sep 8, 2021)

PTK said:


> If you are Spartacist, then you will be able to state the Spartacist League line on the contest for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in 1981?



Or you could just use google.



			Spartacism in Britain


----------



## PTK (Sep 8, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> Via Splits & Fusions, fill your boots.


Thank you very much for this.

One of the documents throws light on the resignation of one of the members who I knew when I was a member. After she resigned, the SL published a pre-written resignation letter from her in Spartacist Britain. I asked why they published it, and was told that it was because she was quite well-known on the left.

When I say "pre-written", I mean that the letter was written when she had no intention of resigning. I thought it was odd that she had written such a letter, but accepted that it had been her decision

From reading the aforementioned document I now know that the comrade had written it in a period before I became a member, and that she was obliged to write it to demonstrate here loyalty.

The comrade concerned now works as a relatively successful academic.


----------



## PTK (Sep 8, 2021)

planetgeli said:


> Or you could just use google.
> 
> 
> 
> Spartacism in Britain


I was going to go on to ask a more difficult question.


----------



## belboid (Sep 8, 2021)

planetgeli said:


> Or you could just use google.
> 
> 
> 
> Spartacism in Britain


I dont think we even need do that.   What would the sparts think about an internal labour election?  Could it possibly be anything other than a plague on the pair of them?


----------



## Carl Steele (Sep 8, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> Via Splits & Fusions, fill your boots.


This is a trip down (repressed) memory lane. The amazing Joe Quigley document (I had completely forgotten about) which looks like he typed it directly onto the stencil, and wrote the title page with a broken crayon. And as an added bonus he refers to himself in the third person. Interesting how much he likes Bill Logan. I think Quigley ended up as a low-level trade union official in Birmingham.


----------



## PTK (Sep 8, 2021)

belboid said:


> I dont think we even need do that.   What would the sparts think about an internal labour election?  Could it possibly be anything other than a plague on the pair of them?


Then the word came from New York: the British section had got it wrong. It would have been in the interests of the programme if Tony Benn had won. There was a "retrospective" line change. The line now was that the pro-NATO wing of the Labour Party, as represented by Denis Healey, should be driven out of the party.

The SL would then write about its “retrospective line” for the next couple of years.


----------



## PTK (Sep 8, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> This is a trip down (repressed) memory lane. The amazing Joe Quigley document (I had completely forgotten about) which looks like he typed it directly onto the stencil, and wrote the title page with a broken crayon. And as an added bonus he refers to himself in the third person. Interesting how much he likes Bill Logan. I think Quigley ended up as a low-level trade union official in Birmingham.


I had never been aware of this document before. I had heard talk of Joe Quigley, but did not know much about him.


----------



## PTK (Sep 8, 2021)

A fact that has just come to the fore from the depths of the land of memory is that couples paid lower subs per person than single people. I questioned this when I was a member, and never received a satisfactory answer. Such a rule did not seem much in accord with Marxism to me.


----------



## Idris2002 (Sep 8, 2021)

PTK said:


> A fact that has just come to the fore from the depths of the land of memory is that couples paid lower subs per person than single people. I questioned this when I was a member, and never received a satisfactory answer. Such a rule did not seem much in accord with Marxism to me.


I'm very surprised at that. A successful cult (religious or political) wouldn't want any of its members to have (or retain) intimate bonds with others, inside or outside the cult. A mass of atomised individuals would seem to be more suitable.


----------



## Pickman's model (Sep 8, 2021)

PTK said:


> Ah, the flattop! Whatever happened to the flattop?
> Where is the hair gel of yesteryear?


Never mind that, where is the hair of yesteryear?


----------



## PTK (Sep 8, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> Never mind that, where is the hair of yesteryear?


I hear you, brother, I hear you. Why don't balding men get a discount at the barber shop (or hairdresser, as they call it these days)?
Down with Reactionary Hairist Haircut Pricing!


----------



## imposs1904 (Sep 8, 2021)

PTK said:


> I hear you, brother, I hear you. Why don't balding men get a discount at the barber shop (or hairdresser, as they call it these days)?
> Down with Reactionary Hairist Haircut Pricing!



Balding men have a 'Finder's Fee Surcharge'.


----------



## Carl Steele (Sep 8, 2021)

PTK said:


> A fact that has just come to the fore from the depths of the land of memory is that couples paid lower subs per person than single people. I questioned this when I was a member, and never received a satisfactory answer. Such a rule did not seem much in accord with Marxism to me.



I don't remember this at all. How did they decide who was a couple? Did they have to live together for a specified time? Couples came and went pretty frequently as I recall.



Idris2002 said:


> I'm very surprised at that. A successful cult (religious or political) wouldn't want any of its members to have (or retain) intimate bonds with others, inside or outside the cult. A mass of atomised individuals would seem to be more suitable.



Most of the couples were quite loose, or open as we might say now, and often short term. Robertson had several wives, which might explain the policy cited by PTK.


----------



## A380 (Sep 8, 2021)

I recon there is enough knowledge on here to do an Operation Mincemeat type job and create a last remaining British Spartacist group that could prove they were the true heirs to the NY building. Should keep the server fund going for a few years…


----------



## PTK (Sep 8, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> I don't remember this at all. How did they decide who was a couple? Did they have to live together for a specified time? Couples came and went pretty frequently as I recall.
> 
> 
> 
> Most of the couples were quite loose, or open as we might say now, and often short term. Robertson had several wives, which might explain the policy cited by PTK.


I don't know how long people had to live together to be regarded as a couple. There were a number of people that were definitely seen as couples. It was well-known that X and Y or A and B were established couples. The Quigley document mentions one couple.

It makes sense to encourage couples from the point of view of the SL leadership. People who had close emotional attachments to people outside the group were less likely to accept oppressive behaviour.

There was also some sort of rule about secrets. You were supposed to report what someone had been saying to you that questioned the status quo in the organisation, but I think that there was an exemption for couples. When one member of a couple resigned there had been some criticism that the other member had not informed the organisation that the member was going to resign, but then I think it was said that it was all right for a member's companion to not mention such things.

This forum is beginning to read like the transcript of a public inquiry!


----------



## PTK (Sep 9, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Tompkin's main focus was the RCP (and related splinters). There are probably some ex-RCPers who remember Barry Tompkins. I'd be interested to hear from them.
> 
> His cover job was as a delivery driver for garden supplies in London. He had a van supplied by the cops. There was nobody in the Sparts in the early 80s in London who drove a van (either for a living or privately). Nobody owned a car. It doesn't matter what his name was, this guy was never a Spart


Actually, a couple of people did have cars, but one of them resigned.

There was, however, a supporter of the SL who had a small van. He drove me and another member to the house of someone in the CP who we were trying to win over. He waited for us in the pub. He attended at least one event that was for members only; I remember someone questioning what he had been invited, at a subsequent meeting of the London "local" (as they called their branches).


----------



## PTK (Sep 9, 2021)

A380 said:


> I recon there is enough knowledge on here to do an Operation Mincemeat type job and create a last remaining British Spartacist group that could prove they were the true heirs to the NY building. Should keep the server fund going for a few years…


I wonder what happens when a political group dissolves itself. 
The Independent Labour Party dissolved itself.
The Revolutionary Communist League of Britain dissolved itself. It had a bookshop in London. I do not know if it owned the building outright.


----------



## imposs1904 (Sep 9, 2021)

PTK said:


> I wonder what happens when a political group dissolves itself.
> The Independent Labour Party dissolved itself.
> The Revolutionary Communist League of Britain dissolved itself. It had a bookshop in London. I do not know if it owned the building outright.


The Independent Labour Party became Independent Labour Publications. It still exists.


----------



## Dom Traynor (Sep 9, 2021)

PTK said:


> I wonder what happens when a political group dissolves itself.
> The Independent Labour Party dissolved itself.
> The Revolutionary Communist League of Britain dissolved itself. It had a bookshop in London. I do not know if it owned the building outright.


Quite often tangible assets will be owned by a trust.


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## Carl Steele (Sep 9, 2021)

PTK said:


> Actually, a couple of people did have cars, but one of them resigned.


Thinking about it now I remember three people who had cars, two women and a man. Also there was a supporter, the partner of a very strange American woman, who had a car. I have realised, in trying to think about those times, how vague my memories are. It was a long time ago and also very unpleasant. Often I can recall scenes, and the feelings attached to the scene, but I have no idea what is being said.



PTK said:


> There was, however, a supporter of the SL who had a small van. He drove me and another member to the house of someone in the CP who we were trying to win over. He waited for us in the pub. He attended at least one event that was for members only; I remember someone questioning what he had been invited, at a subsequent meeting of the London "local" (as they called their branches).



No idea who this is. When I was an ex-member I remember talking to a supporter who had been ferried to an SWP meeting in a van along with a few members. She said the Sparts in the van were the tensest  people she'd ever encountered. This would have been 1987 or later though, some time after Tompkins was supposedly a member.


----------



## A380 (Sep 9, 2021)

PTK said:


> I wonder what happens when a political group dissolves itself.
> The Independent Labour Party dissolved itself.
> The Revolutionary Communist League of Britain dissolved itself. It had a bookshop in London. I do not know if it owned the building outright.


My mum is still pissed off* that a few of the more Tankie elements who were working for the communist party alongside her from the 50s and 60s,  supposedly earning the same poverty wages as her and my dad and other people they are still friends with managed to end up with large houses in Hampstead, which they are still in. Bizarre they could  have afforded them even back in the day, what with the ‘holidays’ to Moscow…

* This is to put it mildly.


----------



## PTK (Sep 9, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Thinking about it now I remember three people who had cars, two women and a man. Also there was a supporter, the partner of a very strange American woman, who had a car. I have realised, in trying to think about those times, how vague my memories are. It was a long time ago and also very unpleasant. Often I can recall scenes, and the feelings attached to the scene, but I have no idea what is being said.
> 
> 
> 
> No idea who this is. When I was an ex-member I remember talking to a supporter who had been ferried to an SWP meeting in a van along with a few members. She said the Sparts in the van were the tensest  people she'd ever encountered. This would have been 1987 or later though, some time after Tompkins was supposedly a member.


One thing I do remember about the man with the van whom I mentioned is that he owned a digital watch (which were not common in those days) on which you had to press a button to see the time. As he joked, it would not be much use to someone with one arm. I mention this as an example of the oddities of memory.

The American women whom you mention was a decent person, I think, who had qualms about some of the things that went on.

It would be interesting to know which ex-members of the Spartacist League remained interested in politics.


----------



## Carl Steele (Sep 9, 2021)

sorry, posted too soon, can't delete posts.


----------



## PTK (Sep 9, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> sorry, posted too soon, can't delete posts.


Yes, I just had a case of premature posting on another thread.


----------



## Carl Steele (Sep 9, 2021)

PTK said:


> One thing I do remember about the man with the van whom I mentioned is that he owned a digital watch (which were not common in those days) on which you had to press a button to see the time. As he joked, it would not be much use to someone with one arm. I mention this as an example of the oddities of memory.


I don't remember this guy, but maybe I never did anything with him. He does seem like a candidate to be Tompkins, drove a van and was peripheral to the organisation. The idea that someone attended a meeting who shouldn't have rings a distant bell.



PTK said:


> The American women whom you mention was a decent person, I think, who had qualms about some of the things that went on.


She wasn't personally nasty, but she must have had qualm after qualm after qualm because she was a member for at least 10 years. I was still getting calls from her long after I left. I don't recall her ever objecting to anything. Not sure how decent that makes her.



PTK said:


> It would be interesting to know which ex-members of the Spartacist League remained interested in politics.


A lot remained interested in politics only passively.


----------



## PTK (Sep 9, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> I don't remember this guy, but maybe I never did anything with him. He does seem like a candidate to be Tompkins, drove a van and was peripheral to the organisation. The idea that someone attended a meeting who shouldn't have rings a distant bell.
> 
> 
> She wasn't personally nasty, but she must have had qualm after qualm after qualm because she was a member for at least 10 years. I was still getting calls from her long after I left. I don't recall her ever objecting to anything. Not sure how decent that makes her.
> ...


 I wonder about the psychology of all this.


----------



## Carl Steele (Sep 9, 2021)

PTK said:


> I wonder about the psychology of all this.


The bottom line is that for the Sparts politics was a set of abstract ideas. A purist ideology. (Geoff White made this point in his 1968 resignation letter). There was no practical application, no way to test the validity or otherwise of the ideology, so it could never be falsified. How do you know if "Defend the Soviet Union" is correct? It's just a vague slogan. How do you know if the proletarian revolution is the answer to every problem, everywhere in the world? The Sparts were a perverse literary society which used politics for internal control, not to affect the world.

Why would anyone join this organisation, let alone stay in it for years? It's an issue too complex for this forum, but the intense, angry quality of the place was a major attraction for many, including the "decent" American woman.


----------



## PTK (Sep 10, 2021)

I remember going to the office of the WSL to buy a number of copies of this document. The SL liked to read the documents produced by their opponents on the left. I don't remember reading it.

The bit about the proposed selling off of the car factories is very good. It shows up the politics of the Sparts then as, er, rather [I cannot think of the correct expression].








						WSL Spartacist Truth Kit.pdf
					

Shared with Dropbox




					www.dropbox.com


----------



## Carl Steele (Sep 11, 2021)

PTK said:


> I wonder about the psychology of all this.


This is a brief intro to the EnlightenNext cult:




There are real parallels between EnlightenNext and the Sparts - particularly the grandiosity of the apparent goals and the abusive behaviour - there is a lot more detail here: WHAT enlightenment??! and here: American Guru

There are also differences - the leader Andrew Cohen effectively dissolved his own cult. 

**edit **  And I should underline that Cohen dissolved the cult because his followers rebelled - the Sparts membership were much more passive, they had no fight in them.


----------



## PTK (Sep 12, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> This is a brief intro to the EnlightenNext cult:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Thanks I will have a look at that. In the meantime, this is an account of a cultish US Marxist group. The members rebelled and expelled the guru when she was away.







						Democratic Workers Party - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Carl Steele (Sep 12, 2021)

From Delusions of Grandeur

_The notion of a vanguard revolutionary party inherently predisposes its adherents to view themselves as the pivot on which world history is destined to turn. Revolution is seen as the only route by which humanity can avoid annihilation, but revolution is only possible if a mass party is built around a group of “cadres”: that is, devotees of the party with a particularly deep insight into its ideology. Members become possessed by a tremendous sense of urgency and a powerful conviction of their group’s unique role in bringing about the transformation of the world. They develop delusions of historical grandeur. Religious zealotry soon follows._

Describes the Sparts exactly. (Tim Wohlforth,  one time collaborator with Jim Robertson, is the co-author of the book from which this is quoted).

The devotees of EnlightenNext differed from the Sparts only in that they believed themselves to be the pivot on which the development of the universe turned.


----------



## RebelSpart (Oct 14, 2021)

As a former Spart from the early 1970s, I wonder whatever happened to people like George Foster, George Crawford, Liz Gordon and Alice L. (Carl L.'s widow). (All names mentioned are are party names). Does anyone have uptodate information?


----------



## RebelSpart (Oct 14, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> From Delusions of Grandeur
> 
> _The notion of a vanguard revolutionary party inherently predisposes its adherents to view themselves as the pivot on which world history is destined to turn. Revolution is seen as the only route by which humanity can avoid annihilation, but revolution is only possible if a mass party is built around a group of “cadres”: that is, devotees of the party with a particularly deep insight into its ideology. Members become possessed by a tremendous sense of urgency and a powerful conviction of their group’s unique role in bringing about the transformation of the world. They develop delusions of historical grandeur. Religious zealotry soon follows._
> 
> ...


I met Tim Wohlforth around 1971/72 and the description he attributes to Robertson also fits him to a tee!


----------



## kenny g (Oct 14, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> As a former Spart from the early 1970s, I wonder whatever happened to people like George Foster, George Crawford, Liz Gordon and Alice L. (Carl L.'s widow). (All names mentioned are are party names). Does anyone have uptodate information?


Who needs to know?


----------



## kebabking (Oct 14, 2021)

kenny g said:


> Who needs to know?



You don't actually believe that the various state organs who find themselves burdened with the baleful task of keeping tabs on these mortal threats to the capitalist pig-dogs/bunch of certifiable nut-cases are in the dark as to what they are up to, do you?


----------



## kenny g (Oct 14, 2021)

kebabking said:


> You don't actually believe that the various state organs who find themselves burdened with the baleful task of keeping tabs on these mortal threats to the capitalist pig-dogs/bunch of certifiable nut-cases are in the dark as to what they are up to, do you?


May well be due to their use of "party names".


----------



## kenny g (Oct 14, 2021)

Quite often security services will set training tasks for new recruits such as " identify the whereabouts of all present and former members of group X". This would fit that MO.


----------



## kenny g (Oct 14, 2021)

Whatever my feelings about SL I am quite happy to not in effect DOX former or current members of the org.


----------



## Carl Steele (Oct 14, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> As a former Spart from the early 1970s, I wonder whatever happened to people like George Foster, George Crawford, Liz Gordon and Alice L. (Carl L.'s widow). (All names mentioned are are party names). Does anyone have uptodate information?



George Foster was one of the speakers at the memorial meeting for Robertson, according to WV. As for the rest I have no idea. Why do you ask?



RebelSpart said:


> I met Tim Wohlforth around 1971/72 and the description he attributes to Robertson also fits him to a tee!



Wohlforth doesn't mention Robertson in the piece you quote.


----------



## Carl Steele (Oct 15, 2021)

kenny g said:


> Quite often security services will set training tasks for new recruits such as " identify the whereabouts of all present and former members of group X". This would fit that MO.



If that's what this is, we can all sleep soundly at night. Three of the four names RebelSpart uses can be found in the editorial box of WV. The other is the wife of a physicist-spart who died in 2011 and is quite well known in academic circles -  the wife is mentioned in the WV obituary, and can easily be found with Google.

The reference to Wohlforth seems confused, Wohlforth split with Robertson in 1964 or thereabouts.


----------



## RebelSpart (Oct 15, 2021)

kenny g said:


> Who needs to know?


What difference does it make? I actually knew the individuals mentioned in these posts and I am curious as to what happened to them. Even if I were a cop and there were a cop tapping into these threads, it would be of zero importance. 
I heard that the SL has essentially shut down operations, but a former comrade (just recently deceased), says they are having problems but are still operational. At 25, I had just had enough (actually had enough way before that) and I came across GB Shaw's famous quote, which I paraphrase as, "if you were not marxist at 19, you have no soul; if you remain a marxist at 31, you have no brains!"


----------



## Idris2002 (Oct 15, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> I came across GB Shaw's famous quote, which I paraphrase as, "if you were not marxist at 19, you have no soul; if you remain a marxist at 31, you have no brains!"


A quote also attributed to Churchill, and a load of old bollocks in both cases.


----------



## RebelSpart (Oct 15, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> If that's what this is, we can all sleep soundly at night. Three of the four names RebelSpart uses can be found in the editorial box of WV. The other is the wife of a physicist-spart who died in 2011 and is quite well known in academic circles -  the wife is mentioned in the WV obituary, and can easily be found with Google.
> 
> The reference to Wohlforth seems confused, Wohlforth split with Robertson in 1964 or thereabouts.


So you guys think I'm a cop and, of course, you are sure about your fellow posters' true identities? My comment concerning Wohforth was in response to someone citing him regarding Robertson. Not confused! Whatever, I am no fan of the Sparts. I left them early, I only wish I left them much earlier. They had some brillant people who really believed in what they were doing. I cannot claim the same level of overall intelligence, but I knew I hated cliques, always have, always will. I also hate talking with people who have no firsthand experience in a subject about which they can pontificate endlessly!


----------



## hitmouse (Oct 15, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> I also hate talking with people who have no firsthand experience in a subject about which they can pontificate endlessly!


Welcome to urban!


----------



## Idris2002 (Oct 15, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Welcome to urban!


_You'll never leave_


----------



## Carl Steele (Oct 15, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> So you guys think I'm a cop and, of course, you are sure about your fellow posters' true identities? My comment concerning Wohforth was in response to someone citing him regarding Robertson. Not confused! Whatever, I am no fan of the Sparts. I left them early, I only wish I left them much earlier. They had some brillant people who really believed in what they were doing. I cannot claim the same level of overall intelligence, but I knew I hated cliques, always have, always will. I also hate talking with people who have no firsthand experience in a subject about which they can pontificate endlessly!



FWIW I don't think you are a cop. My response was ironic. If you want to see what's happened to the Sparts check out this thread and the Sparts website and maybe the Internationalist Group articles. They are barely functional, probably squabbling over the spoils


----------



## Serge Forward (Oct 15, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> which I paraphrase as, "if you were not marxist at 19, you have no soul; if you remain a marxist at 31, you have no brains!"


So you became an anarchist then?


----------



## RebelSpart (Oct 15, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> FWIW I don't think you are a cop. My response was ironic. If you want to see what's happened to the Sparts check out this thread and the Sparts website and maybe the Internationalist Group articles. They are barely functional, probably squabbling over the spoils


I already checked out their website and found nothing new. My impression (perhaps false) is that they haven't published Workers Vanguard in over a year. 
What renewed my interest in them is the death of a former comrade in L.A. a week or so ago (just heard yesterday). Despite our huge political differences, I am saddened to learn of his death. I also learned of Carl Lichtenstein's death (yes, I use his real name; like other public figures, the SL didn't both with pseudos). He and his wife, Alice, were adorable and good friends ... until I broke with the SL.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 15, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> So you became an anarchist then?


No, I became a fervent I-don't-knowist and started from scratch!


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## RebelSpart (Oct 15, 2021)

Idris2002 said:


> A quote also attributed to Churchill, and a load of old bollocks in both cases.


Yes, indeedee, don't know about Churchill, although he was not above absconding with someone else's ideas. But your point is well taken; the quote is part of a long string of similar quotes going back centuries (minus the marxism bit).


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## Carl Steele (Oct 15, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> already checked out their website and found nothing new. My impression (perhaps false) is that they haven't published Workers Vanguard in over a year.



They haven't published WV since May 2020. The Americans have written only 2 leaflets since then (and called them supplements). They were completely silent throughout the BLM protests. They've translated the leaflets into several languages to make it appear as though they are a functioning organisation. Apart from that the Greeks have produced a couple of leaflets as have the Canadians. In the last 5 or 6 months there's been nothing at all. Looks like it's over, but they still have to sort out who gets the cash from the properties - New York office building and Robertson's Bay Area retirement home.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 15, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> They haven't published WV since May 2020. The Americans have written only 2 leaflets since then (and called them supplements). They were completely silent throughout the BLM protests. They've translated the leaflets into several languages to make it appear as though they are a functioning organisation. Apart from that the Greeks have produced a couple of leaflets as have the Canadians. In the last 5 or 6 months there's been nothing at all. Looks like it's over, but they still have to sort out who gets the cash from the properties - New York office building and Robertson's Bay Area retirement home.


What you say jibes with what I have read on the net. I doubt Robertson had significant holdings and even if a house bought in the 1970s or 80s appreciated massively, it wouldn't change much members. All that brings me back to the reason why I asked about their leadership. I knew George 'Crawford' before we became Sparts and we met George 'Foster' and Judy shortly thereafter. I remember my friend Victor and his very young (at the time) sister Irene who became a PC member. I wonder what these people have or will do with their lives now. Above all, I am so glad I broke from them, which is probably the hardest thing I ever did besides divorcing my first French wife. LOL


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## kebabking (Oct 15, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> What you say jibes with what I have read on the net. I doubt Robertson had significant holdings and even if a house bought in the 1970s or 80s appreciated massively, it wouldn't change much members. All that brings me back to the reason why I asked about their leadership. I knew George 'Crawford' before we became Sparts and we met George 'Foster' and Judy shortly thereafter. I remember my friend Victor and his very young (at the time) sister Irene who became a PC member. I wonder what these people have or will do with their lives now. Above all, I am so glad I broke from them, which is probably the hardest thing I ever did besides divorcing my first French wife. LOL



I've long been interested in 'afterwards', what people do when the thing their lives once revolved around disappears - I was a member (for about 2 weeks) of the Socialist Workers Student Society, some of the people I knew haven't touched politics since uni, but one bloke is still hammering away for the comrades 20+ years later.

Are these Sparts now members of parish councils and photography clubs, or are they like the impoverished and swept away Grand Duchesses and Serene Highnesses of long forgotten and exiled European royal houses, meeting in shabby hotels in Paris and bestowing Orders on each other and imagining themselves to be stil rulers of their kingdoms, many of which no longr exist?


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## Carl Steele (Oct 15, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> What you say jibes with what I have read on the net. I doubt Robertson had significant holdings and even if a house bought in the 1970s or 80s appreciated massively, it wouldn't change much members. All that brings me back to the reason why I asked about their leadership. I knew George 'Crawford' before we became Sparts and we met George 'Foster' and Judy shortly thereafter. I remember my friend Victor and his very young (at the time) sister Irene who became a PC member. I wonder what these people have or will do with their lives now. Above all, I am so glad I broke from them, which is probably the hardest thing I ever did besides divorcing my first French wife. LOL



According to Tom Riley's Bolshevik Tendency (there are now two BTs) there was a levy on the membership to buy Robertson an expensive house in the Bay Area (I think in the 90s). Also they own the New York Office building, so the money at stake is not insignificant. I'm not assuming they want to divide it up among the membership. Whoever is the leadership will get the spoils.

By Judy do you mean Judith Shapiro? (her membership of the Sparts is well known)

When did you leave, and what prompted you to do so?


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## RebelSpart (Oct 16, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> According to Tom Riley's Bolshevik Tendency (there are now two BTs) there was a levy on the membership to buy Robertson an expensive house in the Bay Area (I think in the 90s). Also they own the New York Office building, so the money at stake is not insignificant. I'm not assuming they want to divide it up among the membership. Whoever is the leadership will get the spoils.
> 
> By Judy do you mean Judith Shapiro? (her membership of the Sparts is well known)
> 
> When did you leave, and what prompted you to do so?


We always called Ms Shapiro 'Judith' and I still do. She is the main reason I stayed as long as I did. A brilliant woman and a decent person. She is now doing great work as a lecturer at LSE. By 'Judy', I was referring to George Foster's wife.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 16, 2021)

kebabking said:


> I've long been interested in 'afterwards', what people do when the thing their lives once revolved around disappears - I was a member (for about 2 weeks) of the Socialist Workers Student Society, some of the people I knew haven't touched politics since uni, but one bloke is still hammering away for the comrades 20+ years later.
> 
> Are these Sparts now members of parish councils and photography clubs, or are they like the impoverished and swept away Grand Duchesses and Serene Highnesses of long forgotten and exiled European royal houses, meeting in shabby hotels in Paris and bestowing Orders on each other and imagining themselves to be stil rulers of their kingdoms, many of which no longr exist?


I, along with a number of my high school friends, joined the SL pretty much at the same time. One guy became a transit worker and took up a hobby as a photographer and amateur video-maker. Another HS friend became an interpreter and lives in France as I do. Al Benson, who just passed away, did all sorts of things and spent years helping fellow gays and working on AIDS projects. Another continued as a HS teacher in Boston. My friend, Victor and Irene G. (brother and sister) are another story. Victor died a few years ago. I actually came across him the streets of NYC 30 years ago. He had apparently left the SL but was still 'loyal', so he refused to talk to me. Too bad because we had been best friends before joining the SL. Irene remained a leading SLer (PC member). She became politicized at the age of 13. She entered politics with a child-like naivety and religious devotion that recalled her family's Orthodox Russian roots. All these people were highly talented and could've done great things; instead they devoted their lives to what they viewed as a socialist future.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 16, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> All these people were highly talented and could've done great things; instead they devoted their lives to what they viewed as a socialist future.



I agree there were some highly talented/intelligent people in the Sparts, who could have done something else. So why do you think they were there? 

To believe that Robertson's group was the last, best hope for humanity you had to be profoundly mistaken about how the world works.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 16, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> I agree there were some highly talented/intelligent people in the Sparts, who could have done something else. So why do you think they were there?
> 
> To believe that Robertson's group was the last, best hope for humanity you had to be profoundly mistaken about how the world works.


In answer to your questions: 1) Many people were drawn to leftwing groups in the 1970s (leftwing meaning communist, trotskyist). I was attracted because of a terrible experience I had in my teenage years, first in juvenile hall and later in a so-called state-authorized boys home. I wanted, at once, to give a huge middle finger to the elites and their many supporters, but also Marx's vision made sense to me; 2) others had different reasons, but the intellectual luminaries like Carl Lichtenstein and Judith sincerely believe the socialism was the only way and that the SL had the best, if not the only chance of getting us there.
BTW, I regret joining the SL but I am in no way ashamed of it. People in other political parties display much of the same sort of behavior and thinking. Millions of people today, more than ever in my lifetime, are opting for conspiracy-based or -laced political positions. Just look at the trumpthings but also the self-styled progressives who emphasize domestic politics to the near total exclusion of foreign policy where the elites do their most damange. Just look at all the phony proclamations for ecology from people who don't think twice before buying a new high-energy consuming device or going on a holiday cruise ship that emits more CO2 in a single day than most cities do in a week. Are not these people also "mistaken about how the world works"?


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## Carl Steele (Oct 16, 2021)

I can understand, or even identify with, your reasons for joining the Sparts, though in contrast to you I do feel ashamed of having been a member of Robertson's organisation for a number of years. Had I gone in, taken a look and got out, it would be different. But I stayed. 



RebelSpart said:


> the intellectual luminaries like Carl Lichtenstein and Judith sincerely believe the socialism was the only way and that the SL had the best, if not the only chance of getting us there.



This I find impossible to accept. They no doubt told themselves this, but the idea that the Sparts could lead a working class revolution was beyond ridiculous. Of course many people believe ridiculous ideas, but there are reasons why people deny climate change or the efficacy of vaccinations which go beyond simple belief.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 16, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> I can understand, or even identify with, your reasons for joining the Sparts, though in contrast to you I do feel ashamed of having been a member of Robertson's organisation for a number of years. Had I gone in, taken a look and got out, it would be different. But I stayed.
> 
> 
> 
> This I find impossible to accept. They no doubt told themselves this, but the idea that the Sparts could lead a working class revolution was beyond ridiculous. Of course many people believe ridiculous ideas, but there are reasons why people deny climate change or the efficacy of vaccinations which go beyond simple belief.


Let me take up your last point first. The Sparts did not think that they were capable of leading a working class revolution at the time I was there (1971-1975) and probably not beyond my time, either. What they thought is that they needed to develop a party to lead the working class to power at some distant point in time, and they did not see anyone else doing it. They just did not see the working class in pre-revolutionary ferment, so they concentrated on winning over members of what they called OROs by exposing them for their supposed deviations from marxism. Not a bad strategy insofar as that goes, but the OROs correctly saw them as posturing, like when they went to antiwar demos with huge banners calling "Communist victory in Indochina!". I remember when I came on board as a 21-year-old in September 1971. I called Robertson to complain about stickers members had plastered all over Cambridge and Boston on which a whole laundry list of evils that the SL opposed was listed. No explanation, just denunciation. I tried to explain to Jim that that was not the way to persuade someone, but he cut me off, screaming that I took a piecemeal approach to politics, which was counterrevolutionary, but that I was welcome to carry out a faction fight on the CC, if I so desired. Needless to say, I was shell schocked.
This last point brings me to your first point, because I wanted to just walk away from Robertson and his followers right then and there. I did not do so because I was just too young, too confused and already too dependent on them. Even though I thought I was on a road to nowhere, I also had nowhere else to go. My bet is that a lot of people felt the same way. Let's just be happy that we got out when we did. When were you in the SL?


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## Carl Steele (Oct 17, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> Let me take up your last point first. The Sparts did not think that they were capable of leading a working class revolution at the time I was there (1971-1975) and probably not beyond my time, either. What they thought is that they needed to develop a party to lead the working class to power at some distant point in time, and they did not see anyone else doing it.



I think the perspective on when the revolution was coming shifted. I'm fairly sure there was a period in the 1970s when the Sparts thought the collapse of US capitalism was imminent and greatness would be thrust upon them. In the 1980s they talked incessantly about the imminence of WWIII. And they did see themselves as the direct (and only) descendants of Lenin. So sometimes they lamented not having much time to build the revolutionary party and at other times they postured as merely the latest link in the chain of revolutionary continuity.



RebelSpart said:


> I remember when I came on board as a 21-year-old in September 1971. I called Robertson to complain about stickers members had plastered all over Cambridge and Boston on which a whole laundry list of evils that the SL opposed was listed. No explanation, just denunciation. I tried to explain to Jim that that was not the way to persuade someone, but he cut me off, screaming that I took a piecemeal approach to politics, which was counterrevolutionary, but that I was welcome to carry out a faction fight on the CC, if I so desired.



I'm trying to understand how you reconcile the above statement with this ...



RebelSpart said:


> the intellectual luminaries like Carl Lichtenstein and Judith sincerely believe the socialism was the only way and that the SL had the best, if not the only chance of getting us there.



Why do you think the reasons the "intellectual luminaries" joined the SL were more rational than your own? I think anyone who made a clear-eyed assessment of the Sparts and Robertson  wouldn't have touched them with the proverbial ten foot pole. Why would anyone believe that a ranting and raving alcoholic could play a pivotal role in bringing about socialism?

And btw I was in the Sparts in the 1980s. I left in 1986.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 17, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> I think the perspective on when the revolution was coming shifted. I'm fairly sure there was a period in the 1970s when the Sparts thought the collapse of US capitalism was imminent and greatness would be thrust upon them. In the 1980s they talked incessantly about the imminence of WWIII. And they did see themselves as the direct (and only) descendants of Lenin. So sometimes they lamented not having much time to build the revolutionary party and at other times they postured as merely the latest link in the chain of revolutionary continuity.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Carl, I was there in the early 1970s when our group met Robertson and the entire SL leadership as well a number of other trotskyist leaders. Our group also held talks with Tim Wohlworth of the WL. It was Wohlworth's WL and his British pupper master, Gerry Healy, who screamed day and night about the imminent collapse of capitalism, not the SL leadership. My bet is that you can verify this yourself by checking out the headlines of the WL's newspaper.
Both the SL and our group considered such claims of an imminent crisis and thus uprising to be ridiculous. Above all, it was precisely because the US was very far from being in a pre-revolutionary period (let alone a revolutionary one), that they stuck with their view that their only role could be as a "propaganda" group (educate people about marxism).
As for my intellectual luminaries comment, I never said that their reasons were better than mine. I said they were good people, but that does not mean their "reasons" for being in the SL were in any way better than mine!
As for Robertson's alcoholism, many great people were alcoholics, drug addicts or had some other major health or even psychological issue. That said, no one within the SL saw him a "great helmsman" or a new Lenin; that is the sort of BS we hear from people outside the org, not within it. He was a deeply flawed individual, as were all the left's top leaders at the time, but some of his opponents are way off track!


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## Carl Steele (Oct 17, 2021)

I didn't say the Sparts "screamed day and night about the imminent collapse of capitalism" but their perspective did shift and change. I clearly recall Robertson talking about the possibility of "explosive growth" in the membership of the organisation, and WV frequently claimed we lived in a world "hurtling towards WWIII" as a consequence of the anti-Soviet war drive. I remember Len Meyers addressing a group of contacts after a demonstration, urging them to join the Sparts because "we need a revolution and we don't have much time." I'm fairly sure the "we don't much time" line came from a 1970s analysis of the US economy, but I'd have to dig to find that.

I am aware of Healy's catastrophism.

Describing the Sparts propaganda group perspective as educating people about Marxism is a bit wide of the mark. It mostly meant denouncing and sometimes slandering other leftists.



RebelSpart said:


> As for Robertson's alcoholism, many great people were alcoholics, drug addicts or had some other major health or even psychological issue. That said, no one within the SL saw him a "great helmsman" or a new Lenin; that is the sort of BS we hear from people outside the org, not within it. He was a deeply flawed individual, as were all the left's top leaders at the time, but some of his opponents are way off track!



Robertson was a small time operator, and the Spartacist League was his organisation. He drove out anyone who challenged him. He ran a highly abusive regime. His alcoholism was the least of it.



RebelSpart said:


> As for my intellectual luminaries comment, I never said that their reasons were better than mine. I said they were good people, but that does not mean their "reasons" for being in the SL were in any way better than mine!



I think you did imply that their reasons were better than yours, but whatever. Do you think anyone joined the Sparts for purely/mostly political reasons?

Were you a member of Norden's group?


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## RebelSpart (Oct 17, 2021)

If you say the SL's perspective changed in the 1980s, I will withhold comment since I was already gone by mid-1975. Yes, propaganda group for the SL mainly consisted of recruiting from and/or splitting other OROs. They were into 'exposing' them. I never had any problem ripping away 'cadre' from the PLP or other OROs, but their methods produced exactly the opposite of what the SL leadership claimed they wanted.
I remember one time we planned an intervention during the speech of the Swedish ambassador to Chile who had sheltered thousands of political refugees in his embassy during the coup d'état in 1972. They guy was old, fragile and a hero to everyone. He is the last guy in the world you want to attack or pick on.
Well, a week earlier, our Chicago org attacked him for being a social democrat and thus sellout. In planning our action in SF/Bau Area, the local leadership chose me to infiltrate his group and present him with a demand that he announce our demo in front of the Chilean embassy a few days after the diplomat's speech at Stanford Univ. But knowing my comrades and the utter lack of political sensitivity of our local organizer (Paul, a former coast guard officer with zero political acumen), I asked for assurrances that we would not attack him. Paul and Tweet (the local political chair) stated flat out that our intervention would entail no attacks on him.
On the night of his speech, I was able to get by his guards and speak with the ambassador who was accompanied by Joan Baez. Joan was pissed at the SL for "disrupting" the ambassador's presentation in Chicago but I promised there would be no such disruption that night. I even praised the ambassador's actions in Chile and told him we held him in great esteem, even if we did not see eye-to-eye with him politically. So our demo was announced after his speech, but when it came time for questions from the audience, Paul was chosen first and he launched a seemingly endless series of nasty comments about Sweden, the social democrats and revisionism in general. Other comrades joined in. I was furious because I had given my word of 'honor.
When I brought the matter up during the next local meeting a few days later, I was met with total silence from the comrades, including Tweet, Paul, his companion Rosalyn, etc. So I called Paul and the entire leadership liars, including Tweet, to which they responded I had a 'bourgeois' attachment to truth. We had several rounds of discussion but I was the only one to bring up the lies and sneaky manoeuvring. I am sure people knew I was right, but everyone, besides Paul, just ignored me. It was not much longer after that incident that I moved to the LA where I resigned (by telephone).
Ok, time to wrap (sorry for the length). Over the years, I have come to believe that the slavish attitude of SL members was typical of many political movements, including mainstream parties. We see it in the GOP under Trump. We saw it in the Democratic Party under Hillary "bomb, bomb, bomb Iraq" Clinton. I've seen the same slavishness from political hacks in Spain, too, where I lived several years. As one of Trump's White House press chiefs said a few years ago, people see "alternative facts". Robertson, like Bob Avakian, Wohlforth and others never worked a day in his life. His entire political career, which began in the CP before traversing the SWP and eventually forming the SL, was based on faction fighting. So it is no surprise that he ended up being a big fish in a small fish bowl.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 17, 2021)

That's an interesting story, a good illustration of how the Sparts were both oblivious and indifferent to the impact they had. Being "correct" was everything. The line about your bourgeois attachment to truth made me laugh. Pity you couldn't have met Joan Baez under better circumstances

I think the sycophancy in the Sparts is somewhat different to the slavish attitude in other political groups or movements. I was a member of Tony Cliff's International Socialists, and while there was no shortage of hackery and group-think the Sparts treatment of one another was far worse, and the detachment from reality was at another level.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 17, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> That's an interesting story, a good illustration of how the Sparts were both oblivious and indifferent to the impact they had. Being "correct" was everything. The line about your bourgeois attachment to truth made me laugh. Pity you couldn't have met Joan Baez under better circumstances
> 
> I think the sycophancy in the Sparts is somewhat different to the slavish attitude in other political groups or movements. I was a member of Tony Cliff's International Socialists, and while there was no shortage of hackery and group-think the Sparts treatment of one another was far worse, and the detachment from reality was at another level.


You are surely right, group-think is a common problem and not just in politics, but the Sparts were in a class unto themselves. One thing that prepared me for them is a little study or review of the utopian socialists of the mid-19th century BEFORE I entered politics. My main takeaway from my amateurish research (age 18) was that the utopian communities that last longest were the ones where the discipline was strictest and the hardship greatest. The SL, like many other leninist groups excluding IS, which I don't view as leninist in any sense (not a criticism), played up the political and police attacks against them, and any old congressional hick from Louisiana woud do. As long as the SL was considered a threat to national security, the leadership would use the criticism to show members that they truly were on the right track. They relied heavily on guilt, but that worked less with someone like me, since, while not working class, I had a tough youth. Hard enough that Robertson volunteerred to sink me into the industrial working class when he met our group (CWC) for merger talks in the summer of 1971. He said this kid (me) is tough enough to withstand a harsh work environment and still fight for his beliefs. (I also turned out to be their number one "goon" in cases where they risked being attacked.) 
After working for a while in the shipyards of Quincy, MA and later in an auto factory, I noticed that the leadership and academic members began calling us workers the "aristocracy" of the nascent proletarian party. It is true we brought home more money, even after paying a 30% stipend on our pay checks. Still, I thought I would gladly swap my working class wages for a chance to go to university.
Befoe I left but long after I made clear my desire to leave, the comrades who always had affluent parents to cover their back called me a traitor to the working class, which made me laugh. My dear friend Carl and Alice were among that group and they actually convinced my girlfriend to break up with me at that crucial time in my life. The same girlfriend who had urged me to resign!
As it turns out, I dodged two bullets for the price of one!


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## RebelSpart (Oct 17, 2021)

Carl, I would also like to learn more about your experience in the SL You revealed an interesting point when you said Robertson spoke of the US hurtling toward WWIII. If he really thought that, his analysis of the world situation had seriously deteriorated. You surely have other things to say about your experience.
Funny, but many of the financial analysts with whom I work (as a translator) argued that capitalism was on the verge of collapse following the abrupt bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the resultant market crash (worse than in 1929) and the ensuing financial and economic crisis. Who would've imagined GWB pushing the US treasury to take majority and/or controlling capital stakes in 9 out of the 10 biggest American banks? Imagine what would've happened if he had stuck to his free market orthodoxy!


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## tim (Oct 17, 2021)

Idris2002 said:


> _You'll never leave_


And never be admitted to the leadership clique.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 17, 2021)

kebabking said:


> I've long been interested in 'afterwards', what people do when the thing their lives once revolved around disappears - I was a member (for about 2 weeks) of the Socialist Workers Student Society, some of the people I knew haven't touched politics since uni, but one bloke is still hammering away for the comrades 20+ years later.
> 
> Are these Sparts now members of parish councils and photography clubs, or are they like the impoverished and swept away Grand Duchesses and Serene Highnesses of long forgotten and exiled European royal houses, meeting in shabby hotels in Paris and bestowing Orders on each other and imagining themselves to be stil rulers of their kingdoms, many of which no longr exist?


I, like you, am interested in finding out what people, especially the leadership, do after they leave an ostensibly revolutionary organization. I know one CC member of the SL who returned to a highly prestigious school where she serves as a senior lecturer. A guy, who stayed at the NYC subway authority where he started out as a SL plant and union militant, ended up as an amateur, but quite accomplished photographer. He also went to Yeshiva and become a practicing Jew. He denounces zionism but refuses to criticize Israel. He participates in a lot of Jewish-oriented events where Israeli flags can be seen everywhere. Most of the people become non political and uninterested in anything remotely resembling social, ecological or current events. That is the most interesting point for me: none of these people were really political animals.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 17, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> Carl, I would also like to learn more about your experience in the SL You revealed an interesting point when you said Robertson spoke of the US hurtling toward WWIII. If he really thought that, his analysis of the world situation had seriously deteriorated. You surely have other things to say about your experience.



I'm happy to exchange experiences with you, and I do have some some questions for you. Let me think about what I want to say and ask. I'm tired now but I'll get back to you tomorrow. But just on the WWIII point here's a WV article from 1983: WV323

It was just taken as a given that the US was preparing to nuke the Soviet Union.


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## deeyo (Oct 17, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> I remember one time we planned an intervention during the speech of the Swedish ambassador to Chile who had sheltered thousands of political refugees in his embassy during the coup d'état in 1972. They guy was old, fragile and a hero to everyone. He is the last guy in the world you want to attack or pick on.
> Well, a week earlier, our Chicago org attacked him for being a social democrat and thus sellout. In planning our action in SF/Bau Area, the local leadership chose me to infiltrate his group and present him with a demand that he announce our demo in front of the Chilean embassy a few days after the diplomat's speech at Stanford Univ.



that would have been harald edelstam, 'the black pimpernel' of ww2 - aristocrat gone socialist diplomat, saviour of communists, jews & dissidents in nazi berlin, occupied norway, stalinist poland, indonesia, guatemala & chile.
he dined with ss-officers in his home while hiding resistance fighters in the basement. dodged two assasination attempts by the gestapo, he smuggled torture victims in the trunk of his car.

he fought hand-to-hand with fascist soldiers to stop them to take mirtha fernandez de pucurull from her hospital bed & only gave up when they put a submachine gun to his head.

to this day, swedish- chileans put flowers on his grave each year. he's on a stamp in uruguay.

and you guys attacked him?

interesting strategy.

not many latinos in the american sparts in the 70s then, i take it?






						Harald Edelstam | Edelstam Institute
					






					edelstaminstitute.org


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## RebelSpart (Oct 17, 2021)

deeyo said:


> that would have been harald edelstam, 'the black pimpernel' of ww2 - aristocrat gone socialist diplomat, saviour of communists, jews & dissidents in nazi berlin, occupied norway, stalinist poland, indonesia, guatemala & chile.
> he dined with ss-officers in his home while hiding resistance fighters in the basement. dodged two assasination attempts by the gestapo, he smuggled torture victims in the trunk of his car.
> 
> he fought hand-to-hand with fascist soldiers to stop them to take mirtha fernandez de pucurull from her hospital bed & only gave up when they put a submachine gun to his head.
> ...


Let me correct my earlier remarks. The SLers didn't actually attack the ambassador but attacked Allende for his popular front strategy. They went on to attack the social democrats and others they considered insufficiently marxist. The ambassador, understandably, took it very bad, as did the crowd. After all, he was not there to debate the best strategy for a socialist revolution but to speak on the evils of the coup d'état and the regime that followed. The SL had its own agenda, which is fair enough, but their diatribe against Allende was off-topic for nearly everyone there, although, to my surprise, some people approached us and said the crowd's reaction was unfair. The SL also drew a fairly good turnout for their demo before the Chilean embassy a few days later, so they might've picked up a few contacts. But they also angered a whole lot of people and they used me to lie to Mr Edelman and Ms Baez.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 18, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> Most of the people become non political and uninterested in anything remotely resembling social, ecological or current events. That is the most interesting point for me: none of these people were really political animals.



I had a exchange recently on a blog with James Creegan (ex Spart, ex BT) where I argued that trying to understand the Sparts as a political group is futile. And what you say here is an illustration of my point. There were a lot of people who were clearly apolitical even while they were in the group - the ones who always shouted about discipline and betrayal but had never read a book. I first started to think about this a few years after I left. I was talking to a friend (an ex-Spart who had been a member around the same time as me) in 1989. I asked him what he thought about the fall of the Berlin Wall, he said something like "I haven't really been following it." This is a guy who spent years in an organisation which never stopped shouting about the defence of the Soviet Union. When the Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed he just wasn't interested.

I think the beginning of wisdom as to what's going on here is to be found in Geoff White's 1968 resignation letter from the Sparts - Geoff White Resignation (you'll find the letter on page 9 after the interview, with a response from Robertson). The Sparts were a purist sect, being correct was the objective, they had little desire to engage with let alone affect the world. This isn't the whole story but it's an important part.

Of course there are those who don't drop out, but continue, like Tom Riley's BT and Jan Norden's IG. I don't know much about the IG but if you look at their journal they are the Sparts of the mid-1970's preserved in aspic - the banners, placards, slogans, articles are identical. Not surprising given who's running the group. 

I suppose you knew Norden. What was your impression of him?


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## RebelSpart (Oct 18, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> I had a exchange recently on a blog with James Creegan (ex Spart, ex BT) where I argued that trying to understand the Sparts as a political group is futile. And what you say here is an illustration of my point. There were a lot of people who were clearly apolitical even while they were in the group - the ones who always shouted about discipline and betrayal but had never read a book. I first started to think about this a few years after I left. I was talking to a friend (an ex-Spart who had been a member around the same time as me) in 1989. I asked him what he thought about the fall of the Berlin Wall, he said something like "I haven't really been following it." This is a guy who spent years in an organisation which never stopped shouting about the defence of the Soviet Union. When the Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed he just wasn't interested.
> 
> I think the beginning of wisdom as to what's going on here is to be found in Geoff White's 1968 resignation letter from the Sparts - Geoff White Resignation (you'll find the letter on page 9 after the interview, with a response from Robertson). The Sparts were a purist sect, being correct was the objective, they had little desire to engage with let alone affect the world. This isn't the whole story but it's an important part.
> 
> ...


Yes, I knew the entire Buffalo Marxist Collective of which Norden was a part. I was the guy Robertson sent to begin talks with them. I spent 12 hours almost nonstop talking with a group of about 30 people. People were semi-hostile but they showed interest and even attraction to the arguments I presented. It was only later that I got a real feeling for Norden. He was distant, disciplined and knowledgeable. I considered him to be productive but boring.
I cannot generalize about all Sparts, anymore than I could for PLPers, excpet to say that all the militants from leninist orgs were sectarian. One thing that is different between me and you is your IS background. I always liked the ISers, but they were almost too nice whereas the leninist were angry. At the time, I didn't care if I lived or died; I just wanted to live or die for a good cause. All the hard leninists I knew, including the SWPers, had many of the characteristics we see in the SLers. They wanted to make a revolution and killing lots of people was not an issue for them ... or for me. We rejected terrorism because we saw it as totally counterproductive and a huge distraction (we are talking about targeted political actions, not mass murder a la ISIS). Their differences revolved around the best way to create a mass revolutionary party sometime in the future. The SWPers took a more practical and more inclusive approach whereas the PLP and the SL took a more sectarian one, but they were all sects.
PS: Did you see my response to Deeyo (above), I retracted/revised part of what I said about the SL interventions against the Swedish ambassador to Sweden in 1972. They did not directly criticize the former ambassador; they attacked Allende and the various OROs who remained uncriticial of him.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 18, 2021)

The SL was certainly a very angry place, and it would be foolish to discount how important this was as an attractive and repellent quality. Many people were in the Sparts because it was a place where they could scream and shout and be well thought of.

Thanks for the comments on Norden. I'm curious about him because he seems to be someone who embraced the Sparts project literally - in a way I don't think Robertson did. For Robertson the politics were a means of controlling his organisation (rather than a means to intervene in the world). So, for example, the WWIII stuff had no impact on the work of the Sparts. They sold a newspaper which claimed the US was about to nuke the Soviet Union but continued on with the same plodding, propagandistic routines. The feverish articles did though have an impact on the internal life, ramping up the intensity, fuelling the guilt, making the membership more malleable. Robertson was all about preserving and controlling the organisation to maintain his lifestyle. But I get the impression Norden believed it all, the revolutionary continuity bullshit and all the rest, as evidenced by his recreation of the 1970s organisation.

I'm also curious about the aftermath of the CWC fusion, the subsequent faction fight (know as the Cunningham/Treiger/Moore fight in Spart mythology). It's decades since I read about this on my favourite ever Trotskyist website, Revolution and Truth, a political tendency of one person, now sadly defunct. I seem to recall an account claiming that Robertson and friends fished through the trash cans at the end of meetings looking for the notes discarded by their opponents, and then later quoted the notes to denounce them. What was going on? I think this happened about a year after the glorious fusion.

And I believe Marv Treiger is now a why-I-left-the-left conservative and part time Buddhist (for those interested in what happens in the hereafter).


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## RebelSpart (Oct 18, 2021)

Marv was the leader of the CWC group of which I was a member. This collective consisted of Marv, two other gentlemen of about 25-28, two women about the same age and about ten former Hollywood High students who turned hard left after forming their own SDS chapter on campus in 1970. I was part of this latter group.
Crucial to understanding our group and thus our merger with the SL is that we were far removed from the SL's operations in other cities. We only came face-to-face with them in the early summer of 1971 via a woman named Helene (or Elaine, not sure) and her then disgraced boyfriend Doug Hainline. Doug was a very easygoing guy and highly persuasive. Anyway, we fused with the SL based on talks with Helene and Doug and, soon thereafter, Jim Robertson.
A few months later, we all moved to our respective SL local areas. I went to Boston and Marv went to NYC, since he sat on the PC. Within days of my arrival in Boston, I objected to the local leadership's "propaganda" (mentioned in an earlier post here). The local leadership suggested I give Jim a ring, which I did. Jim exploded on me after a couple of minutes of what I considered mild exchanges. His attitude was so brutal that I was left speechless. I thought of calling Marv, but that would've been a violation of "democratic centralism" and I did not want to start off my membership in that way. Little did I know that Treiger was also having problems with Robertson, and he did not want to contact us for the same reasons. Later, I realized that Robertson had no problem with potentially torpedoing the entire merger with the CWC. His aggressivity was just breathtaking.
As for the "faction" fight, Marvin opted out almost rightaway. He just abandoned us to our fate, which is pretty cowardly, considering that many of us were barely adults. I didn't see it that way at the time. I hooked up with him years after quitting the SL, but he never even considered apologizing for leaving us in the cold. He later decided his family at birth (before he was put up for adoption as a kid) was Jewish so he declared himself Jewish. He became a Zionist at which he told me I should make copious and public apologies to just about anyone I ever knew or would meet in the future.
Marv is a charismatic individual and he works hard on maintaining his charisma. But he turned out to be the most vile opportunist I have ever had the misfortune of knowing.
Cunningham had a bit of a so-called faction fight but none of us members knew anything about it until it was over and he was long gone. That was just one of the wonders of 'democratic centralism'!


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## Carl Steele (Oct 18, 2021)

Wow! Very interesting. Earlier today I read the WV account of the "fusion" and how it was an historical step forward for the SL  Also, in my argument with Jim Creegan, he cited this as an example of the success of the regroupment strategy.  And then there's the reality. And it's also interesting because the BT narrative has this period, early to mid 70s as the "healthy" period of the Spartacist League, when it was super-revolutionary, and had a well-functioning regime. I have never accepted this narrative because it makes no sense. A fundamentally healthy organisation could not have deteriorated into what I saw in 1980 in a few years (also I had read bits and pieces which indicated the early 70s SL was as you describe).

I knew Helene Brosius, I'm not sure if she was in the SWP but she was a Spart from very early on. She was generally quite pleasant company, but an absolute, unquestioning loyalist. Doug of course I also knew. In Britain in the late 70s/early 80s he and Judith were the human face of Spartacism. He seemed like a fish out of water, like he didn't really belong, he was just too reasonable. Helene once joked that Doug was really good at talking to members of opponent groups,  he could always figure out what they were thinking ... because he was thinking the same thing. But oddly Doug was a part of the Logan regime in the UK, as was Judith, and Logan really was the worst of the worst. I joined a year or two after the Logan trial (which was a stitch up because Robertson was fully aware of Logan's abuses) but I met Logan a couple of times - he really gave me the creeps, just way too cool and self-controlled.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 19, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Wow! Very interesting. Earlier today I read the WV account of the "fusion" and how it was an historical step forward for the SL  Also, in my argument with Jim Creegan, he cited this as an example of the success of the regroupment strategy.  And then there's the reality. And it's also interesting because the BT narrative has this period, early to mid 70s as the "healthy" period of the Spartacist League, when it was super-revolutionary, and had a well-functioning regime. I have never accepted this narrative because it makes no sense. A fundamentally healthy organisation could not have deteriorated into what I saw in 1980 in a few years (also I had read bits and pieces which indicated the early 70s SL was as you describe).
> 
> I knew Helene Brosius, I'm not sure if she was in the SWP but she was a Spart from very early on. She was generally quite pleasant company, but an absolute, unquestioning loyalist. Doug of course I also knew. In Britain in the late 70s/early 80s he and Judith were the human face of Spartacism. He seemed like a fish out of water, like he didn't really belong, he was just too reasonable. Helene once joked that Doug was really good at talking to members of opponent groups,  he could always figure out what they were thinking ... because he was thinking the same thing. But oddly Doug was a part of the Logan regime in the UK, as was Judith, and Logan really was the worst of the worst. I joined a year or two after the Logan trial (which was a stitch up because Robertson was fully aware of Logan's abuses) but I met Logan a couple of times - he really gave me the creeps, just way too cool and self-controlled.I


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## RebelSpart (Oct 19, 2021)

Please keep in mind that my comments reflect only my (necessarily) subjective perspective as a 21-year-old kid who already had misgivings about the SL before even joining. As a CWC member, I was one of two people (the other being George R. who disappeared before we joined the SL) pushing a trotskyist line in a collective based on stalinist/maoist thinking. But the move to the SL was too quick for me and when I and CWC comrade, Lynn M., saw the Sparts at a SF antiwar rally with their ridiculous "All Indochine must go communist!" banner, we said to ourselves they looked pathetic. I planned on asking my CWC comrades to slow down the fusion process, but a security issue arose with one of our members, James, who turned out to be spying on us for the Mike Klonsky-led group with whom we had been close but who remained maoists. The incidence cancelled my plans for bringing up a matter that was sure to go over like a lead balloon among my comrades, anyway.
But here is the thing, Carl. _All the other comrades integrated very well into the S_L, so the fusion was indeed a smashing success from the SL's standpoint. George 'Crawford' became a leading member as did (in time) Irene G. (Victor G.'s little sister who converted to leninism at 13). The reason I was selected to make the first contact with the Buffalo Marxist Collective was my experience within the CWC winning people over to trotskyism. Robertson viewed me as a young Doug Hainline, which I didn't realize was a huge compliment at the time, given his fall from grace. The entire BWC fused with the SL several months later.
The end result was that the SL and the newly formed RCY grew four-fold in a matter of two or three years, although they never exceeded a couple hundred members. BTW, the SL's first black comrades came from the CWC. These were guys I met in the early days of the CWC. Again, I take no credit for their recruitment, which goes to the black individuals themselves. But it is just one more case of the CWC fueling the SL's growth in a good way.
I still wish I had never joined the SL or had left it within the first year, but, Carl, if I (and perhaps you) were there, it was for a reason. Maybe we had some issues to work out. We survived the experience and moved forward in our lives, which is a lot better than many people, in or out of politics.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 19, 2021)

Robertson's death was one of the events which made me review my experience in the Sparts (the other was a police report which indicated there was a cop infiltrator in the organisation at the time I was a member). There was very little reaction to Robertson's passing but those who did comment said something like "he was a lovable lunatic who did some crazy stuff but also made a contribution to Trotskyism." I wanted to set the record straight insofar as I could, and consequently got caught up in a lengthy exchange with a couple of Robertson apologists. I think Robertson lived off the people he abused and used politics to intimidate and shame his victims. There's little more to the story than that (although that is quite a lot!) A point I've made a few times is that Robertson collectivised the abuse, everybody got to participate in denouncing the victims, and so everybody was implicated. Those who defend Robertson are actually defending themselves, trying to find something noble in the shit.

But as you say, we (and many others no doubt), were there for a reason. My experience in the Sparts taught me a lot about myself (and people in general) - though a good therapist would have been cheaper.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 19, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Wow! Very interesting. Earlier today I read the WV account of the "fusion" and how it was an historical step forward for the SL  Also, in my argument with Jim Creegan, he cited this as an example of the success of the regroupment strategy.  And then there's the reality. And it's also interesting because the BT narrative has this period, early to mid 70s as the "healthy" period of the Spartacist League, when it was super-revolutionary, and had a well-functioning regime. I have never accepted this narrative because it makes no sense. A fundamentally healthy organisation could not have deteriorated into what I saw in 1980 in a few years (also I had read bits and pieces which indicated the early 70s SL was as you describe).
> 
> I knew Helene Brosius, I'm not sure if she was in the SWP but she was a Spart from very early on. She was generally quite pleasant company, but an absolute, unquestioning loyalist. Doug of course I also knew. In Britain in the late 70s/early 80s he and Judith were the human face of Spartacism. He seemed like a fish out of water, like he didn't really belong, he was just too reasonable. Helene once joked that Doug was really good at talking to members of opponent groups,  he could always figure out what they were thinking ... because he was thinking the same thing. But oddly Doug was a part of the Logan regime in the UK, as was Judith, and Logan really was the worst of the worst. I joined a year or two after the Logan trial (which was a stitch up because Robertson was fully aware of Logan's abuses) but I met Logan a couple of times - he really gave me the creeps, just way too cool and self-controlled.


Re-reading your posts, I see I skipped over many interesting things. Who was Logan? Was that his first or last name? I vaguely remember a guy from New Zealand (who I think was called Logan but am not sure). The New Zealander was also an expert in aikido. I didn't realize Judith was a part of any regime in the UK, but that makes sense since she is now well established there. Although involved in good economic development work, she doesn't seem to care that boyfriend Doug Hainline had become a neocon and virulent anti-communist. 
And yes, I see that many of my former comrades simply lost interest in world events. This is not the same thing as dropping out of politics. We can drop out of politics because we see no one presenting solutions that have any chance of success but still be concerned about the real environmental, ethnic and other problems around us. Then there are people like Treiger and Hainline who seem to view politics as a way of inflating their ego and possibly raking it some cash at the same time. 
Among my L.A. friends (mainly from high school and the CWC), I tried contacting Susan S. but, if the person I contacted is the same one I knew in the 70s, she seems to have fashioned an entirely knew persona. She never responded to two very polite, non-intrusive messages. My old buddy Larry says he hates zionists but refuses to talk politics with them and doesn't want anyone to know his opinions (i.e. Spartacist). Al Benson, who just died, remained an orthodox Spart until he passed away two weeks ago, except that he hated Muslims and Palestinians. Another comrade, Bruce M., whom I used to count among my friends at Hollywood High, never responded to my messages to him. Ditto for Phil. I've lost contact with Lynn (dear friend of Susan S.). I ran into Martin Perlich in Venice Beach around 1979, the radio announcer from Cleveland who, after quitting the SL relaunched what turned out to be a very successful career. He had lied to the SL leadership, claiming, after I resigned, that I was selling marijuana. He replied that he had to lie, which was legitimate because he was a revolutionary. You can still check him out on FB.
Anyway, I just can't imagine the remaining leadership making it in the real world. I like George Foster a lot. He has a Ph'd in physics, but he has surely forgot 95% of what he learned some 50 years ago. My ears still ring as I recall the voice of his wife, Judy, telling me that the SL was my only home because I couldn't make it anywhere else. I remember my former CWC comrade, George C., saying the same thing to wit I responded that their comments only increased my desire to leave what appeared more and more like a sect (the lessons of the utopian socialists coming to mind).


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## kebabking (Oct 19, 2021)

Something I've never really thought about before, but the Sparts, and a couple of the other similar type orgs have a recurring theme of people from the org in one country moving to another to take up leadership/administrative/activist/enforcer positions in the org in another country - how did they do that with such apparent ease?

I  remember my parents thinking about emigrating to the US in the mid-80's - my dad had been offered a well paid engineering job in California, but there was still a mountain of paperwork to be done, an approval process to be gone through. It was nothing like as simple as booking a flight, turning up at immigration and saying 'i'm here for the good life baby' before being happily waved through....


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## Idris2002 (Oct 19, 2021)

kebabking said:


> Something I've never really thought about before, but the Sparts, and a couple of the other similar type orgs have a recurring theme of people from the org in one country moving to another to take up leadership/administrative/activist/enforcer positions in the org in another country - how did they do that with such apparent ease?
> 
> I  remember my parents thinking about emigrating to the US in the mid-80's - my dad had been offered a well paid engineering job in California, but there was still a mountain of paperwork to be done, an approval process to be gone through. It was nothing like as simple as booking a flight, turning up at immigration and saying 'i'm here for the good life baby' before being happily waved through....


If they were American, they might have got in via the "grandmother" rule - but mind you, my nieces, who are Irish like their mum, but were born outside Ireland, also like their mum, had a major faff getting Irish passports.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 19, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> Who was Logan? Was that his first or last name? I vaguely remember a guy from New Zealand (who I think was called Logan but am not sure). The New Zealander was also an expert in aikido. I didn't realize Judith was a part of any regime in the UK, but that makes sense since she is now well established there. Although involved in good economic development work, she doesn't seem to care that boyfriend Doug Hainline had become a neocon and virulent anti-communist.



Bill Logan was expelled from the Sparts in 1979 for using his leadership position to indulge his sociopathic personality (my characterisation). Most egregiously, in the early 1970s in Australia, he tried (together with his companion Adaire Hannah) to force a woman member, Vicky, to have an abortion, telling her not to take medication that had been prescribed to prevent a miscarriage. When Vicky went ahead and had her baby, they tried to force her to give up the newborn child, rendering her suicidal.  She was hospitalised following the suicide attempt. The Vicky story was part of a pattern of gross interference in the personal lives of the membership.

The basic facts of the Vicky story are not, as far as I know, disputed by anyone, not even Logan apologists like Tom Riley's Bolshevik Tendency. The only argument concerns how much the US leadership knew of Logan's atrocities while they were taking place. There is good reason to believe Robertson and his cronies knew all about what was happening in Australia and used the events to get rid of Logan when he was perceived to be a threat to their leadership.

At the time of his trial and expulsion Logan was the leader of the Spartacist League of Britain, and Doug and Judith were two of his lieutenants. I wasn't a member at the time so I can't tell you about the internal life under the Logan regime. But Logan's downfall led to Doug and Judith's demotion and eventual exit from the organisation. They did though maintain their personal friendship with Logan, and as I recall put his behaviour in Australia down to "inexperience".


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## DaveCinzano (Oct 19, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> I ran into Martin Perlich in Venice Beach around 1979, the radio announcer from Cleveland who, after quitting the SL relaunched what turned out to be a very successful career. He had lied to the SL leadership, claiming, after I resigned, that I was selling marijuana.


Max Perlich's dad?!


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## petee (Oct 19, 2021)

Idris2002 said:


> If they were American, they might have got in via the "grandmother" rule - but mind you, my nieces, who are Irish like their mum, but were born outside Ireland, also like their mum, had a major faff getting Irish passports.



the story here was that they'd just hand you one, and i do know yanks who got it that way (after showing documentation i mean, like my parents' birth certificates). but when i went to the consulate i was swept aside, though i meet all the qualifications. i never tried again (i figured i didn't need it except to get into a few countries barred to yanks but i have no desire to visit anyway).


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## RebelSpart (Oct 19, 2021)

Sorry, but I don't know.


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## kenny g (Oct 19, 2021)

DaveCinzano said:


> Max Perlich's dad?!
> 
> View attachment 293359


Indeed he is: Martin Perlich - Wikipedia  (at the end of the overly long wiki page)


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## Dom Traynor (Oct 19, 2021)

Hey I live in NZ and have mutual friends with an old far left type called Bill Logan, I wonder if it's the same one? He looks to be in his late sixties.

Edited to add: oh wait it's definitely him his FB profile links to bolshevik.org

Looks like he became a drug counsellor and wedding celebrant. He's spending his online time campaigning against trans stuff by the looks of it.


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## nogojones (Oct 19, 2021)

DaveCinzano said:


> Max Perlich's dad?!
> 
> View attachment 293359


Quite possibly

Cleveland, Old man a radio presenter.


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## nogojones (Oct 19, 2021)

kenny g said:


> Indeed he is: Martin Perlich - Wikipedia  (at the end of the overly long wiki page)


But that says nothing about his service to the world revolution!


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## Carl Steele (Oct 19, 2021)

Dom Traynor said:


> Hey I live in NZ and have mutual friends with an old far left type called Bill Logan, I wonder if it's the same one? He looks to be in his late sixties.
> 
> Edited to add: oh wait it's definitely him his FB profile links to bolshevik.org
> 
> Looks like he became a drug counsellor and wedding celebrant. He's spending his online time campaigning against trans stuff by the looks of it.



Sounds like the man. You can find him on twitter with a real photo. I'm sure he's really plausible. Have a great day.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 20, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Sounds like the man. You can find him on twitter with a real photo. I'm sure he's really plausible. Have a great day.


I just found his FB page, too. He looks very, very different from the handsome and soft-spoken young man I met in the early 1970s.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 20, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> I just found his FB page, too. He looks very, very different from the handsome and soft-spoken young man I met in the early 1970s.



The saddest thing is he's still playing the Bolshevik Bill game, acting out his fantasies in an empty auditorium.


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## kenny g (Oct 20, 2021)

How many active SLers are left in the UK do we reckon?


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## Dom Traynor (Oct 20, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> The saddest thing is he's still playing the Bolshevik Bill game, acting out his fantasies in an empty auditorium.


Actually (and not defending him because he seems annoying at the least) it's not quite empty because the far left is a relatively small pond here and even a small fish can interact with a lot of people. However the main reason he has any traction will be his old union mates from 30+ years ago most of whom are retired now, plus his drug reform and counseling work. 

So less an empty auditorium and more a small function room in a community hall with a smattering of retired folks.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 20, 2021)

Dom Traynor said:


> So less an empty auditorium and more a small function room in a community hall with a smattering of retired folks.



Yes, that's probably a better image.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 20, 2021)

Dom Traynor said:


> and not defending him because he seems annoying at the least



As far as I am aware he's never expressed regret for what he did. He's made some excuses, and there is documentation of abusive behaviour in his Permanent Revolution Group in the 90s and 2000s. Best give him a very wide berth.


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## JeffTipps4 (Oct 22, 2021)

Interesting discussion overall. Going back to the SL / ICL,  what is actually going on? I thought that with their repudiation of their previous position on lockdown earlier this year it would restart them, but apparently not.

Having attended many demos in Britain in the last 20 years they were a regular fixture, and had about 15 people on some of them but they noticeably shrank in the last few years.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 23, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> I think the perspective on when the revolution was coming shifted. I'm fairly sure there was a period in the 1970s when the Sparts thought the collapse of US capitalism was imminent and greatness would be thrust upon them. In the 1980s they talked incessantly about the imminence of WWIII. And they did see themselves as the direct (and only) descendants of Lenin. So sometimes they lamented not having much time to build the revolutionary party and at other times they postured as merely the latest link in the chain of revolutionary continuity.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I am curious about your opinions and knowledge of Judith. I assumed that she had left the SL in the early 1980s but your comments lead me to think she was still there when you left in 1986. Is that right? My understanding is also that her and Doug's situation within the org worsened considerably after they (she) concluded that we would not see a socialist revolution in our lifetime.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 23, 2021)

Judith left in 1981 - you can read her resignation letter here (page 6). Her and Doug's situation worsened when Logan was purged because they had been part of his leadership in Britain. When I joined in early 1981 Doug was a marginal member, floating around in the ranks, Judith was on the Spartacist Britain editorial board and a CC member (alt) but obviously an outsider. I maintained contact with them, and met up with them a few times after I left. Judith had a spell in the Labour Party and worked for a while in the Soviet Union, she was involved in Gorbachev's perestroika reforms. You may be interested in reading a transcript of her remarks to the Platypus Society in 2018.

Edit: also you may be interested to see Judith speaking in 2013 in an intelligence squared debate: Karl Marx was right Judith's first contribution is at the 47 minute mark.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 23, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Judith left in 1981 - you can read her resignation letter here (page 6). Her and Doug's situation worsened when Logan was purged because they had been part of his leadership in Britain. When I joined in early 1981 Doug was a marginal member, floating around in the ranks, Judith was on the Spartacist Britain editorial board and a CC member (alt) but obviously an outsider. I maintained contact with them, and met up with them a few times after I left. Judith had a spell in the Labour Party and worked for a while in the Soviet Union, she was involved in Gorbachev's perestroika reforms. You may be interested in reading a transcript of her remarks to the Platypus Society in 2018.
> 
> Edit: also you may be interested to see Judith speaking in 2013 in an intelligence squared debate: Karl Marx was right Judith's first contribution is at the 47 minute mark.


Thank you, Carl, for the links, which I find very instructive. Judith's abridged resignation letter sums up my thoughts exactly when I resiged in 1975, except I refused to give them another penny. I had not renounced socialism, much less advocated for capitalism; I just did not see any way forward and that is what I believe today. As Judith said in the Platypus Society forum, if the battle is between barbarism and socialism, I fear that barbarism is likely to win. I also liked her comments on her way back to Moscow where a friend lamented that, if socialism were only "15% less efficient than capitalism", she would support socialism. Unfortunately, the experience with the self-proclaimed socialist states suggests that socialism is hardly efficient, much less democratic or representative.
Às for Robertson's alcoholism, it doesn't matter. During the American Civil War, Mr. Lincoln, recalling General Ulyssus S. Grant's successes, said that if he could find out what brand of whiskey Grant drank, *he would send a barrel of it* to all the other commanders.”
Robertson's problem was that he was more of a faction fighter than a party builder. When I was in the SL, at least, he lived a modest life in a small NYC flat. As Judith pointed out, she saw no way forward, which means she saw no way forward with any of the other groups or individuals fighting for socialism, which may be why they have all collapsed!


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## Carl Steele (Oct 23, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> Robertson's problem was that he was more of a faction fighter than a party builder.


Judith makes a similar observation:  "What destroyed the Spartacist League were the purges and the splits and so on."

To be perfectly honest, I think this completely misses the point. The project of the Spartacist League wasn't what it claimed to be, The purges and the splits were a consequence of what it actually was - an attempt to build a purist sect around a mediocre personality.

Judith also says: "The worst part of giving up a belief in the imminence of revolution was losing the sense that you had a reason to get up in the morning." Well, not for me. When I finally broke all connection to a belief in Robertson's fictional revolution, I felt liberated.


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## Dom Traynor (Oct 23, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> As far as I am aware he's never expressed regret for what he did. He's made some excuses, and there is documentation of abusive behaviour in his Permanent Revolution Group in the 90s and 2000s. Best give him a very wide berth.


Thanks. I have no intention of going anywhere near him.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 24, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Judith makes a similar observation:  "What destroyed the Spartacist League were the purges and the splits and so on."
> 
> To be perfectly honest, I think this completely misses the point. The project of the Spartacist League wasn't what it claimed to be, The purges and the splits were a consequence of what it actually was - an attempt to build a purist sect around a mediocre personality.
> 
> Judith also says: "The worst part of giving up a belief in the imminence of revolution was losing the sense that you had a reason to get up in the morning." Well, not for me. When I finally broke all connection to a belief in Robertson's fictional revolution, I felt liberated.


OK, Carl, I got it, the SL was a purist sect, which is true. The clique around Robertson condemned people for relying on personal attacks to advance their agenda but they did the same thing with me and seem to have done with Doug. I see no problem whatsoever talking with someone who is considering voting for a far right party. WTF! France is chockful of former CP voters and militants who now vote National Front, Eric Zemmour or even radical Islam (as one major CC member did). The whole problem with a hysterical middle class left posing as defender of the working class and minorities is that their language give a huge opening to the extreme right!
Whatever, all that is beside the point (for me). Just two questions: (1) What did you do after you quit the SL in the UK?, and; what concrete things did Logan and Judith Shapiro that violated revolutionary principles during your time as member?


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## Carl Steele (Oct 24, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> (1) What did you do after you quit the SL in the UK?, and; what concrete things did Logan and Judith Shapiro that violated revolutionary principles during your time as member?



After I quit the SL, I hung around the SL for a while (with more or less enthusiasm), completely broke from them in 1990 following the suicide of Noah Wolkenstein. My membership did not overlap with Logan, he was gone a year or two before I joined. I don't know what you mean by "revolutionary principles" (the SL is not, was not, and never has been a "revolutionary" organisation). During the few months in which my membership overlapped with Judith's I don't recall her doing anything I found objectionable.


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## RebelSpart (Oct 24, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> After I quit the SL, I hung around the SL for a while (with more or less enthusiasm), completely broke from them in 1990 following the suicide of Noah Wolkenstein. My membership did not overlap with Logan, he was gone a year or two before I joined. I don't know what you mean by "revolutionary principles" (the SL is not, was not, and never has been a "revolutionary" organisation). During the few months in which my membership overlapped with Judith's I don't recall her doing anything I found objectionable.


So you had no firsthand knowledge of Logan's missdeeds, yet you speak of Logan's "regime" and behaviour that the SL leadership knew about all along. I am just trying to understand what truly happened under his leadership. And if Judith supported the Logan "regime" and its misdeed, how can you then say she did nothing "objectionable"?
Again, please don't take my questions as a rebuke. I really want to understand what happened to the SL and its leadership in the 1980s and 1990s and I have yet to see anything concrete expressed on these threads.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 24, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> So you had no firsthand knowledge of Logan's missdeeds, yet you speak of Logan's "regime" and behaviour that the SL leadership knew about all along. I am just trying to understand what truly happened under his leadership. And if Judith supported the Logan "regime" and its misdeed, how can you then say she did nothing "objectionable"?
> Again, please don't take my questions as a rebuke. I really want to understand what happened to the SL and its leadership in the 1980s and 1990s and I have yet to see anything concrete expressed on these threads.



This is getting quite frustrating. I explained earlier how Logan was thrown out of the Sparts for what he did while leader of the Spartacist League of Australia and New Zealand, prior to going to Britain. I gave a brief summary of the worst of his crimes - the attempt to stop Vicky having and keeping her baby in 1972/3. This is well documented if you take the trouble to look, which is why I focused on it. There is also documentation of Logan's abusive behaviour in his very own Permanent Revolution Group in the 1990s and 2000s, again not difficult to find. Judith was a member of Logan's regime in Britain, and she remained Logan's friend after he was purged. I observed that she was prepared to put Logan's behaviour in Australia down to "inexperience" - she said this in conversation on at least one occasion - which I find deeply troubling. If that's not "concrete" enough for you I don't know what I can do.

If you want to understand the SL in the 1980s and 1990s you should do a little investigation of your own, or at least take the trouble to read this thread with care.

Edit: the post I am referring to is on this page


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## RebelSpart (Oct 24, 2021)

Yes, Logan was accused and convicted by the SL leadership of abusing a woman into getting an abortion, but since when is an accusation by the SL leadership considered to be synonymous with truth? Hell, I was falsely accused od drug dealing. It's as if Robertson was trying to imitate the methods of Stalin's show trials.
I knew Shapiro with whom I continue to talk (occasionally). Maybe she excused Logan's behavior too easily but the difference between you and her is that she actually knew him for many, many years. I understand your "frustration" but you are not backing up very allegations against both Logan and Shapiro. I trust firsthand knowledge over hearsay any day.
I have no dog in this fight, because I gave up on socialism nearly a half century ago, but the opinions issued on the anti-SL, ostensibly trotskyist blogosphere are often tinted by hysteria and lots and lots of personal attacks.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 24, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> Yes, Logan was accused and convicted by the SL leadership of abusing a woman into getting an abortion, but since when is an accusation by the SL leadership considered to be synonymous with truth? Hell, I was falsely accused od drug dealing. It's as if Robertson was trying to imitate the methods of Stalin's show trials.
> I knew Shapiro with whom I continue to talk (occasionally). Maybe she excused Logan's behavior too easily but the difference between you and her is that she actually knew him for many, many years. I understand your "frustration" but you are not backing up very allegations against both Logan and Shapiro. I trust firsthand knowledge over hearsay any day.
> I have no dog in this fight, because I gave up on socialism nearly a half century ago, but the opinions issued on the anti-SL, ostensibly trotskyist blogosphere are often tinted by hysteria and lots and lots of personal attacks.



Even Tom Riley's Bolshevik Tendency (of which Logan was a member for nearly 30 years) accept that Vicky was put under pressure not to take medication which could prevent a miscarriage. Had you done any serious investigating yourself, with your eyes open, you would know this.

I was trying to help you out, but whatever, I'm done with this. Have a nice day!


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## RebelSpart (Oct 24, 2021)

I don't deny that Vicky was put under pressure and that Logan was out of line, but I think we need to put these stories in perspective, which is lacking in your statements. Remember, I am only interested in understanding the SL's functioning and the situation of its members and leaders a good 10+ years after I left it. You seem very, very bitter about your SL experience, which I now understand better, given that you spent not just five but 10 years (+/-) in or around the UK SL at a time when the SL was in deep decline.
I don't care about the Bolshevik Tendency or any of the other Spart offshoots, either.
It took me years to overcome my four years in the SL. I broke hard and clean but it hurt big time. But I returned to university, went to France, came back to the States, began a (very unsatisfying) career and then returned to France where I eventually found decent work, love and a home in the country. So I am not bitter. I wonder what have you done with your life since leaving the SL.
My sole and unique aim here is to understand what happened to the SLers after I left it. I don't care about Logan's activities after the SL. I am more interested in your claim that he ran a horrendous "regime" in the UK and that the _SL knew about it all along_. I do know that the SL leadership took the UK SL very seriously. How can you know such a thing, if you were not there during Logan's time in the org? Sorry, Carl, but so far, I see more bitterness and frustration and very little light coming from you.
Have a nice day, too!
Edit: After reading my post, I think I am bit guilty of vitriol, too. Carl, I appreciate very much the information you have passed on to me/us. I have read everything, especially concerning Judith. All of it is very interesting, including her remarks at the Karl Marx was Right debate. There we see the Judith Shapiro I knew as the political chair of the Los Angeles local, but 20 years older. So have a nice day, and I mean it!


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## kenny g (Oct 24, 2021)

Nice to know you have both got over it in any case.


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## planetgeli (Oct 24, 2021)

Ex-SL members parody SL shocker.


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## butchersapron (Oct 25, 2021)

You wasted your life lads. Don't waste the retirement.


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## Carl Steele (Oct 28, 2021)

butchersapron said:


> You wasted your life lads. Don't waste the retirement.



Says he who has been on Urban for 20 years


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## imposs1904 (Oct 31, 2021)

If this is the halloween treat, I want eggs thrown at my window. 

I had to stop reading after about 5 minutes:

a transcript of a discussion at a national conference of the Spartacist League / Britain in 1985.


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## petee (Oct 31, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> If this is the halloween treat, I want eggs thrown at my window.
> 
> I had to stop reading after about 5 minutes:
> 
> a transcript of a discussion at a national conference of the Spartacist League / Britain in 1985.



excellent pumpkin tho'.


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## imposs1904 (Oct 31, 2021)

petee said:


> excellent pumpkin tho'.



I prefer this classic:


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## hitmouse (Oct 31, 2021)

One of the interesting things where we struggled for a long time was why did the long bow go out of use in favour of the musket at a time when there was far more range and far more accuracy…why did all the armies of Europe, two hundred years before a good military rifle in WW1 would be superior to a long bow. The answer is very simple [actually not], anybody can be …you have to start when you’re about 8 years old and practice every single week of your life to be proficient with a longbow. A country that would today teach its children the longbow would find that it still presents a very deadly force…But the masses – in fact, one of the great things that the Black Douglas of Scotland was known for was his humanitarianism. Usually when the English and Welsh longbowmen were caught by enemies, they were executed because they were so valuable. But the Black Douglas simply cut off the right hand and put out the right eye…thus he fulfilled his great humanitarian role. Who knows what happened after that?

You ever watch a whale on the surface – it dives, it comes up in spurts and then goes under again. We cannot ignore the Labour Party. It’s the political repository of what passes for working-class consciousness.


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## imposs1904 (Oct 31, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> One of the interesting things where we struggled for a long time was why did the long bow go out of use in favour of the musket at a time when there was far more range and far more accuracy…why did all the armies of Europe, two hundred years before a good military rifle in WW1 would be superior to a long bow. The answer is very simple [actually not], anybody can be …you have to start when you’re about 8 years old and practice every single week of your life to be proficient with a longbow. A country that would today teach its children the longbow would find that it still presents a very deadly force…But the masses – in fact, one of the great things that the Black Douglas of Scotland was known for was his humanitarianism. Usually when the English and Welsh longbowmen were caught by enemies, they were executed because they were so valuable. But the Black Douglas simply cut off the right hand and put out the right eye…thus he fulfilled his great humanitarian role. Who knows what happened after that?
> 
> You ever watch a whale on the surface – it dives, it comes up in spurts and then goes under again. We cannot ignore the Labour Party. It’s the political repository of what passes for working-class consciousness.



One of the more lucid passages.


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## hitmouse (Oct 31, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> One of the more lucid passages.


They've just uploaded some footage of his speech:


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## Dom Traynor (Nov 1, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> If this is the halloween treat, I want eggs thrown at my window.
> 
> I had to stop reading after about 5 minutes:
> 
> a transcript of a discussion at a national conference of the Spartacist League / Britain in 1985.


I read the whole thing. It's amazing.


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## imposs1904 (Nov 1, 2021)

Dom Traynor said:


> I read the whole thing. It's amazing.



I went back to it. You know it's a genuine transcript, 'cos no one could make up that stream-of-cult-leader-consciousness.


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## Dom Traynor (Nov 1, 2021)

It would be interesting to know what the conference attendees were saying to each other after that. Like I was at an SWP rally where delegates made fun of once of the CC members afterwards. Would Sparts have done the same?


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## Carl Steele (Nov 1, 2021)

Dom Traynor said:


> It would be interesting to know what the conference attendees were saying to each other after that. Like I was at an SWP rally where delegates made fun of once of the CC members afterwards. Would Sparts have done the same?



Nobody made fun of Robertson, not even in private. I was at that meeting. At the time I was particularly confused by Robertson's claim that he could have overthrown the Sri Lankan government. And reading it now I'm still confused. The Sparts had 5 or 6 people in Sri Lanka at the time.

It's typical Robertson, rambling and incoherent for sure, but effective as a series of narratives which mythologise and dramatize mundane events. It's an affected and deliberate style, intended to suggest there's deeper meaning there if you could only grasp it.


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## JeffTipps4 (Nov 1, 2021)

I always remember the leaflets from the IBT about Robertson and the Kurds are Turds scandal but thought they were perhaps over egging the polemical pudding. This is far far worse imo and would definitely indicate a very unhealthy regime.

I don't see how these comments can be defensible. Not even pub talk but a lead off at a conference!


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## MagicMikey (Nov 2, 2021)

There’s been a lot of negative things written here on the Sparts so I’d like to offer a few of my own recollections.

I joined the SL/B and another European section in the nineties and was a member for several years (5 or 6?). I had a largely positive experience and I think I got a lot from my involvement. I got the self-confidence to get up and speak in front of a crowd – albeit mainly hostile crowds where I was denouncing their leadership and program (!) I got to be influenced by the several female leaders who challenged my somewhat sexist attitudes – and some other regressive attitudes too. And I got a classical Marxist education – something which has served me well since – and which would have been virtually impossible for someone of my background otherwise.

While I was denounced more than once internally for different things I wouldn’t characterise any of it as abusive. Nor did I see abuse of any type taking place, including sexual coercion. There was some unusual sexual activity and relationships, but nothing outside the bounds of the types of open/polyamorous relationships now common among millennials/Gen Z in the UK today.

I was never in much of a leadership position so I wasn’t privy to CC meetings and the like. But women in the SL/B during my time there were largely well respected and important part of the leadership – and that was quite unusual on the British left then, which was mostly led by white middle class men. (Incidentally, this still seems to be largely the case).

Regarding the denunciations - yes they were a regular part of internal life, but I never felt they were personal, they were about things people had said or done. They were supposed to sharpen political perspectives for all sides. Someone might be denounced for writing political formulations that were too soft or too sectarian on the Labour Party for example (usually the former of course!).

They did put enormous pressure upon you, but, it also forced you to fight your corner and arguably helped clarify the issues for both sides. This type of hard debating style is not unique to the Spartacists by the way - I have seen this taught to evolutionary biology students by some American professors for example. 

Moreover when I look at twitter today I see massive arguments and denunciations made with an ad hominem nastiness that far exceeds anything I witnessed in the Spartacists.

Now I’m not denying other people’s experiences, but seeing as it looks like the organisation has virtually disbanded and this forum might be one of the last places where anything is said about them, I thought I’d just add my own to the mix.


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## Carl Steele (Nov 2, 2021)

MagicMikey said:


> I joined the SL/B and another European section in the nineties and was a member for several years (5 or 6?).



Just wondering, why did you leave the Spartacist League?


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## MagicMikey (Nov 2, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Just wondering, why did you leave the Spartacist League?


By the late 90's even the Spartacists admitted there wasn't likely to be a revolution anytime soon, and I wanted to do other things with my life. Lack of progress and a need to focus on other things is why most people leave the active left in my experience.


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## Carl Steele (Nov 2, 2021)

MagicMikey said:


> Regarding the denunciations - yes they were a regular part of internal life, but I never felt they were personal, they were about things people had said or done. They were supposed to sharpen political perspectives for all sides. Someone might be denounced for writing political formulations that were too soft or too sectarian on the Labour Party for example (usually the former of course!).
> 
> They did put enormous pressure upon you, but, it also forced you to fight your corner and arguably helped clarify the issues for both sides. This type of hard debating style is not unique to the Spartacists by the way - I have seen this taught to evolutionary biology students by some American professors for example.



It's not very useful to discuss in the abstract, but I'll just observe your choice of words. Debate and denunciation are not at all the same thing. Debate can be measured and respectful, denunciation is about shaming someone (for what they have said or done). Maybe you think denunciation is a legitimate part of political discussion, I don't know. And I doubt evolutionary biology students are encouraged to denounce each other.



MagicMikey said:


> While I was denounced more than once internally for different things I wouldn’t characterise any of it as abusive. Nor did I see abuse of any type taking place, including sexual coercion. There was some unusual sexual activity and relationships, but nothing outside the bounds of the types of open/polyamorous relationships now common among millennials/Gen Z in the UK today.



Robertson routinely used his authority to elicit sexual favours from women who wouldn't have given him a second look outside the context of the Spartacist League. And beneath the veneer of "sexually liberated" behaviour there was a lot of emotional damage being done, mostly to the women. I also recall how David Strachan, who you probably know, casually referred to a couple of women he didn't like as "the gang of two bitches" and another young woman who had displeased him as a "dizzy c*nt". But never mind, there were women in the leadership.

Of course there are people who positively liked being a Spart, but this doesn't change what was actually going on. I don't know what you wrote in your resignation letter (or if you wrote one at all) but many leave the Sparts with an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame - I wonder why this is.


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## MagicMikey (Nov 2, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> It's not very useful to discuss in the abstract, but I'll just observe your choice of words. Debate and denunciation are not at all the same thing. Debate can be measured and respectful, denunciation is about shaming someone (for what they have said or done). Maybe you think denunciation is a legitimate part of political discussion, I don't know. And I doubt evolutionary biology students are encouraged to denounce each other.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Denunciation is used widely in society – especially in politics e.g. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro denounced for joining pro-dictatorship rally

Ideas are also regularly denounced in science e.g. https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/27/hear-scientists-different-views-covid-19-dont-attack-them/

Regarding sexist language, using words like “bitches” and “c*nt” would be a serious offence when I was a member in the 90’s and I never heard anyone use them. Even words like “twat” were specifically proscribed. Perhaps things were different in the 80’s but the sparts were very modern in their language by the early 90’s – and also in their attitudes towards sexism. However given the existence of the women and revolution journal and the multiple senior female leaders who I never saw take shit from anyone, I suspect even in the 70’s and 80’s the Sparts weren’t quite the bullying misogynist sex cult you portray.

I’m sorry you are so bitter and angry about your time there. I don’t think anyone left on good terms. I certainly didn’t – you were either with them or against them it seemed and thus they didn’t have much of a periphery.

Guilt and shame are emotions I’m very familiar with – I certainly felt them when I left the sparts, and also to some extent as a member. But the sparts didn’t invent these emotions or pioneer their use. Parents use them all the time and they are essential ingredients to social development and political socialisation. I can’t think of an organisation that doesn’t use them to some extent, whether an employer, community organisation, charity, political party. And of course – famously – religion of all types.

Abuse is something I’m also familiar with, having suffered psychological and physical abuse as a child – something most people of my background also experienced to some extent. Abuse is something I never experienced or witnessed in the sparts during my time though. Perhaps there was abuse – perhaps it was even endemic as you imply. In which case there’d have to be evidence, right? Surely you’d have evidence before you levy such serious allegations?

Have I missed the evidence in this forum? If so I’d be much obliged if you repost the links.


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## Carl Steele (Nov 3, 2021)

Posted too soon!


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## Carl Steele (Nov 3, 2021)

MagicMikey said:


> Denunciation is used widely in society – especially in politics



I didn't say denunciation wasn't used in society, I said its purpose was to shame people, which is different than debate.



MagicMikey said:


> Regarding sexist language, using words like “bitches” and “c*nt” would be a serious offence when I was a member in the 90’s



Glad to hear they cleaned that up. The language though was only a symptom.



MagicMikey said:


> given the existence of the women and revolution journal and the multiple senior female leaders who I never saw take shit from anyone, I suspect even in the 70’s and 80’s the Sparts weren’t quite the bullying misogynist sex cult you portray.



During a break in conference, I along with many others, watched Robertson grope a female IEC member while shouting lewd comments. Nobody objected. I wonder why not.



MagicMikey said:


> Abuse is something I’m also familiar with, having suffered psychological and physical abuse as a child



I'm sorry to hear that, there were a lot of damaged people in the Sparts.



MagicMikey said:


> Guilt and shame are emotions I’m very familiar with – I certainly felt them when I left the sparts



If you want evidence of abuse in the Sparts there it is. The constant denunciation you describe in your first post, which produces often intense guilt and shame, is a form of psychological and emotional abuse. These feelings shouldn't be a normal part of life.


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## MagicMikey (Nov 3, 2021)

Guilt and shame are used for control by oppressive institutions and regimes. Christian churches use them to enforce repressive sexual practices. Governments use them shift blame from themselves or capitalism to the general population. Various cults have used them to terrorise memberships and perpetuate cycles of abuse.

But these emotions are also a normal part of life. When a child takes a toy from another child behind their back, when you forget your partners anniversary or your mother’s birthday, when you dump some trash instead of recycling, when you watch an advert about starving children in Syria. Perhaps they shouldn't be part of life, but they are and there are good reasons for thinking they are evolutionarily evolved mechanisms to assist pro-social behaviour, co-operation and to enforce social norms. e.g. The Motivational Foundations of Prosocial Behavior From A Developmental Perspective–Evolutionary Roots and Key Psychological Mechanisms: Introduction to the Special Section

So the existence of the emotions of guilt and shame in ex members is not evidence of abuse per se.

It also depends upon your definition of abuse. On one end of the spectrum, the rape and sexual coercion of children over decades by members of the Catholic Church was clearly the most terrible abuse. On the other end, psychologists wrongly characterised so-called refrigerator mothers as abusive and responsible for autism in their children. “Misgendering” is now considered abuse by many activists today, with some activists claiming their feelings of being “intellectually threatened” by some lecturers are also a form of abuse.

Bullying is a bit easier to define: “seek to harm, intimidate, or coerce (someone perceived as vulnerable).” I never saw anyone in the sparts seeking to harm or intimidate another member. Indeed the beginnings of such activity were shut down by the leadership pretty quickly. This sometimes led to feelings of guilt and shame and resignations including in a leader I was close to. Coercion is a bit more tricky, there was enormous pressure put on you to change you mind if you had a minority position, but this was done with arguments and the social pressure of being in a minority which anyone feels in any situation/organisation. There were no threats to expel or discipline people for having minority views for example.

There was of course coercion to follow the party line publicly – the threat being expulsion from the party. But this is called Leninism and its pretty widespread, even in bourgeois political formations.

But there were no physical threats, financial threats, sexual threats, never mind any physical violence, theft, or sexual assault that I witnessed or was aware of throughout the 90’s

You claim to have witnessed a very public sexual assault and you claim to have knowledge that sexual coercion was rife. Maybe you are correct, but do you have any evidence other than your witnessing of this one incident? Testimony by a former alleged victim for example? Or at least supporting testimony for your claim of the public assault?

Like I say I wasn’t there in the 80’s, but the your characterisation of the organisation is not one I recognise from the 90’s. So either the organisation radically transformed form the 80’s to the 90’s or one of us is wrong.


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## Carl Steele (Nov 3, 2021)

MagicMikey said:


> Guilt and shame are used for control by oppressive institutions and regimes. Christian churches use them to enforce repressive sexual practices. Governments use them shift blame from themselves or capitalism to the general population. Various cults have used them to terrorise memberships and perpetuate cycles of abuse.



Well, this is kind of my point. The rest of your thesis is irrelevant. Of course we will sometimes feel guilt or shame over something we do, while we learn or fail to learn a lesson. But someone who uses guilt and shame to manipulate and control others is an abusive individual.

The most public case of someone being driven to a nervous breakdown by this kind of behaviour in the Spartacist League is that of Ian Donovan. He's written about it himself and I knew him at the time. He tried to defend a sick woman who was being denounced by Len and Eibhlin and the ensuing torrent of abuse led to him suffering a breakdown and losing his job and home. You can contact him yourself if you're so interested in the truth. I'm sure you can find him with a Google search.

You are asking for testimony but providing none yourself. You make a series of legalistic assertions and academic arguments and ignore the impact constant shaming and guilt-tripping, at times hysterical, can have on someone over a period of several years, especially the angry but vulnerable types who for were drawn to the Sparts. Do you think it is an accident that you, with your background, ended up there? You admitted how difficult you found it to leave. I'm guessing guilt and shame probably kept you in the organisation for about 2 years after your expiry date.

I've made the point a couple of times on this thread that the abuse was collectivised. So the leadership didn't just yell at you and tell you what a traitorous, counterrevolutionary miscreant you were. They also did this to others, and when they did you got to join in, going to the front of the room to reiterate whatever the current great leader had said. And the problem is, if you accept this behaviour was abusive then you are an abuser. So you go to great lengths to rationalise what happened. Others, for example the Bolshevik Tendency, get around this by claiming the organisation became abusive only when it turned on them - previously everything was just fine, all we did was talk about politics.



MagicMikey said:


> You claim to have witnessed a very public sexual assault and you claim to have knowledge that sexual coercion was rife.



I did indeed witness "a very public sexual assault." Unfortunately I didn't have one of those old video cameras ready at the time, so I was unable to capture it on film. You can believe or dismiss what I say as you wish. Whatever makes you feel comfortable. Robertson's coterie of women and his practise of propositioning any female who crossed his path was hardly a secret in the organisation. But I've also encountered those who claim the way he used his authority to get the girls into his bedroom wasn't abusive. You can take a look at my exchange with Jim Creegan on the Fischerzed blog (link somewhere in this thread) for more on this.

Changing tack slightly, do you not think there was something deranged about denouncing people because of a supposedly poor formulation about the Labour Party? Just asking.


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## MagicMikey (Nov 3, 2021)

I have provided testimony above - those are my recollections and reflections on life in the SL/B as an ordinary member in the 1990's. I don't think it had an abusive or bullying internal culture. They are completely different from your recollections and intepretations from the 1980's.

That's fine - both views have been recorded now. Peace.


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## Carl Steele (Nov 3, 2021)

Peace, Land, and Bread  Not a big fan of bothsidesing   but never mind.


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## JeffTipps4 (Nov 3, 2021)

Although we have mainly been talking about Jim Robertson, what's the score with Joseph Seymour?

I'm not a Spartacist but have a number of their pamphlets several of which are transcribed from talks that he did and I found them very useful. Always seemed very lucid and relatively accessible. Is he still in the central leadership? 

I imagine that was a cracking meeting when he debated Ernest Mandel!


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## Carl Steele (Nov 7, 2021)

This is truly magnificent. A barely comprehensible, almost unreadable, typed-directly-onto-the-stencil leaflet produced by an ex-Spart, ex-WRP, ex-WSL threesome (a polygamous marriage made in heaven). I give you the Revolutionary Labour League.  You have to wonder how many pints of warm beer they drank while writing this. They can't even spell _Pabloism_ correctly.


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## The39thStep (Dec 2, 2021)




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## Kevin Oakleigh (Dec 3, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> ... The Sparts did not think that they were capable of leading a working class revolution at the time I was there (1971-1975) and probably not beyond my time, either. What they thought is that they needed to develop a party to lead the working class to power at some distant point in time, ...


I was present at a internal meeting in the 1970’s where Robertson exclaimed we had half the time the Bolsheviks had to build a revolutionary party before decisive revolutionary situations would arise. Seymour in that period toured the US with a lecture on the origins of world war 3. Certainly in the 1970’s we believed the objective situation was ripe to build a party through a propaganda perspective of splits and fusions with leftward moving tendencies in “ostensible revolutionary organizations” to resolve the “crisis of revolutionary leadership”. We would have a chance in our lifetime. Iran looked like Czarist Russian and Portugal was on the brink. As someone in the BT wrote Robertson wanted his rank and file super active and “frothing at the mouth” That was my experience too.


----------



## planetgeli (Dec 3, 2021)

If this thread goes on much longer we’ll have pretty much everyone who was ever in the Sparts contributing.

Is it coming up high on a google search or something?


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## imposs1904 (Dec 3, 2021)

planetgeli said:


> If this thread goes on much longer we’ll have pretty much everyone who was ever in the Sparts contributing.
> 
> Is it coming up high on a google search or something?



My guess is google alerts.


----------



## RebelSpart (Dec 6, 2021)

Interesting, Kevin. We were in the SL at precisely the same time period. Since it did not yet have international affiliates, you were in the US and we probably knew each other. I seem to remember a Keviin from Michigan (or thereabouts) who joined Ruth and me for an intervention in Harlan County, Kentucky in support of the striking coal mine workers. I wonder if that was you?


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## RebelSpart (Dec 6, 2021)

MagicMikey said:


> I have provided testimony above - those are my recollections and reflections on life in the SL/B as an ordinary member in the 1990's. I don't think it had an abusive or bullying internal culture. They are completely different from your recollections and intepretations from the 1980's.
> 
> That's fine - both views have been recorded now. Peace.


I, for one, appreciate your comment. I came to detest Robertson but the whining expressed on these threads does not impress me, either.


----------



## RebelSpart (Dec 6, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> I, for one, appreciate your comment. I came to detest Robertson but your comment is a refreshing break from the whining expressed on these threads.


----------



## RebelSpart (Dec 6, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> My guess is google alerts.


We may have every former Spart, but something tells me we'll still have you, too.


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## RebelSpart (Dec 6, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> I didn't say denunciation wasn't used in society, I said its purpose was to shame people, which is different than debate.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Carl, I just do not believe your recollection of events. Your claims of eternal victimhood have become tiring.


----------



## RebelSpart (Dec 6, 2021)

JeffTipps4 said:


> Although we have mainly been talking about Jim Robertson, what's the score with Joseph Seymour?
> 
> I'm not a Spartacist but have a number of their pamphlets several of which are transcribed from talks that he did and I found them very useful. Always seemed very lucid and relatively accessible. Is he still in the central leadership?
> 
> I imagine that was a cracking meeting when he debated Ernest Mandel!


Seymour was forced out many years ago by Robertson who claimed he was some sort of clone. I am sure Carl can give you some of the more sordid details. I was never impressed by the man. I remember when he raised the oh-so-pressing issue of whether or not we needed to wash both sides of a dish. I think he was reacting to some of the female comrades' complaints that men (that would include Seymour) did not do enough to keep house in their common households. He took at stab at modern economics, something Robertson bragged about in his meetings with the CWC, but he stopped writing about the subject shortly thereafter.
Indeed, no one on the left, aside from Ernest Mandel, attempted economic analyses, regardless of their political views, and that says a whole lot about why the left could not prevail. We all failed!


----------



## nogojones (Dec 6, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> I remember when he raised the oh-so-pressing issue of whether or not we needed to wash both sides of a dish. I think he was reacting to some of the female comrades' complaints that men (that would include Seymour) did not do enough to keep house in their common households.


So what was the official Spart line on how to do the dishes? I need to know.


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## Idris2002 (Dec 6, 2021)

nogojones said:


> So what was the official Spart line on how to do the dishes? I need to know.


What line is there ever on housework, when the sexes clash in battle royale?


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## RebelSpart (Dec 6, 2021)

Idris2002 said:


> What line is there ever on housework, when the sexes clash in battle royale?


I think people ignored him. Maybe it was his very New York Jewish sense of humor, which some of us took to the first degree, in which case, the joke's on me!


----------



## hitmouse (Dec 6, 2021)

Idris2002 said:


> What line is there ever on housework, when the sexes clash in battle royale?


----------



## nogojones (Dec 6, 2021)

hitmouse said:


>


I note only one side of that dish is being washed mind.


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## Idris2002 (Dec 6, 2021)

nogojones said:


> I note only one side of that dish is being washed mind.


Not much gets past our man jones.


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## nogojones (Dec 6, 2021)

Idris2002 said:


> Not much gets past our man jones.


It's my advanced dialectical thinking skillz.


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## Kevin Oakleigh (Dec 7, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> Interesting, Kevin. We were in the SL at precisely the same time period. Since it did not yet have international affiliates, you were in the US and we probably knew each other...


I was never a member nor visitor to the SLUS. The meeting I mentioned with Robertson took place in the Sydney offices of the SLANZ and probably when he and Liz G visited for a summer camp\ national gathering. Our membership was very young and Robertson’s pep talk was to pump us up. The SLANZ was likened to a youth group that was structured and functioned as a party demanding total dedication. Around that time it’s central committee and that of the SLUS functioned formally as an international leadership which became a problem for Robertson when Bill L and Adaire H were sent to head up the SLB and supposedly forgot they were on a mission. “(Dis)Honourable Schoolboy” and (counter-coup)“7 days in May” stuff was said to have taken place. Bill L, an upstart, was easily snuffed out and Adaire left shortly after.


----------



## Kevin Oakleigh (Dec 7, 2021)

RebelSpart said:


> Seymour was forced out many years ago by Robertson who claimed he was some sort of clone....


The clones were said to be young Seymour type intellectuals that were stopped and maybe a “re-education” was attempted or probably they just collapsed under the attack and left. The name Murry S that figured at the time could be the Canadian academic who has found space on the IBT web site.


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## Jeff Robinson (Dec 7, 2021)

The OG Spartacist League:






The Nu Skool Spartacist League:


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## DaveCinzano (Dec 7, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> My guess is google alerts.


First rule of ultraleft trainspotter club is don't mention Google Alerts


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## The39thStep (Dec 7, 2021)

nogojones said:


> So what was the official Spart line on how to do the dishes? I need to know.



When the Harrington Out Campaign occupied the main site. Many people got fed up with them very quickly but   I put it to the vote that the Sparts could stay providing they cleaned the toilets. Vote carried. 'Cleanliness is next to Trotskyism'.


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## nogojones (Dec 7, 2021)

The39thStep said:


> When the Harrington Out Campaign occupied the main site. Many people got fed up with them very quickly but   I put it to the vote that the Sparts could stay providing they cleaned the toilets. Vote carried. 'Cleanliness is next to Trotskyism'.


I hope they cleaned inside and outside of the bowl.


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## The39thStep (Dec 7, 2021)

nogojones said:


> I hope they cleaned inside and outside of the bowl.


I made it my duty as chair of the meeting to check. Five stars .


----------



## nogojones (Dec 7, 2021)

The39thStep said:


> I made it my duty as chair of the meeting to check. Five _red _stars .


----------



## nogojones (Dec 7, 2021)

Jeff Robinson said:


> The OG Spartacist League:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It's about quality not quantity. Snappy slogans like that don't write themselves.


----------



## Dom Traynor (Dec 7, 2021)

Jeff Robinson said:


> The Nu Skool Spartacist League:


That picture was my desktop background on my laptop for several years. I once leant it to a high profile UK Labour right winger MP to do a presentation. A bit of a redface moment when she finished and that came up in a room of a hundred plus people.


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## DaveCinzano (Dec 8, 2021)

The39thStep said:


> I made it my duty as chair of the meeting to check. Five stars .


I hope you gave them a decent review on TrotAdvisor


----------



## Carl Steele (Dec 9, 2021)




----------



## Carl Steele (Dec 9, 2021)

As I mentioned in an earlier post I got drawn into relitigating my experience in the Sparts because of the Spycops investigation and the death of Robertson. Here and on a couple of blogs I've had some lengthy exchanges with 6 or 7 ex-Sparts (lengthier than I intended). My main observation is: if you want to make sense of what happened in the Spartacist League most ex-Sparts will be unwilling or unable to help you. I think there are two main reasons for this.

Firstly, as I've explained several times, there's the little matter of culpability. Nobody got out with their hands clean and few are willing to face up to this.

Secondly, the Sparts claim to be a part of a revolutionary tradition was purest fantasy. Jeff Robinson's juxtaposed photos make the point perfectly. The German Spartacists were real working class revolutionaries, many of whom sacrificed their lives for the movement. Robertson's Spartacist League was a piece of poorly produced theatre - a bunch of deluded adults pretending to be revolutionaries much as children play at being action heroes (though the children know it's just a game). Most ex-Sparts remain lost in Narnia.

Anyway, those are my final reflections on the matter, for what they are worth.


----------



## RebelSpart (Dec 9, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> As I mentioned in an earlier post I got drawn into relitigating my experience in the Sparts because of the Spycops investigation and the death of Robertson. Here and on a couple of blogs I've had some lengthy exchanges with 6 or 7 ex-Sparts (lengthier than I intended). My main observation is: if you want to make sense of what happened in the Spartacist League most ex-Sparts will be unwilling or unable to help you. I think there are two main reasons for this.
> 
> Firstly, as I've explained several times, there's the little matter of culpability. Nobody got out with their hands clean and few are willing to face up to this.
> 
> ...


Still more "final reflections on the matter"? As in final, final?


----------



## hitmouse (Dec 9, 2021)

Just remembered about the Partisan Defense Committee being a thing. Don't really have any observations or anything about that, beyond like fair play to them for sending Mumia et al a bit of money every month?


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## JeffTipps4 (Dec 12, 2021)

I watched some people from PDC / SL on some sort of cable TV channel in the US, I think Rachel Wolkenstein was one of them. Quite interesting stuff. Here in the UK Only seen some PDC pamphlets. I gather they did some stuff around Mumia, not sure what else. Has anyone seen the SL or any other ICL section on a protest recently? Saw the Bt at Cop26 and gather they and IBT at the SP event.


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## hitmouse (Dec 14, 2021)

A good Spart cameo in this article from an ex-WSMer:








						Reds in tooth and claw
					

When people look at the confusing patchwork of organisations and ideologies that exists on the far-left, a common reaction is to wonder why they fail to unite. On an ideological level, they have mu…



					www.chekov.org
				





> They were so inconsequential that they considered even the tiny WSM as being worth the odd polemic. On one of my first political demonstrations, for example, we held a picket outside the US embassy calling for the release of Mumia Abu Jamal from death row. One of the Sparts approached me and harangued me for being a conservative chauvinist, on account of the fact that I was offering copies of Workers Solidarity for sale. I was confused until somebody eventually explained to me that this was in response to an old issue of the paper which had called for “paedophile priests out of the schools”.


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## PTK (Dec 18, 2021)

nogojones said:


> I note only one side of that dish is being washed mind.


It is very difficult to wash both sides of a dish simultaneously. This is why the dishwashing machine was invented. The invention and mass production of said machine is one of the preconditions for the construction of communism.


----------



## PTK (Dec 18, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Robertson's Spartacist League was a piece of poorly produced theatre - a bunch of deluded adults pretending to be revolutionaries much as children play at being action heroes (though the children know it's just a game). Most ex-Sparts remain lost in Narnia.


----------



## PTK (Dec 18, 2021)

You could argue that small left-wing groups have elements of a cargo cult. They believe that by enacting the outward forms of a revolutionary party, they will actually create a revolutionary party and a revolution. A type of sympathetic magic, perhaps.


----------



## PTK (Dec 18, 2021)

Carl Steele said:


> Judith left in 1981 - you can read her resignation letter here (page 6). Her and Doug's situation worsened when Logan was purged because they had been part of his leadership in Britain. When I joined in early 1981 Doug was a marginal member, floating around in the ranks, Judith was on the Spartacist Britain editorial board and a CC member (alt) but obviously an outsider. I maintained contact with them, and met up with them a few times after I left. Judith had a spell in the Labour Party and worked for a while in the Soviet Union, she was involved in Gorbachev's perestroika reforms. You may be interested in reading a transcript of her remarks to the Platypus Society in 2018.
> 
> Edit: also you may be interested to see Judith speaking in 2013 in an intelligence squared debate: Karl Marx was right Judith's first contribution is at the 47 minute mark.


The circumstances of the writing of the resignation letter by Judith are peculiar. She felt obliged to write a resignation letter at a time when she had no intention of resigning. She felt obliged to write a letter that exonerated the Spartacist League/Britain. She was resigning, the letter says, not because there was something amiss with the organisation, but because she was a different person. I wondered at the time why her resignation letter was published, and was told that this was because she was well-known.

I was told on another occasion that in Russia, Bolshevik delegates elected to the Duma were required to write resignation letters that would be released if they acted contrary to party policy. I do not know if this is true, but the case of Judith is not at all comparable.

By the way, members were not described internally as having resigned, but as having “quit”. This is a rather pejorative term, which of course locates the reasons for the resignation of the member in their individual moral failings, rather than in the practice of the organisation.


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## PTK (Dec 18, 2021)

PTK said:


> The circumstances of the writing of the resignation letter by Judith are peculiar. She felt obliged to write a resignation letter at a time when she had no intention of resigning. She felt obliged to write a letter that exonerated the Spartacist League/Britain. She was resigning, the letter says, not because there was something amiss with the organisation, but because she was a different person. I wondered at the time why her resignation letter was published, and was told that this was because she was well-known.
> 
> I was told on another occasion that in Russia, Bolshevik delegates elected to the Duma were required to write resignation letters that would be released if they acted contrary to party policy. I do not know if this is true, but the case of Judith is not at all comparable.
> 
> By the way, members were not described internally as having resigned, but as having “quit”. This is a rather pejorative term, which of course locates the reasons for the resignation of the member in their individual moral failings, rather than in the practice of the organisation.


I have just re-read the resignation letter by Judith published in Spartacist Britain for the first time in about forty years. I realise now that I may have been confusing the letter published in Spartacist Britain with a letter in an internal bulletin. Judith, and I think one or two other members, felt obliged to write letters to be released in the event of their resignation. This/these letters are in an internal bulletin dealing with the “Logan regime”, I believe. Upon leaving the SL/B I think that I returned all my internal bulletins. If I remember correctly, this was in exchange for my collection of vinyl LPs, which was being held hostage.


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## PTK (Dec 19, 2021)

petee said:


> excellent pumpkin tho'.


----------



## PTK (Dec 19, 2021)

imposs1904 said:


> If this is the halloween treat, I want eggs thrown at my window.
> 
> I had to stop reading after about 5 minutes:
> 
> a transcript of a discussion at a national conference of the Spartacist League / Britain in 1985.


This link is now dead. It seems that transcipt of Jim Robertson of the Spartacist League has disappeared.


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## DaveCinzano (Dec 19, 2021)

PTK said:


> This link is now dead. It seems that transcipt of Jim Robertson of the Spartacist League has disappeared.


Archived:









						A Halloween Treat…
					

A guest post from Ed Jones who sends us a transcript of a discussion at a national conference of the Spartacist League / Britain in 1985. Ed Writes: “For all Spartacist-pathetics out there, a…




					web.archive.org


----------



## PTK (Dec 19, 2021)

DaveCinzano said:


> Archived:
> 
> https://web.archive.org/web/2021103...rdpress.com/2021/10/31/a-halloween-treat/[/UR



Thanks. I wonder why Red Mole Rising removed this article.

It is interesting that Robertson himself says that: “I sort of have a sense that I’m poured onto an airplane every two years and there’s a national conference and the men are crying and the women are raging and people are purged and everybody swears to do better and then I go away again.”

From the horse’s mouth we have an admission that the internal life of the Spartacist League/Britain was pathological.[/url]


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## PTK (Dec 19, 2021)

PTK said:


> Thanks. I wonder why Red Mole Risi...e Spartacist League/Britain was pathological.


An interesting article. I think that what Robertson says here is very true:

“So you see, we tend to measure by our own lifespan, the expectations of political events. But the political rhythm of the class struggle does not care about an individual’s lifetime. Sometimes, to quote Trotsky in Lessons of October [is that so?], weeks are worth decades and sometimes decades are worth nothing. Shachtman used to say I’m so tired with all these young kids who come in at eighteen and then two years later they say I’ve given it the best two years of my life and still there’s no revolution and now I’m getting my degree and quitting.”


----------



## PTK (Dec 19, 2021)

PTK said:


> An interesting article. I think that what Robertson says here is very true:
> 
> “So you see, we tend to measure by our own lifespan, the expectations of political events. But the political rhythm of the class struggle does not care about an individual’s lifetime. Sometimes, to quote Trotsky in Lessons of October [is that so?], weeks are worth decades and sometimes decades are worth nothing. Shachtman used to say I’m so tired with all these young kids who come in at eighteen and then two years later they say I’ve given it the best two years of my life and still there’s no revolution and now I’m getting my degree and quitting.”


“This is the chauvinist climate, fostered by the anti-Soviet war drive, in which the fascists hope to fester and grow. What's needed to stop them, what the Spartacist League (SL) fought for last month, is 'Irish, blacks, Asians, an army of Scottish workers storming out of their Clydeside bastions across the border like Wallace and the Black Douglas did -- all behind the power of organised labour’.” - Spartacist Britain, March 1984.

The Spartacist League had a phase in the mid-1980s of trying to root its narrative in British culture, and an aspect of this was a bit of an obsession with Black Douglas. I think that this explains why Robertson mentions said figure in his remarks, to which a link was posted. I think that this position was a product of the Maoist background of many of the SL cadre.


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 4, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> This is the Spycop podcast episode on Barry Tompkins for anyone interested. The stuff about the exam required to join the Sparts is nonsense. Maybe the RCP did something like that, I don't know.



Finally got around to listening to the spycops podcast episode on Tompkins. I loved, and had not seen elsewhere, the detail about the USSR apparently attempting to recruit him, which could be fantasist bullshit, but if we choose to take it at face value would mean that Special Branch had an opportunity to get an informant within the USSR's intelligence apparatus but passed it up so as not to take him away from the valuable work of monitoring the Sparts and the proto-RCP.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 9, 2022)

Hello to all.  

I'm the Doug Hainline mentioned earlier in this thread ... for those who haven't read the part to which I refer, it was about the Spartacist
League, its internal life, and why intelligent and non-neurotic people might want to join such an organization,  and, more interestingly, why they would remain 
in it for more than a year or two.  

I was a member, with a three-year break after I deserted the Army  as an 11B10 on the way to Vietnam (and was expelled for doing so), hid out from the FBI for 18 
months, turned myself in, served six months at hard labor in military prison, then was expelled (from the Army, I'd already been expelled from the SL), re-joined (the SL, not the Army), 
was sent into the International Socialists to help split them. I finally left the SL in 1980.

I'm happy to answer any questions anyone may have*. May I suggest you not use people's real names here?  *(Unless they've already been used.) 

We're probably all now either in our graves or heading there soon,  but there just might be someone who is embarrassed, or even worse, 
by the revelation that they were a member of a communist group.

I just want to make two points about why people stayed in the SL:
*
(1) We wanted socialism.=> We thought that socialism was only achiveable via a mass workers' revolution.=> We thought that such a revolution required a revolutionary party to succeed.*
"_Without a party, apart from a party, over the head of a party, or with a substitute for a party, the proletarian revolution cannot conquer._" * (Read "=>" as "implies".)*

ABC, really.

So why did we think the SL was that party? (Or, to be precise, a propaganda group for the moment, but the nucleus of a revolutionary party, which we did not believe would
come into existence via the recruitment of ones and twos, but mainly by a process of splits and fusions from other leftwing groups  -- and we assumed that those groups would grow
as a natural product of capitalist contradictions -- rather like the Bolshevik Party in 1917, which pulled in various subjective revolutionaries from non-Bolshevik groups, like Trotsky's
_Mezhraiontsi_. [ August 7-13: Mezhraiontsy unite with the Bolsheviks ])

No doubt everyone had their reasons, whether or not they were aware of them. 

For some, the SL was just the first radical organization that got to them. For me, it was this: the SL was honest, it told the truth about the world, no matter how unpopular 
this was among the radical left, and no other organization did. It didn't suck up to the Black Panthers, it didn't whitewash Stalinism, etc etc etc etc. 
 It was -- or so I thought and still think -- brutally honest.

Why was this attractive? Perhaps for ''moral' reasons, but it also seemed to be the quality necessary to resist the pressures of bourgeois society, pressures 
which in the past had derailed several protential revolutions via corrupting their leadership.  So, whatever the" real" reaons for this attractive honesty, 
there appeared to be good pragmatic reasons as well.

At the same time, yes, I was one of the SLers who felt that its general style was too angular, too sectarian, too much given to propagating abstract truths as opposed to being 
active as the 'best builders' (as the SWP/YSA used to put it) of movements fighting for a supportable goal.  I personally put this down to historic/social circumstances: 
a bunch of mainly middle-class people, isolated from the labor movement and working class generally ... but something we would overcome in time, as the class struggle 
propelled more and more working class people into the organized Left, including us.

*(2) I do not agree at all that the SL was a cult,* or that Robertson's motive was just to build a group of personal loyalists so that he could live a posh lifestyle from their dues money.  

It was a sect, and it was, increasingly over the years, one that tolerated no one who was not a Robertson loyalist, but I believe Robertson's main motive
 was to keep the organization politically pure, and that he was the only one who could guarantee that --- thus all potential rivals who did not demonstrate total loyalty 
to him had to be purged. 

This was the motive -- the only one -- for purging Bill and Adaire Logan.  Whatever they did in Australia, they did it with the full knowledge and approval of the central SL leadership. 

Nor was their leadership of the British SL particulary 'bureaucratic' or abusive -- rather more 'liberal' than the practice in the US, in fact. 
They are good, decent people -- however misguided their political beliefs.

(One _déformation professionnelle_ of being a hard-line political person, on either side of the barricades, is to believe all your opponents are driven by base motivations.  
For a refreshing exception to the rule, see this conservative's appreciation of an old Soviet soldier:  [ An Old Soviet Soldier - The Salisbury Review  ])

 It is probably true, as the 70s waned, that at some level Robertson realized that, for this period anyway, the upsurge we experienced in the 1960s was over, 
and that he would not see a large change in the circumstances of the organization in his lifetime. Thus the retirement to California, and not to a modest flat either.  

There is no word to describe the SL: not a cult, although partaking of features of a cult. 

A sect, but not a sect that _wanted _to be a sect, so to speak. 

Reality is more complex than vocabulary, and,_ viz _Alfred Korzybski, we always have to be careful when using the 'to be ' verb.

Of course, we are still in the Dark Ages so far as a scientific undestanding of human psychology is concerned, but I believe that most of the people who joined and remained in the SL had the
same motives I had.  

While the rest of the Left cheered the victory of Islamic reaction in Iran, only the SL -- ONLY the SL -- had the insight and the guts to proclaim what was coming.  

Good for them! And shame on all the fools who thought that the mullahs in power would be as opportunist as they were.

All  human life was there in the SL, as in any organization, Left or Right, but by and large I recall my former comrades as very decent, well-motivated people.  

Terribly misguided, as I now believe, but _why_ they wanted socialism is completely understandable. Their motives were entirely honorable.  

It's a cruel world, unbridled capitalism is very ugly, the strong eat the weak, and any decent person must feel revulsion at what he or she sees daily on TV.  
 (Why don't the civilized powers of the world find a way to accommodate those desperate refugees risking their lives to get away from the horrors of their own horrible countries?)

I don't think goverment ownership of the economy is the right solution, even if you tack the meaningless  phrase "under workers control" to it, 
although_ some_ government ownership  and regulatory intervention is a good idea. But that's a different topic: how to keep dragging our nasty species forward.

Anyway, anyone who wants to ask me anything, feel free.  If you want to know about my current political beliefs, that's fine.  "NeoCon" doesn't cover them, although I think
their motives were good, and much of what they had to say abotu domestic issues was, and still is, on target.  My politics now are probably closest to being a 1960 FDR/JFK Democrat, 
not that my personal beliefs are of any importance.

My central belief, transcending the transient political beliefs we all have,  is that we must always seek disconfirming evidence for any factual belief 
(as opposed to 'value belief' -- you can't go from 'ought' to 'is', as the man said) , so I'm always happy -- okay, always willing, even with gritted teeth -- 
to hear view which contradict what I currently believe. I've been wrong before, and therefore am probably wrong now about some things. Life is complex
and humans are fallible.

I was wrong in the past, more than once, so maybe I'm wrong now. [Nope, the good people of Iraq and Afghanistan do_ not_ want Lesbian Outreach Centers in their
coiuntries. Robespierre, of all people, was right when he notied that people do not love missionaries with bayonets.  The 82nd Airborne could bring democrfacy to
Arkansas, but not Afghanistan. They'll have to do it on their own, mainly. (Not that we couldn't help a bit, behind the scenes.)

But my 'ought' belliefs haven't change sinced I was a teenager in the late 1950's in Texas,  reading* The Bending Cross [ The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs: Ginger, Ray, Davis, Mike: 9781931859400: Amazon.com: Books *] and *Homage to Catalonia. [ Amazon.com: Homage To Catalonia eBook : George Orwell: Kindle Store ]*

_The point is to change it._  The question is how, and what to.


----------



## belboid (Jan 10, 2022)

The SL were consistent opponents of Stalinism and the only ones to realise the truth about the Iranian Revolution? What a steaming pile of horseshit.


----------



## DaveCinzano (Jan 10, 2022)

Hi Doug, I believe that what my esteemed colleague belboid meant to say was:


belboid said:


> Fraternal greetings and welcome to the boards!
> 
> The SL were consistent opponents of Stalinism and the only ones to realise the truth about the Iranian Revolution? What a steaming pile of horseshit.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 10, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> I'm the Doug Hainline mentioned earlier in this thread



Hello Doug, as far as the Sparts go your views are pretty much the same as those of James Creegan with whom I had a lengthy exchange on the Fisherzed blog, although your reference points differ. It's a self-serving rationalisation of the experience, and as such not open to meaningful interrogation, in my opinion. I do though wish you and Judith well.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

Well, I suppose we all rationalize our experiences to one degree or another.  But I think some meaningful interrogation is possible.


DaveCinzano said:


> Hi Doug, I believe that what my esteemed colleague belboid meant to say was:


HI ... did he mean to say that?  No, he implied something more interesting: that there were other leftist tendencies who did not cheer on the Mullahs.  Maybe there were. If so, I'd be interested in finding out who they were.


----------



## planetgeli (Jan 10, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> Hello to all.



I liked your post because it was well-written and comprehensible. I don't agree with everything you say but I know your viewpoint. So thanks for that.

Also, now you've appeared I just need Judith for Full House on my SL bingo card. Would appreciate if you could get her to post.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 10, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> Well, I suppose we all rationalize our experiences to one degree or another.



Of course, but I think you can only make the claims you do if you are very heavily invested in the story (particularly given your current politics). This was certainly the case with Creegan and the discussion went nowhere. I have no interest in repeating the experience.


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 10, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> Well, I suppose we all rationalize our experiences to one degree or another.  But I think some meaningful interrogation is possible.
> 
> HI ... did he mean to say that?  No, he implied something more interesting: that there were other leftist tendencies who did not cheer on the Mullahs.  Maybe there were. If so, I'd be interested in finding out who they were.


Well, for starters, here's a 79/80 issue of the North American Anarchist, and here's a reprint of a 79 text from Raya Dunayevskaya. Although since belboid is, to my knowledge, neither an anarchist or a Dunayevskayaist, he might well be thinking of someone else entirely?


----------



## belboid (Jan 10, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> Well, I suppose we all rationalize our experiences to one degree or another.  But I think some meaningful interrogation is possible.
> 
> HI ... did he mean to say that?  No, he implied something more interesting: that there were other leftist tendencies who did not cheer on the Mullahs.  Maybe there were. If so, I'd be interested in finding out who they were.


Socialist Organiser, being a bunch of islamophobes, didn't support 'the mullahs'.  Not did the Militant (as was). 

Meanwhile you bunch of reactionaries were busy supporting Stalinism in Afghanistan.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

Well, I suppose we all rationalize our experiences to one degree or another. 

When Howard Fast quit the CP, after 1956, he wrote a scathingly critical book about the Party:

*The Naked God: The Writer and the Communist Party *(1957)
Over thirty years later, he wrote a book which is almost a repudiation, although not explicitly, of the previous one.

*Being Red* (1990), Boston, Houghton Mifflin
What changed? Well, for one thing, the milieu for whom he was writing: even liberals in 1957 were anti-Communist. 

[Quick quiz: The *Communist Control Act of 1954 *was the most draconian piece of anti-Communist legislation ever passed by the nation's elected representatives. (I say 'the nation' because my home state, Texas, outdid everyone else by proposing -- although I don't think it passed -- a bill to make membership of the Communist Party punishable be death.] 

 It simply outlawed the Communist Party. To quote from it: "_The Communist Party of the United States, or any successors of such party regardless of the assumed name, whose object or purpose is to overthrow the Government of the United States, or the government of any State, Territory, District, or possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein by force and violence, are not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies created under the jurisdiction of the laws of the United States or any political subdivision thereof; and whatever rights, privileges, and immunities which have heretofore been granted to said party or any subsidiary organization by reason of the laws of the United States or any political subdivision thereof, are hereby terminated"   --_ 
[ American History Documents II  ]

I recalled this, when I saw spoiled brats  whining about 'repression' and 'fascism' under Trump._, _the most incompetent would-be authoritarian ruler in history.

So, now the quiz: who was its author? Hint: a prominent Senator, from a state bordering on Canada and west of  the Great Lakes_._]

However, I don't think that was the only thing that influenced Fast. When he left the Party, all the indignities that he had suffered at the hands of its leadership -- some of which prefigure our 'Woke' witch-hunters of today -- were still fresh in his mind.  Decades later, he could reflect on them, and come to the conclusion that the Stalinist movement drew in large numbers of decent people who wanted to fight for a better world, and corrupted them. Which I think is right.

In his  *Neo-Conservatism -- the Autobigography of an Idea,* Irving Kristol,     said that he did not regret a minute that he spent in the Trotskyist movement in his youth.  He contrasted the Trotskyists, who told the truth as they saw it, with the deviousness of the Stalinists, who advanced their agenda by pretending to be liberals. (In my first enounter with CP members, the parents of a friend and comrade of mine when I was in high school, I had the strong impression that I was being lied to.)

I think that's the essence of the Spartacists -- and maybe why some people really dislike them -- they abjured the cant which permeates the Left.  "Diversity is Strength!"  -- Christ, don't these people know anything about the world, and what happens when tribal groups overlap?  One thing I learned from Robertson was the reality of national feeling, and the importance of the National Question -- where I think the Spartacists had a decent line, now repudiated as they disintegrate and decay: when the tribes of Lebanon began trying to exterminate each other, the Spartacist line was: "All Sides Are Squalid."

This sort of thing really offended the Left. But as Trotsky said, "The motor force of progress is truth and not lies."

As for everyone in the SL being abusive, two points: the intolerance of disagreement and of disagree-ers was not there from the beginning. It developed over time, accelerating in the mid-70s.
And ... all human life was there, as in any organization: people exhibited the usual distribution of human qualities such as empathy -- on the one hand -- or pleasure in the discomfort of others.  There were a few people -- usually of not outstanding intelligence -- who positively exulted in tormenting those who came under the regime's hammer.  Others went along with it, and some did their best to moderate it.

And there is another point. 

The SL was a 'combat party', as all ostensibly Leninist groups are. It envisioned being in the leadership of a social revolution, necessarily one that could not be carried through wihtout -- let's not flinch from this -- violence, in which many of its members would perish.

 It was not  a discussion club, because, as Mao said, a revolution is not a tea party.

 If you've ever been in, or read about, the initial training that every serious military puts its new recruits through, you will know that there is a lot of shouting, a lot of unpleasantness. This behavior has a purpose -- to purge out the habits of soft civilian life, something that we who have been lucky enough to grow up in liberal democracies with the rule of law take for granted.

As Marshall Suvorov put it two centuries ago,  "Difficult in Training, Easy in Battle."

So when someone tells me how terrible life in the SL was, I am willing to agree, having experienced it myself.  But I know that there are some people who would not fit into any serious organization with a similar purpose. They're too precious, too full of themselves, unwilling to make serious sacrifices for a cause higher than their own self-gratification.

I'm not saying anyone posting here about their experiences in the SL is such a person, since I don't know you. 

But I know such types existed on the Left -- indeed, the contemporary Left seems to consist of nothing but such people.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

belboid said:


> Socialist Organiser, being a bunch of islamophobes, didn't support 'the mullahs'.  Not did the Militant (as was).
> 
> Meanwhile you bunch of reactionaries were busy supporting Stalinism in Afghanistan.


No , you are mistaken about _Socialist Organizer_.  [The Matgamna group I'm talking about.]  

They were Khomaini apologists -- I recall a p;iece that they wrote about how Khomeini was not prejudiced against women. Later, they changed completely.

The ostensible Trotskyists assimilated the mullahs to socialist centrists, who would eventually betray the revolution, as the momentum of the revolutionary masses pushed
in the direction of complete social revolution, blah blah blah.   Fools.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

belboid said:


> Socialist Organiser, being a bunch of islamophobes, didn't support 'the mullahs'.  Not did the Militant (as was).
> 
> Meanwhile you bunch of reactionaries were busy supporting Stalinism in Afghanistan.


The SL supported the Soviets in Afghanistan against the reactionary Islamists, and good for them.  They also supported them against the Nazis. It's not a perfect would, and you sometimes have to choose side.

 Had the Soviets managed to exterminate the Islamists and drag Afghanistan into the 20th Century,  turning it into a replication of the other 'stans, which, although pretty bad, are not at the level of Afghanistan, that would have been a victory for humanity.  They didn't, any more than the Americans could.   They really don't want Lesbian Outreach Centers, or even female engineers, in Kandahar.

Too bad.


----------



## belboid (Jan 10, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> The SL supported the Soviets in Afghanistan against the reactionary Islamists, and good for them.  They also supported them against the Nazis. It's not a perfect would, and you sometimes have to choose side.
> 
> Had the Soviets managed to exterminate the Islamists and drag Afghanistan into the 20th Century,  turning it into a replication of the other 'stans, which, although pretty bad, are not at the level of Afghanistan, that would have been a victory for humanity.  They didn't, any more than the Americans could.   They really don't want Lesbian Outreach Centers, or even female engineers, in Kandahar.
> 
> Too bad.


Thank you for confirming the vile Stalinism of you and your nasty little sect.   Thank fuck it’s dead.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> Well, for starters, here's a 79/80 issue of the North American Anarchist, and here's a reprint of a 79 text from Raya Dunayevskaya. Although since belboid is, to my knowledge, neither an anarchist or a Dunayevskayaist, he might well be thinking of someone else entirely?


Yes, a valid point.

 I don't really think of anarchists as "on the Left", or even really political at all (the current so-called 'anarchists') but of course serious anarchists  -- people in the FAI/CNT tradition, for example --  would not, I assume, be apologists for the mullahs.  (And to tell the truth, I didn't know that the Dunayevskaya tendency was still around by then.  And there were probably other small Trotskyoid grouplets that had something parallel to the Spartacist line on the mullahs -- eg the Ellens group, the Lutte Ouviere-ists, perhaps.) 

We never saw any of these  people in the UK at anti-Shah demonstrations.

Added later: Come to think of it, there was a very interesting Stalinist group then, the British and Irish Communist Organisation, which had positions at least congruent to those of the SL. I don't recall
their saying anything interesting about the Iranian Revolution -- they probably waffled -- but I would be pretty sure they didn't cheer the Mullahs.


----------



## kenny g (Jan 10, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> Hello to all.
> 
> *May I suggest you not use people's real names here?  *


Sure. Hello Mr Cunt.

If your shitfest wasn't a cult why did it support pedo's?


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 10, 2022)

belboid said:


> Thank you for confirming the vile Stalinism of you and your nasty little sect.   Thank fuck it’s dead.


To give our new friend his due, registering a new account under the name of "VirulentNeoCon" and then posting about how invading Afghanistan is great does at least show an admirable self-awareness. I look forward to the posts about how if the invasion of Iraq had gone a bit better then that would also have been a marvellous victory for humanity, hypothetically.


----------



## kenny g (Jan 10, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> To give our new friend his due, registering a new account under the name of "VirulentNeoCon" and then posting about how invading Afghanistan is great does at least show an admirable self-awareness. I look forward to the posts about how if the invasion of Iraq had gone a bit better then that would also have been a marvellous victory for humanity, hypothetically.



I suppose if loads of massive disasters had gone a bit better it would have been marvellous. It shows the depths of their analysis that in 2021 they feel justified  to vomit forth such tripe.


----------



## kenny g (Jan 10, 2022)

This is almost like trying to argue with flat earthists. They are not cults but just funny kinds of sects. They are very naughty boys...


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## Carl Steele (Jan 10, 2022)

kenny g said:


> This is almost like trying to argue with flat earthists. We are not cults but just funny kinds of sects. And he is a very foolish man...



I think this is a game, I'm not sure how much he believes of what he says. He's a pro-capitalist liberal, why is he defending the 1970s Sparts?


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> To give our new friend his due, registering a new account under the name of "VirulentNeoCon" and then posting about how invading Afghanistan is great does at least show an admirable self-awareness. I look forward to the posts about how if the invasion of Iraq had gone a bit better then that would also have been a marvellous victory for humanity, hypothetically.


Well of course it would.  Had the Iraqis, in their great majority, both sects, taken advantage of the chance to establish something like a decent society, with the Americans and British paying the price, that would have been wonderful.. 

The Japanese did. The Germans did.  But in the Islamic world, it's not going to happen.  Too bad.


----------



## kenny g (Jan 10, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I think this is a game, I'm not sure how much he believes of what he says. He's a pro-capitalist liberal, why is he defend





VirulentNeoCon said:


> Well of course it would.  Had the Iraqis, in their great majority, both sects, taken advantage of the chance to establish something like a decent society, with the Americans and British paying the price, that would have been wonderful..
> 
> The Japanese did. The Germans did.  But in the Islamic world, it's not going to happen.  Too bad.


Scratch a stalinist and find a ....


----------



## planetgeli (Jan 10, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> But in the Islamic world, it's not going to happen.  Too bad.



Go on. Because...


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 10, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> Well of course it would. Had the Iraqis, in their great majority, both sects, taken advantage of the chance to establish something like a decent society, with the Americans and British paying the price, that would have been wonderful..
> 
> The Japanese did. The Germans did. But in the Islamic world, it's not going to happen. Too bad.



It's such a pity Doug, to come across you in your dotage spouting such reactionary garbage. The Sparts were bad enough, but this is worse. I have a recollection of you as a basically decent person, but this along with your apologies for your good buddy Logan tells me I was wrong.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I think this is a game, I'm not sure how much he believes of what he says. He's a pro-capitalist liberal, why is he defending the 1970s Sparts?


Political movements and the people in them are not monoliths.

People bring their personal character into the movements they join, and this character was formed years before they became political.
There are admirable people in every part of the political spectrum ... well, maybe not among Nazis by definition, but I would guess that even there you would find, or have found when National Socialism wa sa mass movement -- people who were simply nasty little opportunists, and also people who were 'ideailistic' nationalists ... having the same attitude towards their nation that internationalists have towards humanity as a whole.

Similarly, we can find things to admire in many movements with which we are in strong disagreement ('disagreement' is too mild a word but it's the best I can do now).
For example, the Communist Party USA during the 1930s:  they were the propagandists for totalitarianism, cheered the Moscow trials, were happy when the American Trotskyists
were indicted under the Smith Act.  At the same time, they stood up for and fought hard for Black rights, and worked hard to organize workers into unions.

Liberals in the US are now, hypocrtitically, playing the "Patriot" card, as they call Confederates 'traitors', and extend the same appelation to Trump supporters.  These are people
who, until now, couldn't pronoune 'patriot' without a patronizing sneer.

So I point out to my fellow right-wingers the kind of patriot these people _really _like: namely, the Soviet spy Ethyl Rosenberg, celebtated by the New York City Council a few years ago.

However, what motivated this woman? Was she yearning to see Americans sent to Alaskan uranium mines, those that escaped the firing squads?  She helped Stalin get the atomic bomb 
years earlier than he would have. Did she really hope to see mushroom clouds over America? No ... she grew up in circumstances which made her anti-capitalist -- quite understandable -- and she
believed the Soviet Union was a great victory for socialism. She dedicated her life -- and finally gave it (when she didn't have to) -- for its preservation.  

In other words, her motives were not base.  They were in fact admirable.  A huge tragedy that people like her were pulled into supporting a totalitarian movement.

It's not a new idea.  Although he wasn't directly praising Rommel's morality, Churchill did pay him the compliment, in the House of Commons, of calling him "Across the havoc of war, a great general". 
[Okay,  Churchill may have had an ulterior motive, letting the non-Nazi German senior commanders know that they would not be seen and treated as genuine Nazis would be.]

And speaking of Churchill -- is his statue still there outside the House of Commons? -- a couple of years after the Cuban Revolution, when it was still in its uplift phase, a new bookstore
was opened in Havana, and Castro gave a speech at the opening ceremony.  After the speech, a young red-hot revolutionary in the audience asked, "Comrade Fidel, why does this 
bookstore stock works by Winston Churchill ... a notorious imperialist?" Castro's reply:  "If it wasn't for Winston Churchill, you wouldn't be here."

Those who are literate who are reading this will recall the tribute Shakespeare has Antony' make to Brutus:
*ANTONY*


> This was the noblest Roman of them all:
> All the conspirators save only he
> Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
> He only, in a general honest thought
> ...



Of course, the ability to discern admirable qualities even in one's deadly enemies is not given to everyone. 

Macaulay recounts the case of a Scottish rebel against James II, who was captured, sentenced to death, and brought before James.
The King asked the condemned man, "Why do you not ask me for mercy? You know it is within my power to grant it."
The man replied, "Aye, it is within your power ... but it is not within your nature."

For some people, it's just not within their nature.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> It's such a pity Doug, to come across you in your dotage spouting such reactionary garbage. The Sparts were bad enough, but this is worse. I have a recollection of you as a basically decent person, but this along with your apologies for your good buddy Logan tells me I was wrong.


I don't know who you are, but I must say I have formed an equally bad impression of  your character.  
And by the way, there are plenty of people like you on the Right, I am sorry to say.
Cheers.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

planetgeli said:


> Go on. Because...


Well, it may happen ... productive forces develop, base determines superstructure and all that ... but it's going to take a lot longer than Fukayama and I thought. 
Same in Russia and China.  Things aren't linear, etc.
So, yes,   "and yet, it moves."


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 10, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> I don't know who you are, but I must say I have formed an equally bad impression of your character.
> And by the way, there are plenty of people like you on the Right, I am sorry to say.
> Cheers.



But I do know who you are Doug, and I know who Logan is, and I know why he is your friend, because you were and are just like him. A guy who tried to force a young woman not to take medicine that could prevent a miscarriage, a guy who tried to force a young woman to give up her baby. And he's your friend, has been for a lifetime.


----------



## kenny g (Jan 10, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> Well, it may happen ... productive forces develop, base determines superstructure and all that ... but it's going to take a lot longer than Fukayama and I thought.
> Same in Russia and China.  Things aren't linear, etc.
> So, yes,   "and yet, it moves."


Noted that the noncery angle has not been resolved.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> To give our new friend his due, registering a new account under the name of "VirulentNeoCon" and then posting about how invading Afghanistan is great does at least show an admirable self-awareness. I look forward to the posts about how if the invasion of Iraq had gone a bit better then that would also have been a marvellous victory for humanity, hypothetically.


By the way, I don't think that 'invading Aghanistan was great'.  It was a huge blunder .. both times.  And the Soviets invaded to support a more moderate faction of the radical Afghans who were trying to drag their wretched country into the 20th Century.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> But I do know who you are Doug, and I know who Logan is, and I know why he is your friend, because you were and are just like him. A guy who tried to force a young woman not to take medicine that could prevent a miscarriage, a guy who tried to force a young woman to give up her baby. And he's your friend, has been for a lifetime.


Yes, he's my friend. And not at all the person you, and the Spartacists, say he is.  And the Spartacists were entirely on board with trying to persuade her to have an abortion.
 Please spare us your faux-indignation.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

kenny g said:


> Noted that the noncery angle has not been resolved.


What is "noncery"?


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 10, 2022)

planetgeli said:


> I liked your post because it was well-written and comprehensible. I don't agree with everything you say but I know your viewpoint. So thanks for that.
> 
> Also, now you've appeared I just need Judith for Full House on my SL bingo card. Would appreciate if you could get her to post.


I  will ask her, but I don't think she will want to.  

After we left, we both had "Spartacist Dreams", ie nightmares.  Robertson feared Judith, because her IQ  (in the fourth Standard Deviation) matched his, and she knew something about economics,
which he didn't. During the Logan Purge, he called her "human garbage".   He was a master of human psychology -- knew all your weaknesses, inner doubts, fears, vulnerabilities.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 11, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> And the Spartacists were entirely on board with trying to persuade her to have an abortion.



Yes, Robertson was no better than Logan and neither are you.



VirulentNeoCon said:


> Please spare us your faux-indignation.



Is there anything you care about?


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 11, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> Yes, Robertson was no better than Logan and neither are you.
> 
> 
> 
> Is there anything you care about?


I'm not sure what you're asking, but I've always thought that Bertrand Russell expressed my feelings exactly, when he wrote that
“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”


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## Carl Steele (Jan 11, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> I'm not sure what you're asking, but I've always thought that Bertrand Russell expressed my feelings exactly, when he wrote that
> “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”



Excellent, so since you are here let me ask you to comment on what was done to Vicki.

For those who don't know, Vicki was a young woman member of the Spartacist League of Australia and New Zealand. I think she was in her early twenties. She became pregnant towards the end of 1971. Her doctor advised her that she may well have a miscarriage and gave her medication to prevent this happening. Bill Logan and Adaire Hannah (leaders of the SL/ANZ) and David (Vicki's husband and member of the SL/ANZ) pressured Vicki _not to take the medication _because they wanted her to have a miscarriage.

There's more to the story but this vignette is enough to capture what was going on. I wonder Doug what you think of this behaviour. I wonder what you think it says about the people involved. 

And yes, Robertson did know about this long before the Logan show trial - but that doesn't change what happened does it?


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 11, 2022)

Okay, a fair question.  

But first, can we agree that Logan was NOT purged because of this incident? 

He was purged because Robertson feared him as a rival. This incident was just dredged up and used against him, just as various things Trotsky had  said or done during the War Communism/Civil War period,  
things which went to the edge of and perhaps crossed over the boundaries of good judgement, were later used against him. 

I therefore never thought deeply about the Vicky issue, so I'm going to think out loud here -- and maybe change my mind in the light of any good arguments anyone else puts forth.  

This case is rather like the Roman Polansky and the 13 year old girl -- easy to be demagogic about it, but in fact, more complex than it might seem on the surface. (Not that demagogues care about that.)  

So here are my thoughts:  when you join a revolutionary organization, it's not like joining the Labour Party or a chess club. 

You dedicate your life to it ... because the goal is worth it, and requires it. This means you are willing to pick up and move to the other side of the world if the organization requires it; you give up going to grad school and get a job in a car factory if the organization requires it; you literally give it -- or we did -- half your disposable income .  (I saw someoneearlier in this thread specualted   that Marv Treiger and I did something wanted to "rake in some extra cash" ... I had to laugh out loud at that shallow ignoramus -- in the SL, the cash was raked _out _of you.  But no doubt that person just assumes others have the same motivations and morality that he does.)

And, given the premises on which you joined -- the world faced a choice between socialism or barbarism, and the success of your organization was required to get socialism -- all this made sense.  

Yes, the premises were wrong, but if you accepted them, all else followed. If you were serious.

Now, as general background, let me say that the SL did NOT do what the Workers League did: run its members into the ground while dangling the prospect of imminent revolution before them. 

Maybe it did after I left, when its internal life was changing for the worse,  but while I was in, although our committment was total, this was not abused.  
Robertson knew the importance of pacing yourself, of taking a break from time to time.  It's just good sense, nor a moral issue.

And, although having children was definitely a serious obstacle to revolutionary activity, and we all knew that, I never saw anyone directly pressured not to have them. 

In fact, I recall Robertson once joking that when women reached the age of 30, they conceived "an irresistable urge to try out their biological machinery."  

If others experienced something different, I didn't know about it.  Again, that's just good sense. 
Better to have a comrade with children, than no comrade with children, or a comrade who is full of suppressed resentment at having to remain childless.

So with Vicky, I would have to know: did she really really want a child? Or was this an accident, and she was ambiguous about it?  If she really really wanted a child, and was pressured to kill the one she was
developing, than, to steal a line from Talleyrand, it was worse than a crime, it was a blunder. 

I suppose they would have used arguments like, you're being selfish in wanting to bring one child into the world, whereas you should be thinking about the tens of millions of children all over the world
growing up in abject poverty, which it is our job to abolish via the revolution. _Those _are your children. The attempt to make abstract reason conquer biological imperatives.  .

But if it was a blunder, it was one done out of an excess of zeal. 

My experience of Bill and Adaire was that they ran a fair regime, rather more open than the Robertson regime.  (I recall that they were once criticized by Robertson because in their internal discussions, 
the leadership, ie Bill and Adaire, always spoke last -- in order not to unduly sway the more junior members from thinking through issues for themselves, even if they got it wrong. 

Whereas Robertson said this was not leadership ... the leaders should speak first.  I think Bill and Adaire were right on this one.)

However, there is one thing that puzzles me.  Where I hang out -- via the internet, not physically -- the good people believe that human life begins at conception, and that therefore abortion is murder. 

Once that sperm embeds in the egg, that's a human being. 

Whereas you, who I assume are on the Left, don't see things that way. For you, the fetus is just a clump of cells,  and you would have no qualms about killing it up until some rather late period in its development.

So for you, surely, the issue of Vicky would be analogous to someone who had spent years developing a really long beard  of which he was very fond -- only  to have the Party (as we called ourselves) decide that it was putting the workers we were trying to reach off, making him look like an eccentric, and that therefore he should cut it off, and 'pressuring' him to do so.  

 Or have the people who make a big deal of this case, perhaps unconsciously, absorbed some of the 'pro-life' attitudes so common on the other side of the Atlantic-- Bill and Adaire, murderers of the innocent unborn.

And I detect possibly another American influence.  Bill was from a solid middle-class family -- his father was a doctor, I believe -- and he himself was the national chairman of the equivalent of the Young Conservatives in New Zealand.  He projected a thoroughly upper class British demeanor.  (Kiwis are notorious for being more English than the English, some of them. Supposedly, unlike Aussies, they still think of this island as 'home'.)

This can rub some Americans the wrong way -- it certainly did so to Robertson.  If you're an American, dealing with someone like Bill, you can feel slightly patronized, slightly looked down upon.  I never felt that way, but I can see how others might. 

All I can say is that I always found both Bill and Adaire to be very decent human beings.  Adaire in particular was one of the most transparent and honest people I have ever met. I don't think she was even capable of dissembling, or saying something she didn't believe.


----------



## belboid (Jan 11, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> So with Vicky, I would have to know: did she really really want a child?


No, the question would be ‘wtf does it have to do with anyone other than Vicky?’

You’ve proven yourself a thoroughly nasty piece of work very quickly and easily.


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## nogojones (Jan 11, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> This case is rather like the Roman Polansky and the 13 year old girl -- easy to be demagogic about it, but in fact, more complex than it might seem on the surface. (Not that demagogues care about that.)


What would you consider the complexities are in the Roman Polansky case?



VirulentNeoCon said:


> What is "noncery"?


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 11, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> But first, can we agree that Logan was NOT purged because of this incident?



Why Logan was purged is your issue not mine. I don't really care, but for what it's worth he was probably purged because Robertson viewed him as a threat.



VirulentNeoCon said:


> I therefore never thought deeply thought about the Vicky issue, so I'm going to think out loud here -- and maybe change my mind in the light of any good arguments anyone else puts forth.



Mind boggling!!!

The issue is very simple, whether or not to have a child is Vicky's decision, as belboid pointed out. It's nothing to do with Bill and Adaire or David.

The idea that the SL/ANZ was a revolutionary organisation, and the fate of the revolution depended on what a dozen students, teachers and office workers did, was demented, and the behaviour that flowed from this delusion was, in the case of Vicky, cruel and ghoulish. _They wanted her to have a miscarriage_ so she'd be free for the Saturday morning paper sale. 



VirulentNeoCon said:


> So for you, surely, the issue of Vicky would be analogous to someone who had spent years developing a really long beard of which he was very fond -- only to have the Party (as we called ourselves) decide that it was putting the workers we were trying to reach off, making him look like an eccentric, and that therefore he should cut it off, and 'pressuring' him to do so.



Again, they wanted her to have a miscarriage, at the very least a traumatic event, possibly life-threatening, and you compare this to a man cutting off a beard!!!

Vicky did have the baby, then they tried to get her to put it up for adoption. She initially agreed and as the date approached for the baby to be taken from her she became suicidal. She was hospitalised following the attempt. This was all orchestrated by your good buddy Bill. And you've never thought deeply about it. Or thought about it at all, apparently.


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## hitmouse (Jan 11, 2022)

I still can't get over someone actually seriously saying "this is one of those complicated moral gray areas where it's impossible to say what's right and what's wrong, a bit like with Roman Polanski and that 13-year-old".


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## kebabking (Jan 11, 2022)

It seems once a Spart, always a Spart - one might leap from one strand of politics to another, but always it's about rabid certainties, and the demonisation of anyone who doesn't subscribe to this week's certainty.

Fucking mentallers.


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## Idris2002 (Jan 11, 2022)

Real "are we the baddies" stuff, this.


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## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 11, 2022)

If you join an organization whose aim is to lead a revolution, you have to make some choices.  There are things you can no longer do, and things you will have to do that you wouldn't ordinarily do -- like selling newspapers at 5am to the departing night shift at the local factory.  To take a big leap upwards, Trotsky escaped from Siberia, leaving his wife and children behind. (She was a revolutionary and was okay with that, or at least so she said.) You expose your loved ones to retribution -- Trotsky's son may have been murdered by the GPU in Paris.  

I suppose some people can't really understand this, because they cannot transcend their own egos. Thus the idea of sacrifcing something they want for a cause greater than their own self-gratification is entirely alien to them.  If they join a revolutionary organization for a while, it's just the equivalent of taking a vacation in an exotic location.

And then of course there are people whose personality type seems to be entirely at odds with the noble aim they profess. I forget the Bolshevik leader he was speaking about, but I recall Trotsky saying   of one of them, that he had a 'dirty personality'.

Having a child definitely cuts across being able to be active as a professional revolutionary.  Of course, if the aim of the small revolutionary group is achieved and it becomes a big revolutinary group -- a mass party -- then it will necessarily incorporate many people with children, and the question becomes less acute.

However, it's a powerful urge, and it would not be wise to pressure someone who clearly wants a child, not to have it.  
If Bill and Adaire did this,  and I accept that they did, it was very bad judgement on their part, and if outside the boundaries of what the SL did generally, it was not far from them.

From my experience in the Spartacist League, I can say that there were some people who did bad things, but with good motivations. Being abusive was not in their natural character -- when they were, it was because they thought this was how you had to act as a revolutionary.  

But there were others for whom abuse came naturally. They positively  enjoyed raking an erring comrade over the coals. 
Usually these were the less political, and less intelligent, members, getting their own back on people who were 'above' them in the organization.  

Nothing I know about Bill and Adaire, having worked with them for a couple of very intense years, makes me think that they are in the latter category.

As for the child sex question: a favorite trope among people on the Right is that Mohammed was a paedophile, because he married a nine-year old girl.  The age at which someone could get married in much of the American South, where I come from, used to be 12.  One of the tragedies of the inability of either the USSR or the USA to bring civilization to AFghanistan, is that very young girls are going to be forced into  'marriages' with barbarians -- as we see it.   

Cultures vary, and some are  -- from the point of view of human dignity -- better than others, a proposition we on the Right uphold and you on the post-Marxist Left generally do not.

Personally, I despise Polansky, as I do many of his pals in Hollywood who defended him.  (And I was happy to see the good Kyle RIttenhouse rid the earth of a very nasty paedophile, although of course I suppose you will mourn at the thinning of your ranks.  )  I thought Katha Pollit of the leftwing_ Nation _magazine said all that needs to be said about him and his case. [ Roman Polanski Has a Lot of Friends ]  What she writes shows the falseness of the Spartacist position at the time, which was essentially that the sex was consensual.

Of course, people on the Left have to be careful when they pretend to get indignant about paedophilia, because the natural direction of motion of the post-Marxist Left is to legitimize it, something that began back in the 1960s, retreated for a while in the 90s, and is now making a comeback. [For example, PIE, the Paedophile Information Exchange, was an accepted part of the leftist Liberty group, something that has caused embarrassment to certain people today. [ Calls for legal child sex rebound on luminaries of May 68 ] [How did the pro-paedophile group PIE exist openly for 10 years? ] 
[  How much longer can paedophilia apologists stay silent?  ]

The issue is clouded by  the sizable lunatic conspiracy theorist element of the American Right, who throw insane accusations of child sex-trafficking around with no concern at all for the truth, and by the attempts of others on the Right to demonize liberal psychologists who make what seems to me a very reasonable distinction between people who are sexually attracted to children, but do not act on their desires, and those who do, under the assumption that this attraction is not something under their voluntary control.

So we could have a good discussion on this issue, and if I thought I were dealing with honest people, I would.

But I'm not, so I won't.


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## kebabking (Jan 11, 2022)




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## Carl Steele (Jan 11, 2022)

Well, I think he's gone. That was stunning and disturbing. Doug was the human face of Spartacism in the UK in the 1970s (along with Judith) What I notice most about almost all the ex-Sparts I've encountered online is their numb indifference to the suffering of others, and their need to maintain a completely deluded account of their "revolutionary" past, because as we've just heard, if you're working for the revolution you may make mistakes but you'll never do anything morally wrong.


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## JimW (Jan 11, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> If you join an organization whose aim is to lead a revolution, you have to make some choices. There are things you can no longer do, and things you will have to do that you wouldn't ordinarily do -- like selling newspapers at 5am to the departing night shift at the local factory. To take a big leap upwards, Trotsky escaped from Siberia, leaving his wife and children behind. (She was a revolutionary and was okay with that, or at least so she said.) You expose your loved ones to retribution -- Trotsky's son may have been murdered by the GPU in Paris.
> 
> I suppose some people can't really understand this, because they cannot transcend their own egos. Thus the idea of sacrifcing something they want for a cause greater than their own self-gratification is entirely alien to them. If they join a revolutionary organization for a while, it's just the equivalent of taking a vacation in an exotic location.


I'm actually in agreement with the broad thrust of how you start, but if you're not spotting the difference between the febrile years of a gathering revolutionary storm and a world to win and some student types flogging papers in stolid solid social democracies then the ego issue is who on earth you think you are


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## hitmouse (Jan 11, 2022)

JimW said:


> I'm actually in agreement with the broad thrust of how you start, but if you're not spotting the difference between the febrile years of a gathering revolutionary storm and a world to win and some student types flogging papers in stolid solid social democracies then the ego issue is who on earth you think you are


And, indeed, the difference between the sacrifice involved in having to get up early to flog papers and the sacrifice involved in not taking medication prescribed by your doctor while pregnant.


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## Sue (Jan 11, 2022)

Well that was seriously disturbing. I mean if you don’t have any concern for people, what is the point of your politics? 🤢 

('Professional revolutionary" though. Can't leave the Revolution to _amateurs_. 🤣)


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## DaveCinzano (Jan 11, 2022)

Sue said:


> ('Professional revolutionary" though. Can't leave the Revolution to _amateurs_. 🤣)


Everything would be fine if only there was better regulation of revolutionaries. Perhaps with a Revolutionary Industry Authority vetting, training and licensing revolutionaries to a state-approved standard?


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## nogojones (Jan 11, 2022)

DaveCinzano said:


> Everything would be fine if only there was better regulation of revolutionaries. Perhaps with a Revolutionary Industry Authority vetting, training and licensing revolutionaries to a state-approved standard?


But you'd need at least an NVQ2 in revolutionaryism before you could even sell a paper.


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## Sue (Jan 11, 2022)

nogojones said:


> But you'd need at least an NVQ2 in revolutionaryism before you could even sell a paper.


That's actually not a bad plan...


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## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 11, 2022)

JimW said:


> I'm actually in agreement with the broad thrust of how you start, but if you're not spotting the difference between the febrile years of a gathering revolutionary storm and a world to win and some student types flogging papers in stolid solid social democracies then the ego issue is who on earth you think you are


Yes. I take it to mean that for some people, the actual objective situation -- and prospects for its dramatic change -- are not really important. Being a member of the group is what really counts.
I think this is true to one degree or another for all of us.  Being in a 'primary allegiance group'  -- on the Right it's usually a church -- brings us something that we need, being primates: fellowship.
So some people will just carry on, regardless.  Well, so long as no damage is done to them psychologically by an abusive regime, good for them.

And on the other hand .... Robertson was fond of saying that we fall too easily into the fallacy of indefinite linear projection of the current situation.  Today was like yesterday, tomorrow will
probably be like today, and on and on.  And yet we know that there are periodic dramatic ruptures.

I recall reading a quote from the memoirs of the late Harold MacMillan, walking back with a friend to their flat early Sunday morning in 1914, seeing headlines in the morning press, 'Archduke
Assassinated in Sarajevo". MacMillan remembers saying to his friend, "There, at least, is something we don't have to be concerned about."

And of course every good Marxist knows the famous Lenin quote, in a letter to someone in, I think, January of 1917 ... "We older generation may not live to see the Revolution."

So those people plodding away in nice fat social democracies selling their newspapers are not entirely without hope.  (What is ironic is that the Spartacist League imploded just as the US was
exploding.)


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## nogojones (Jan 11, 2022)

If only they were still the tight vanguard party. It could all be so different.

Also, What do Kyle Rittenhouse and Roman Polanski have to do with each other?


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## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 11, 2022)

nogojones said:


> If only they were still the tight vanguard party. It could all be so different.
> 
> Also, What do Kyle Rittenhouse and Roman Polanski have to do with each other?


Polanski was/is a sexual abuser of below-age young people, and Kyle killed one.


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## Idris2002 (Jan 12, 2022)

I'm pretty sure this VirulentNeoCon  guy is here to troll us, lads, even if he is who he claims to be.


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## hitmouse (Jan 12, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> I'm pretty sure this VirulentNeoCon  guy is here to troll us, lads, even if he is who he claims to be.


I mean, I haven't really had the pleasure of many Spartacist interventions myself, but wasn't that basically the point of how the old Sparts interacted with the rest of the left anyway? So at least he's consistent, I suppose.


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## Carl Steele (Jan 12, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> I mean, I haven't really had the pleasure of many Spartacist interventions myself, but wasn't that basically the point of how the old Sparts interacted with the rest of the left anyway? So at least he's consistent, I suppose.



If you've never experienced a Spartacist intervention you've never really lived. But don't despair, the Spartacist League of Britain has recently quivered back to life and I believe they are holding a public meeting in February. Details here. 



Idris2002 said:


> I'm pretty sure this @VirulentNeoCon guy is here to troll us, lads, even if he is who he claims to be.



I'm fairly sure he is who he claims to be. He is a troll but he'd be better off playing his game elsewhere. Maybe Fox News, Dave Rubin, Eric Weinstein, the remaining Koch brother etc. would be interested.


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## hitmouse (Jan 12, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> If you've never experienced a Spartacist intervention you've never really lived. But don't despair, the Spartacist League of Britain has recently quivered back to life and I believe they are holding a public meeting in February. Details here.


At this point, I feel like this thread was probably single-handedly responsible for reviving the SLB by reminding them that they exist.
Having had a look, there's an absolutely classic graphic here:





As I understand it, they seem to be suggesting that the Queen gave Boris Johnson syphilis, which through a complicated series of events then led to Dave Ward of the CWU infecting the entire RCG?


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## Carl Steele (Jan 12, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> As I understand it, they seem to be suggesting that the Queen gave Boris Johnson syphilis, which through a complicated series of events then led to Dave Ward of the CWU infecting the entire RCG?



Something like that.  I remember the term "syphilitic chain" from the 80s. It was used in Spartacist Britain, maybe during the miners' strike. Can't remember who came up with it though.


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## kebabking (Jan 12, 2022)

Is it utter bampots who join the SL, or are they varying degrees of normal and are then converted to complete loon-dom during their membership?

Are there recognised steps of fanaticism that one must attain for advancement into the inner circle, or is it more random?

Or, perhaps, is it not fanatics who are advanced, but the utterly cynical?


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## Carl Steele (Jan 12, 2022)

kebabking said:


> Is it utter bampots who join the SL, or are they varying degrees of normal and are then converted to complete loon-dom during their membership?



Alienated, psychologically angry, socially disconnected are all positives for a potential Spart. The longer you stay in the worse you will become. The Sparts are not hermetically sealed from the outside world but contact is very limited and they are usually in hostile situations. It is a world unto itself, you are one of the elect.



kebabking said:


> Are there recognised steps of fanaticism that one must attain for advancement into the inner circle, or is it more random?



The people who do best are those who understand the political formula (consciously or unconsciously) and can come up with the correct position seemingly spontaneously. Fanaticism is a requirement, included in this is a willingness to trash transgressors.



kebabking said:


> Or, perhaps, is it not fanatics who are advanced, but the utterly cynical?



The leaders generally believe in what they do or say, even when they contradict what they said last week. Shame and guilt make the glue that holds the organisation together, many remain members long after they've given up because they can't face the shame of leaving.

Robertson was a very cynical man in my opinion, he knew it was all crap for many years, but he was the only one who (apart from his wives) benefitted financially from the Sparts, so he didn't tell anyone.


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## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 12, 2022)

When Robertson, along with a few of us, first came to Britain ... and before we had formed an organization which would make all the other Left groups' public meetings so pleasant ... we met
several 'independent Trotskyists' .. people who had been around for a few years.

What was interesting is that they were all ... odd.  All male, evidently without girlfriends  -- not gay, in fact today the post-Marxist Left would call them "homophobes"  -- and all eccentric. 
People who could never have fitted into any organization but the very 'loosest'.

Robertson -- who was brilliant at personal psychological analysis, which he used to devastating effect on anyone within the organization whom he suspected of disloyality -- said
that for these people, "Sex was a toilet function."

I wonder what he would say about all the pathetic ex-socialists here, none of whom seem capable of making a political argument?


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## Carl Steele (Jan 12, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> I wonder what he would say about all the pathetic ex-socialists here, none of whom seem capable of making a political argument?



I'm not a big fan of psychology as a discipline, but I have to say when Freud came up with the idea of projection he was probably on to something.


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## hitmouse (Jan 12, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> I wonder what he would say about all the pathetic ex-socialists here, none of whom seem capable of making a political argument?


It'd be a good online personality quiz, "How would Robertson from off of the Sparts denounce you?" Apparently uquiz is quite easy to use if you fancy trying to design it.


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## Sue (Jan 12, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> When Robertson, along with a few of us, first came to Britain ... and before we had formed an organization which would make all the other Left groups' public meetings so pleasant ... we met
> several 'independent Trotskyists' .. people who had been around for a few years.
> 
> What was interesting is that they were all ... odd.  All male, evidently without girlfriends  -- not gay, in fact today the post-Marxist Left would call them "homophobes"  -- and all eccentric.
> ...


You seem completely smitten with this Robertson bloke. Is/was he a 'Professional Revolutionary' or more an interested amateur?


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 12, 2022)

Sue said:


> You seem completely smitten with this Robertson bloke. Is/was he a 'Professional Revolutionary' or more an interested amateur?


Yes, there is something in what you say.  He was a very interesting, and complex person. I first met him face-to-face when I was doing voter registration work in
Fayette Country, Tennessee -- part of Freedom Summer.  (Look up "Tent City" if you're interested.)  

I had gone to the March on Washington the year before -- five of us jammed into a VW bug and drove up from Austin, Texas -- had encountered the SWP/YSA there, 
and was invited to attend the YSA convention as an observer. (I was a member of the Young Peoples Socialist League at the time, but not happy with the organization, 
which was also differentiating  itself into a  subjectively  revolutionary Left, and a reformist Right .. the latter eventually became one of the initiating components of the DSA).

I went to their convention, and witnessed a faction fight between the pro-Castro leadership, and the opposition, which was critical of Castro, led by Robertson. 
I was definitely critical of Castro so I kept in touch with the opposition, who were later expelled.

When the project was completed, he flew to Nashville, and we drove together home to Houston.  He seemed to me -- an impressionable 21 year old -- like the real thing.
I won't go further into it, but he had read everything, and  seemed like the real deal.  If you are not now, or never have been, a revolutionary  -- seriously wanting to overturn 
capitalism in the US and the whole world with some understanding of the potential sacrifices this will necessary require  -- this won't mean much. 
The psychology will be alien to you.

All the socialists I had known seemed like a tame opposition, compared to him (and the other Spartacists).  I'll  tell you one thing that impressed me.
As we were driving down, I brought up the situation in Cambodia ... which was in the news at the time, Communist guerillas vis monarchists -- and I 
naively said something about a proposal I had seen which seemed like a possible solution, to partition the country and police it with an army from the
UN ... and he exploded!  (People who know him will know how he could shriek!) NO! PARTITION THE US AND POLICE IT WITH AN ARMY FROM LAOS!!

Whoa... he had a very good feeling, I think, for what it was like to be part of  a non-dominant group -- Blacks, Palestinians, and was really sensitive to the
 unconscious arrogance  and chauvinism of people who are in the dominant group.  I know political opponents, given the SL's (past)  refusal to tail 'revolutionary
nationalists' -- will find this hard to believe, but it's true.  

And congruent to this, he had a good understanding of 'the National Question', and what happens when you get 'interpenetrated peoples', something few
Americans are aware of. Thus the ludicrous bit of cant popular on the Left: "Diversity is Strength".

It's paradoxical .. . he was _very_ American ... no foreign languages, not much appreciation that I ever saw for other cultures, but very definitely an internationalist.

Another paradox: he had a lot of insight into people's personal psychology,  but this didn't translate into effective agitational or propaganda work.  

Not only were Spartacist interventions at other group's meetings needlessly antagonizing, but the newspaper, when we finally got one, was not snappy or appealing. 

Oceans of grey print, and very formulaic articles.  (I recall when I started studying programming, I considered writng a computer program that could generate _Workers Vanguard _[the SL
paper} editorials. "Only the working class, under the leadership of ..." blah blah blah.   (People who have been around a while will probably be familiar with the wonderful
Post-modernism Generator, based on a recursive grammar, here:  Post-Modernism Generator }

He slowly gave up any belief that he would see a revolution, starting in the mid-70s.  However, there is no reason to believe that this was conscious. 

We all do many things, driven by impulses which are below the level of consciousness,  and rationalized in various ways.  
(It's a common trope on the Right that Democrats are consciously trying to destroy America -- ridiculous, but thinking in this was avoids the hard work of
 trying to figure out what is really going on.)

Anyway, this is probably of no interest whatsoever to anyone but two or three people, and they're not necessarily going to read it. 

 So ... future PhD student, doing your doctorate on this minisucle bit of American history,  it's all yours!


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 12, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I'm not a big fan of psychology as a discipline, but I have to say when Freud came up with the idea of projection he was probably on to something.


Funny ... several times, reading the little whiners here, I was going to say almost the same thing.  It's one of those things you can almost
always apply in any argument about personal character, the grown-up equivalent, of "Nyah, nyah, I'm rubber and you're glue, bounce
 off me and stick on you!"  But it was obviously a cheap retort, so I didn't.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 12, 2022)

It's interesting Doug, how much you still admire Robertson. I see nothing admirable in the man. He created an organisation in which a young woman was driven to a suicide attempt by his (at the time) favourite lieutenant, your lifelong friend Bill. He knew all about this and did nothing. Then, a few years later, when it was convenient to him, he used the young woman to drive Bill out of the organisation. The cynicism and corruption of the man you quote with such fawning admiration is utterly nauseating. As is your hypocrisy.

You've talked about the nightmares you had after leaving the Spartacists. Do you think Vicky had nightmares, surrounded as she was by "comrades" who for about a year tried to force her to give up her baby. Can you imagine what that must have been like? Month after month, meeting after meeting, you're betraying us, get rid of your baby. Actually I don't think you can. Because you don't care.


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## hitmouse (Jan 12, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> *(2) I do not agree at all that the SL was a cult,*





VirulentNeoCon said:


> Robertson -- who was brilliant at personal psychological analysis, which he used to devastating effect on anyone within the organization whom he suspected of disloyality


The Sparts definitely weren't a cult and I can't understand why all these people keep suggesting they were. By the way, have I mentioned how Our Glorious Leader was great at analysing people to work out their weaknesses and then fucking them up if he thought they might be disloyal?


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## Sue (Jan 12, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> Yes, there is something in what you say.  He was a very interesting, and complex person. I first met him face-to-face when I was doing voter registration work in
> Fayette Country, Tennessee -- part of Freedom Summer.  (Look up "Tent City" if you're interested.)
> 
> I had gone to the March on Washington the year before -- five of us jammed into a VW bug and drove up from Austin, Texas -- had encountered the SWP/YSA there,
> ...


I can just about understand you falling for this/him as an impressionable youngster but...you don't seem to have unfallen for it/him. It's very strange.

From the things Carl Steele has posted (which you don't seem to deny) and some of the things you've posted yourself, he sounds like a despicable and very manipulative person.

Which is why I thought it was strange when you seemed to be trying to provoke an argument with the 'What would Robinson have to say?' thing. I mean who gives two fucks what some unpleasant no mark bloke would have to say? Seriously. 🤷‍♀️

Eta Sorry, meant to say 'political no mark' but hopefully my meaning was clear.


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## Carl Steele (Jan 12, 2022)

Sue said:


> I can just about understand you falling for this/him as an impressionable youngster but...you don't seem to have unfallen for it/him. It's very strange.



It is strange, it's the worse case I've come across of someone being completely unable to assimilate the experience. Robertson removed Doug from a position of central leadership and pushed him to the margins where nobody took him seriously, and yet ...

And you are right in your implication, Robertson was not at all the Svengali Doug describes. He was an alcoholic mediocrity who preyed on young women and built a tiny organisation in his own image.


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## Sue (Jan 12, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> It is strange, it's the worse case I've come across of someone being completely unable to assimilate the experience. Robertson removed Doug from a position of central leadership and pushed him to the margins where nobody took him seriously, and yet ...
> 
> And you are right in your implication, Robertson was not at all the Svengali Doug describes. He was an alcoholic mediocrity who preyed on young women and built a tiny organisation in his own image.


Well IIRC, the 'original' Svengali manipulated and exploited young women so it actually sounds quite apt.


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## spring-peeper (Jan 12, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> Funny ... several times, reading the little whiners here, I was going to say almost the same thing.  It's one of those things you can almost
> always apply in any argument about personal character, the grown-up equivalent, of "Nyah, nyah, I'm rubber and you're glue, bounce
> off me and stick on you!"  But it was obviously a cheap retort, so I didn't.




you already did a cheap retort with your post of



> No, but I did fuck your mother once. Okay, I was hard up, she looks like you. And it was partly motivated by pity, she was sodesperate.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 12, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> The Sparts definitely weren't a cult and I can't understand why all these people keep suggesting they were. By the way, have I mentioned how Our Glorious Leader was great at analysing people to work out their weaknesses and then fucking them up if he thought they might be disloyal?


No, that's not how the word "cult" is generally used.  In a cult, the Great Leader is followed, and worshipped, _as a person,_  openly, explicitly, regardless of what he believes. He can change his beliefs, even to their diametrical opposite, and the cult leaders will continue to follow him.  

Allthough I am not familiar enough with the  Lynn Marcus group to say whether the word 'cult' fully applies,  I think it must come pretty close. They were an example of how such a group's explicit politics are secondary to faith in the Great Leader.   They moved from the Left to the Right, without even -- to my knowledge -- a serious factional fight.

Robertson occasionally speculated about this, in fact, but the SL's political evolution only occurred after he was effectively out of the leadership,  and was only a deviation from their previous positions.

The Revolutinary Communist League is a cult -- they make no bones about it.  Bob Avakian -- not their political program -- is continually featured in their press.

In fact, Robertson also joked that the model to follow  --- it was a JOKE -- was not the grotesque Chinese or North Korean adulation of an individual, but the practice of the German Stalinists: he
quoted the current Party leader, speaking to a Party congress: "Comrades, I am charged by the Central Committee with presenting to you this report....."

 I believe that neither cult, nor sect, nor even cult-sect (as the SL once called the Seattle group around Richard Fraser and his wife) adequately describes the organization. The personalization that a cult involves just wasn't there.  

It became a one-man show, for sure, politically monolithic internally, where the only safe attitude was full-hearted total enthusiastic agreement with the Party Line.

Lenin said somewhere that to be a Bolshevik, you needed patience and a sense of irony. 

Robertson had a similar observation: you needed* (1) *above-average intelligence, * (2) *the capacity for indignation, and *(3) *a sense of humor, including the ability to laugh at yourself.   

The first quality is obvious: all that reading!  

As is the second: if  you're not indignant at injustice, if you're just following a fashion in becoming a 'revolutionary', you won't last.  

As for the third, it's a counterweight to egoism ... precious little  me-ism.  

The problem we Americans (and West Europeans) had was that we grew up in a very soft environment, the years of the post-war boom. 

No one faced any real hardship, with the exception of the draft and Vietnam, and that was easily evaded by anyone  from a middle-class background who really wanted to. 

So lots of young people became radicals, even 'revolutionaries', but from a position of privilege, of being indulged in their childhood and young adult years.  

It would be interesting to contrast their character, with that of young radicals in Latin America, who faced real, tangible, threats to their lives, frequently enacted.  

I think you would have found much better human material there.

And you can see that essential self-centredness, magnified a hundred times in today's snowflake left, looking for 'Safe Spaces', demanding not to be exposed to anything that might challenge their own beliefs.  They are the descendants of the radicals of fifty years ago, with each interceding generation amplifying the worst characteristics of its predecessor.

And the main reason the Sparacists were hated then, and are hated now,  was that they didn't honor anyone's safe space. They 'said what was', as they saw it, regardless of the effect on 
petty-bourgeois radical opinion.  Although they underwent a serious degeneration, even by the 90s, I think that was an admirable quality.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 12, 2022)

spring-peeper said:


> you already did a cheap retort with your post of


That was like for like.  Make a political argument, I'll give you a political reply.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 12, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> It became a one-man show, for sure, politically monolithic internally, where the only safe attitude was full-hearted total enthusiastic agreement with the Party Line.



And you suffered because of this Doug, didn't you? You fell from grace. Perhaps you could tell us what happened.


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 12, 2022)

Sue said:


> I can just about understand you falling for this/him as an impressionable youngster but...you don't seem to have unfallen for it/him. It's very strange.
> 
> From the things Carl Steele has posted (which you don't seem to deny) and some of the things you've posted yourself, he sounds like a despicable and very manipulative person.
> 
> ...


Well, Sue, all I can say, is you had to be there.

Look ... we're all human.  We're all the descendants of primates, and pretty nasty ones at that.  We're all Sinners.

 I try to understand people's motivations,  which are always mixed, and try to give them the benefit of the doubt..  I say "try", not "succeed".
Robertson's primary motive, for many years -- beginning in about 1945 and carrying on through McCarthyism -- was to build a revolutionary
party, in order to liberate humanity.  This is a misguided project, but the aims are not base.

The whole socialist project is a busted flush, only capable of bring misery to people wherever it is tried. So I'm glad the Spartacists did not succeed.

But there were some very admirable people in it.  I can't use that term without alloy  for Robertson, especially in light of what he became in his last forty years, but
he had some very good qualities alongside the bad ones -- qualities you would want in anyone, if you wanted to make a social revolution, and which are fairly
rare.  (I know nothing about you so I cannot say whether these qualities are something you would appreciate.)


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 12, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> And you suffered because of this Doug, didn't you? You fell from grace. Perhaps you could tell us what happened.


I supported the Logans, and my repudiation of my support was (correctly) not seen as really genuine.

After Judith and I left, I did some reading. At the time, someone had just published an academic study
of cults.  And while, as you know, I don't think that word applies to the SL, there were interesting parallels
between its internal life, and the internal life of the various religious and quasi-religious groups studied
by the author.

Factional struggle in small groups is nothing new. I'll bet that essentially the same tales could be told by 
former members of the CP, the IS, the SWP, and a hundred other groups.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 12, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> I supported the Logans, and my repudiation of my support was (correctly) not seen as really genuine.



So you repudiated your support for the Logans. Why was this not seen as genuine and what did Robertson do to you?


----------



## VirulentNeoCon (Jan 13, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> So you repudiated your support for the Logans. Why was this not seen as genuine and what did Robertson do to you?


It was probably seen as not genuine because, subconsciously, it wasn't.

Here's an analogy, going from the farcical to the tragic:  The Bolshevik Party began as a genuine revolutionary organization. After the last convuslive twith of the failed German revolution -- an
attempted insurrection n Hamburg, against the Communist Party's wishes, it was clear to the politicized people in the USSR that their country would be isolated for an indefinite, but not short, period. This ws the signal for the consolidation of a conservative, cautious bueaucracy in that country, led by Stalin.  (Ex-Spartacists reading this will know all about it.)

But there were still Bolsheviks who adhered to the original outlook of the Party: hold on, and encourage revolution in Europe. They became known as the Left Opposition.  However, when world capitalism underwent a profound crisis in 1929,  Stalin mechanically ordered the Comintern into a 'Left turn' -- the so-called Third Period.

The Left Opposition hadn't got anywhere, Stalin seemed to be projecting a revolutionary course ... so many Left Opposition supporters 'capitulated' and became supporters of the regime -- which they no doubt saw as deeply flawed, but still revolutionary, contra to the predictions of the Left Opposition that the bureaucracy would restore capitalism.  (And this belief was no doubt consolidated when
Stalin made the internal turn towards forced industrialization, 'building socialism'. )

Were their conversions 'sincere'?  Yes and no.  If you're a genuine revolutionary, you put the welfare of the revolution, and of the Party that will lead it, ahead of your own personal feelings.  

Anyway, all these people ended up being shot in the great Purge that came a few years later. Stalin didn't trust them, and he was right not to do so.

In my own case, after the nightmare of the Logan trial -- the worst period of my life -- I was only a half-hearted member. Perhaps that was obvious.  I was coming to the conclusion that there were only two things that would justify continued membership of the SL: If it had a healthy internal life, one could remain a member, waiting for the objective circumstances to change. Or, if it had an unhealthy internal life, but still had the capacity to intervene in an outside world that presented a chance for the revolutionary forces to grow, that would justify remaining. 

But neither was true.  I recall an incident that consolidated my view that the SL was beyond hope: the IMG had  been vociferous supporters of the mullah's seizure of power in Iran. (One of their leaders travelled there during the early period of mullah rule, and when he retunred and gave public lectures about how wonderful things were, he proudly showed his 'Khomeini Card', some sort of pro-regime token that its supporters had.)

Then came the inevitable repression, with Iranian Trotskyists being imprisoned and threatened with with execution.  The SL mounted a campaign of sorts in their defense ... but in its own sectarian way.
Anyway, we were outside an IMG meeting of some sort, possibly for IMG members only, handing out leaflelts about the situation in Iran. Everyone going into the meeting ignored us .. except for one fellow.  He took a leaflet, and stopped to argue with us ... genially.  

Paydirt!   Three or four of us clustered around him .And then, after a minute or two, he said something -- I forget what, exactly -- and one of our members -- an ex-soldier -- suddenly and without warning  screamed in his ear.

He just shook his head, broke off the conversation, and went into the meeting. I knew then that we were doomed.  We had had a chance to present our case on Iran to someone who was willing to listen and discuss ... and we blew it.

Now, I didn't make a conscious decision to resign. All this was cumulative. Quantity had not yet turned into quality.  It took another incident ... I think someone has mentioned it already ... where I was censured for arguing with a kid who said, I think just to wind me up,  "I support the National Front myself."

There is a passage in the excellent biography of Margaret Thatcher, by Claire Berlinsky, in which she interviews a group of former coal miners: they all express the leftist sentiments you would expect. And then one of them says, something to the effect that he has found an organization which really cares about the working class ... the National Front.  It's a startlement, but  -- as I think someone in a previous post pointed out -- this is not uncommon in the working class, even among people who had supported Leftist parties  all their lives -- I think it's quite common in France.  

If you can't argue with such people, it shows you are really just a posturer,  concerned about your own virtue.

However,  I don't take as the sole measure of anything, how it affects me., or at least I try not to.

  Most of the people in the SL were good people, concerned about the world, willing to sacrifice a lot in the pursuit of their ideals.  Many of their critics seem to be just bruised egos, people who would not have made it in any serious revolutionary group.

What happened to the SL was  mainly the result of outside forces -- the lack of any realistic prospect for revolution.  

I'm glad there was no realistic prospect for revolution, but I'm sorry to see that so many good people ended up wasting part of their life ... and for some of them, including several I recruited, their whole life.  

For those who still within the group, I hope they get some monetary compensation when the organization's physical assets are liquidated.


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 13, 2022)

There is something about this one that would make a fascinating case study, having managed to dump all the official large-scale beliefs of the SL and Trotskyism, and yet still somehow convinced that whatever virtues his shit cult and its members had were somehow unique and everyone else on the left are just unserious bruised egos. I suppose he's like a one-man version of the RCP/Spiked set?


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jan 15, 2022)

Saw three Sparts at the Kill the Bill demo at Lincolns Inn Fields handing out their Programme which seems to be last thing they have in print and that's been out for awhile. Every shade of Bolshevik there, including the almost extinct International Bolshevik Tendency and Workers Power.


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## Dom Traynor (Jan 15, 2022)

Wow I didnt know Workers Power were still going!


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Jan 16, 2022)

Your contributions have transported me back into the late 80s early 90s Marxist-Leninist crap fest that not only offered the working class nothing, but also wasted a lot of good people's valuable time.  Catch onto your self, help yourself, and instead of jumping from ideology/ideologue to ideology/ideologue, have a look a look at the day to day world you live in, and the people you rely on (and take some care and consideration for them).

Cheers - Louis MacNeice


----------



## petee (Jan 16, 2022)

charlie mowbray said:


> the almost extinct International Bolshevik Tendency



heck, i used to read 1917. 
it was relatively fat, value for money.


----------



## imposs1904 (Jan 16, 2022)

petee said:


> heck, i used to read 1917.
> it was relatively fat, value for money.



Bought at St Marks?


----------



## petee (Jan 16, 2022)

imposs1904 said:


> Bought at St Marks?



why, yes. 
no place like that anymore.


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jan 16, 2022)

Dom Traynor said:


> Wow I didnt know Workers Power were still going!


Yes, unfortunately. They went deeply into Labour Party under Corbynism and operated under cover of name Red Flag ( nothing to do with Posadist paper) For awhile they produced a paper Red Flag printed on pink paper. When I asked them which horses to back they didn't get it, and delivered a stern sermon on the evils of betting. See here: Workers Power


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 16, 2022)

charlie mowbray said:


> Yes, unfortunately. They went deeply into Labour Party under Corbynism and operated under cover of name Red Flag ( nothing to do with Posadist paper) For awhile they produced a paper Red Flag printed on pink paper. When I asked them which horses to back they didn't get it, and delivered a stern sermon on the evils of betting. See here: Workers Power


Yeah, I thought they'd officially changed their name/decided to start pretending to just be a paper instead of a group. But I suppose being a Starmer-orientated Red Flag probably offers slim pickings nowadays.
eta: I suppose it makes quite a funny combination with the recent meme. When they claim to be the Fifth International 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 etc.


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jan 16, 2022)

Actually I 've known one of them for decades. When I was at Edgware General Hospital in the 1970s, he was a shop steward there ( not in my department, he was a porter, I was a Central Sterile Supplies Department assistant and I was also a shop steward). He was in IS then, but talked to me about forthcoming split which led to Workers Power. He was there this Saturday. A nice guy, apart from being a Trot.


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## Carl Steele (Jan 16, 2022)

charlie mowbray said:


> Saw three Sparts at the Kill the Bill demo at Lincolns Inn Fields handing out their Programme which seems to be last thing they have in print and that's been out for awhile. Every shade of Bolshevik there, including the almost extinct International Bolshevik Tendency and Workers Power.



Was it the International Bolshevik Tendency or the Bolshevik Tendency? If in doubt you ask them if they think Russia is imperialist. If they answer "yes" they are IBT. "No" means they are BT. "Don't know" means they should book themselves into a ComCrit session asap.


----------



## locomotive (Jan 16, 2022)

Dom Traynor said:


> Wow I didnt know Workers Power were still going!



I was involved with Revolution, which was their youth group / a totally independent organisation depending on who you asked, for a few years in the 00s. I wonder whatever happened to them...


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 16, 2022)

Having looked it up on wikipedia, turns out that "are Workers' Power still going?" is one of those trick questions where "nah, they wound themselves up a few years ago" and "yes" are both right answers, apparently they officially dissolved themselves in 2015 and then un-dissolved themselves last summer:


> Dissolution​In September 2015 Workers Power dissolved, calling for all socialists to join the Labour Party. Former members formed the Red Flag Platform, describing itself as "a revolutionary socialist initiative campaigning in the Labour Party". It published the first issue of its newspaper, _Red Flag_, in November 2015.
> 
> Relaunch​In August 2021, Workers Power was relaunched...


----------



## JimW (Jan 16, 2022)

Louis MacNeice said:


> wasted a lot of good people's valuable time


This is nail on the head for me, imagine that energy channelled into something even half productive, imagine even half of those people not burnt out and disillusioned. It'd be just the same but slightly less shit


----------



## belboid (Jan 16, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> Having looked it up on wikipedia, turns out that "are Workers' Power still going?" is one of those trick questions where "nah, they wound themselves up a few years ago" and "yes" are both right answers, apparently they officially dissolved themselves in 2015 and then un-dissolved themselves last summer:


It's almost as if the dissolution were a complete fabrication so they could become deep entryists!  The only thing they have ever been deep about


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 16, 2022)

Did they ever get officially prescribed, or were they stuck in the even more embarassing situation of "groups too insignificant to bother banning"?


----------



## Dom Traynor (Jan 16, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> Did they ever get officially prescribed, or were they stuck in the even more embarassing situation of "groups too insignificant to bother banning"?


Definitely that one


----------



## charlie mowbray (Jan 16, 2022)

IBT, I believe. They had a leaflet with'1917' on it.
Yeah, they pretended to dissolve and yeah  too insignificant to proscribe


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 16, 2022)

charlie mowbray said:


> IBT, I believe. They had a leaflet with'1917' on it.



Both the IBT and BT claim 1917 as their own. It's the most Pythonesque split in the history of Trotskyism. For those who may not know, and I feel slightly ashamed that I do know, but my excuse is old personal connections and therefore interest, the IBT is the property of Bill Logan and the BT belongs to Tom Riley, they fell out a few years ago ostensibly over whether or not Russia is imperialist.


----------



## Kevin Oakleigh (Jan 17, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> Having a child definitely cuts across being able to be active as a professional revolutionary.


There is an untold corollary to the Vicky's baby drama in the SLANZ. Around the time baby was placed with a foster family a clause was written into the dues guidelines to facilitate those who wanted sterilisation\ vasectomies. This was later removed as not appropriate in writing but remained as an unwritten norm.
Several of those directly involved in Vicky’s story underwent sterilisation. He who writes had a first visit at a family planning clinic and told to return in some months, considering my young age, if still convinced to carry on with this endeavour. Happily I didn’t and today I’m a grandfather while some others, to ensure their functioning as dedicated cadre or “upper level” full time professional revolutionaries sacrificed this possibility, such were the times.


----------



## RebelSpart (Jan 17, 2022)

VirulentNeoCon said:


> It was probably seen as not genuine because, subconsciously, it wasn't.
> 
> Here's an analogy, going from the farcical to the tragic:  The Bolshevik Party began as a genuine revolutionary organization. After the last convuslive twith of the failed German revolution -- an
> attempted insurrection n Hamburg, against the Communist Party's wishes, it was clear to the politicized people in the USSR that their country would be isolated for an indefinite, but not short, period. This ws the signal for the consolidation of a conservative, cautious bueaucracy in that country, led by Stalin.  (Ex-Spartacists reading this will know all about it.)
> ...


It’s nice reading you again; I presume you are Doug, is that right? I am very sorry to hear that you have become a neocon although Judith told me as much. We should talk by email sometime; I don’t like the circus environment here. Judith has my details including my FB and Messenger details. Victor


----------



## DaveCinzano (Jan 17, 2022)

I bet Idris2002 would not, eleven years ago, have put money on this thread turning into the darkest ever episode of _Surprise Surprise_.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 17, 2022)

DaveCinzano said:


> I bet @Idris2002 would not, eleven years ago, have put money on this thread turning into the darkest ever episode of _Surprise Surprise_.



It's also a bit like the Iris Murdoch novel, "The Sea, The Sea", all the people you're trying to escape from keep turning up.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 17, 2022)

Kevin Oakleigh said:


> here is an untold corollary to the Vicky's baby drama in the SLANZ. Around the time baby was placed with a foster family a clause was written into the dues guidelines to facilitate those who wanted sterilisation\ vasectomies. This was later removed as not appropriate in writing but remained as an unwritten norm.
> Several of those directly involved in Vicky’s story underwent sterilisation. He who writes had a first visit at a family planning clinic and told to return in some months, considering my young age, if still convinced to carry on with this endeavour. Happily I didn’t and today I’m a grandfather while some others, to ensure their functioning as dedicated cadre or “upper level” full time professional revolutionaries sacrificed this possibility, such were the times.



Is this documented somewhere? Is there some testimony? Can you give some names, only first names, of those who underwent sterilisation or vasectomies. I knew a woman very well who was in the SL/ANZ in the Logan years and she never mentioned this.

How many members did the SL/ANZ have in 1973?


----------



## locomotive (Jan 17, 2022)

This thread is absolutely fascinating.

It's got all the hallmarks of an amazing podcast / Netflix documentary.


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 17, 2022)

DaveCinzano said:


> I bet Idris2002 would not, eleven years ago, have put money on this thread turning into the darkest ever episode of _Surprise Surprise_.


Should we ask editor to officially get the name of the site changed to spartsreunited.com, or at least get a redirect?


Carl Steele said:


> It's also a bit like the Iris Murdoch novel, "The Sea, The Sea", all the people you're trying to escape from keep turning up.


_What a queer gamble our existence is. We decide to do A instead of B and then the two roads diverge utterly and may lead in the end to heaven and to hell. Only later ones sees how much and how awfully the fates differ. Yet what were the reasons for the choice? They may have been forgotten. Did one know what one was choosing? Certainly not. There are such chasms of might-have-beens in any human life._

Great book that, I read it not that long before the start of the pandemic, and if it hadn't been for having read it fairly recently I think I would've revisited it during lockdown. A good book for a period of retreat from the world.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 18, 2022)

locomotive said:


> It's got all the hallmarks of an amazing podcast / Netflix documentary.



I think it could work as a docudrama - everybody together talking about the past (like The Four Yorkshiremen) mixed with extended flashbacks to what actually happened. Maybe start off with three people and have a drip drip of new people coming in, constantly revising the story.

ETA   Each new character to enter the room comes from the most recent flashback.


----------



## Dom Traynor (Jan 18, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I think it could work as a docudrama - everybody together talking about the past (like The Four Yorkshiremen) mixed with extended flashbacks to what actually happened. Maybe start off with three people and have a drip drip of new people coming in, constantly revising the story.
> 
> ETA   Each new character to enter the room comes from the most recent flashback.


You could see the same event from different perspectives


----------



## JimW (Jan 18, 2022)

Dom Traynor said:


> You could see the same event from different perspectives


Bolshomon.


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 18, 2022)

JimW said:


> Bolshomon.


Gotta catch 'em all.


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 18, 2022)

DaveCinzano said:


> I bet Idris2002 would not, eleven years ago, have put money on this thread turning into the darkest ever episode of _Surprise Surprise_.


----------



## nogojones (Jan 18, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I think it could work as a docudrama - everybody together talking about the past (like The Four Yorkshiremen) mixed with extended flashbacks to what actually happened. Maybe start off with three people and have a drip drip of new people coming in, constantly revising the story.
> 
> ETA   Each new character to enter the room comes from the most recent flashback.


I must say, it is all a bit Tiger King, but with more tracts about the historic necessity of 1917 and the vanguard party and less big cats.


----------



## tim (Jan 18, 2022)

Waiting for Judith.


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 18, 2022)




----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 18, 2022)

tim said:


> Waiting for Judith.



Great minds and all that, and she'd be more interesting than hubby. Bill is probably more likely though.


----------



## Dom Traynor (Jan 18, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> Great minds and all that, and she'd be more interesting than hubby. Bill is probably more likely though.


I suspect Bill Logan is too busy being a holistic counsellor of vulnerable people.


----------



## belboid (Jan 18, 2022)

Dom Traynor said:


> I suspect Bill Logan is too busy being a holistic counsellor of vulnerable people.


which, following the ongoing discussion, really does sound like _Groomer in Chief._


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 18, 2022)

Dom Traynor said:


> I suspect Bill Logan is too busy being a holistic counsellor of vulnerable people.



Apparently he does something called narrative counselling which focuses on "the stories we tell about ourselves". Stories such as "I am a great revolutionary leader". You really couldn't make this stuff up.


----------



## Kevin Oakleigh (Jan 19, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> Is this documented somewhere? Is there some testimony? Can you give some names, only first names, of those who underwent sterilisation or vasectomies.


No, no names as this was a personal matter and they would want their privacy just as I want mine.
The sterilisation subsidy, if needed, concerned the dues schedule so it was common knowledge to everyone in the organisation and while struck out of print, under American advice, it was still applicable certainly until the Logans were transferred out to London. How do I know this? Because I was there. Who saw fit to undergo sterilization were, as I wrote, a few who had followed Vicky, in one way or another, to the solution of Fostering her baby which is not immediate adoption. A personal choice, (sterilisation) and for my then knowledge a choice that no-one in the “rank and file” was actively interested in making. Who put “theirs” under the surgeons scalpel, or thought to do so as in my case, were acting from the experience of Vickey’s situation. As Doug H wrote: “having children was definitely a serious obstacle to revolutionary activity, and we all knew that,” or Robertson's reported lament “Damn babies, damn babies” or as Logan who arrived at the conclusion, but with other words, “cut off their attributes and sew up the other”. We knew that capitalism would not just collapse but it seemed we were on an “End days” road, the necessary party would be created by “professional revolutionaries” and their work in a period which seemed to offer historic possibilities for “our chance”. Logan thought himself a predestinato. He once said in a local meeting, during a confrontation, that he must be the youngest leader ever (then about 26 years old) of a healthy revolutionary party. The SLANZ was a pressure cooker, and after Logan’s expulsion, when I was no longer a member there, it exploded which reportedly left visiting comrades stunned at the rage and bitterness revealed. I’m sure that among some the line between abusers and abused was quite blurred and those that fell out remained severely scarred.


----------



## Kevin Oakleigh (Jan 19, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I knew a woman very well who was in the SL/ANZ in the Logan years and she never mentioned this.



I was a member of the SLB for a couple of years in the late 70’s and part of 1980 and don’t remember any Australian woman permanently stationed there although I have a recollection of M.H. who was probably just passing by on mission.


----------



## Kevin Oakleigh (Jan 19, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> How many members did the SL/ANZ have in 1973?


Maybe the SLANZ had around 20 members in the mid 1970’s but functioned as if it had double that.

I


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 19, 2022)

Kevin Oakleigh said:


> I was a member of the SLB for a couple of years in the late 70’s and part of 1980 and don’t remember any Australian woman permanently stationed there although I have a recollection of M.H. who was probably just passing by on mission.



Well, this means you would have been in England when Bill Logan and Adaire Hannah were the leadership. You would have witnessed Bill and Adaire's removal.  You would also have been there at the time of the Logan trial. I'd be interested in hearing your recollections.

I'm still surprised that the sterilisations are not mentioned anywhere given the obsessive documentation of the Logan period which runs to several hundred pages of letters, transcripts of meetings etc. As you should know the Sparts tape-recorded every meeting. Seems like this would have been useful ammunition for Robertson since it would have been a genuine aberration. 

MH by the way was a member of the SL/B central committee for a number of years.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 19, 2022)

Kevin Oakleigh said:


> The SLANZ was a pressure cooker, and after Logan’s expulsion, when I was no longer a member there, it exploded which reportedly left visiting comrades stunned at the rage and bitterness revealed. I’m sure that among some the line between abusers and abused was quite blurred and those that fell out remained severely scarred.



I just noticed this - the explosion you are talking about was at an SL/ANZ summer camp in January 1979 which happened prior to Logan's expulsion not after. The Logan trial and expulsion followed in August1979.

The SL/ANZ summer camp laid the basis for the expulsion of Logan, not sure how you get these the wrong way round.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 19, 2022)

Kevin Oakleigh said:


> No, no names as this was a personal matter ahe nd they would want their privacy just as I want mine.
> The sterilisation subsidy, if needed, concerned the dues schedule so it was common knowledge to everyone in the organisation and while struck out of print, under American advice, it was still applicable certainly until the Logans were transferred out to London. How do I know this? Because I was there. Who saw fit to undergo sterilization were, as I wrote, a few who had followed Vicky, in one way or another, to the solution of Fostering her baby which is not immediate adoption. A personal choice, (sterilisation) and for my then knowledge a choice that no-one in the “rank and file” was actively interested in making. Who put “theirs” under the surgeons scalpel, or thought to do so as in my case, were acting from the experience of Vickey’s situation. As Doug H wrote: “having children was definitely a serious obstacle to revolutionary activity, and we all knew that,” or Robertson's reported lament “Damn babies, damn babies” or as Logan who arrived at the conclusion, but with other words, “cut off their attributes and sew up the other”. We knew that capitalism would not just collapse but it seemed we were on an “End days” road, the necessary party would be created by “professional revolutionaries” and their work in a period which seemed to offer historic possibilities for “our chance”. Logan thought himself a predestinato. He once said in a local meeting, during a confrontation, that he must be the youngest leader ever (then about 26 years old) of a healthy revolutionary party. The SLANZ was a pressure cooker, and after Logan’s expulsion, when I was no longer a member there, it exploded which reportedly left visiting comrades stunned at the rage and bitterness revealed. I’m sure that among some the line between abusers and abused was quite blurred and those that fell out remained severely scarred.



This guy is a troll. Nothing rings true. A lot of the quotes he uses are out there on the internet. I could reference all the documents but can't be bothered. The MH reference is in a Bolshevik Tendency document but he clearly has no idea who she is. Some of it's just made up. Some of his posts look like they were generated by an AI app with a Google database.

There is a lot of info on the internet about Logan and the Sparts but it's bitty and confusing and this is why he's muddled up the "explosion" in the SL/ANZ and the expulsion of Logan. Nobody who was there would have done this. Without the "explosion" there was no expulsion.

Also, a detail, he keeps talking about the "dues". In the Sparts the money you paid was a Pledge (like the polish).


----------



## spring-peeper (Jan 19, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> This guy is a troll.



I've been reading the thread with interest, so thank you for all your input.

For clarification sake, who is the troll?  Kevin?

(I'm the queen of getting the wrong end of the stick  )


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 19, 2022)

spring-peeper said:


> For clarification sake, who is the troll? Kevin?



Yes, Kevin is a troll. I've thought this since he first appeared.


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 19, 2022)

spring-peeper said:


> I've been reading the thread with interest, so thank you for all your input.
> 
> For clarification sake, who is the troll?  Kevin?
> 
> (I'm the queen of getting the wrong end of the stick  )


Genuine question, spring - why do you find the thread interesting? There's no way of saying this without sounding snide, but I honestly don't mean it in a snide way.


----------



## co-op (Jan 19, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> Genuine question, spring - why do you find the thread interesting? There's no way of saying this without sounding snide, but I honestly don't mean it in a snide way.



Isn't it utterly fascinating? It seems self-evident to me


----------



## spring-peeper (Jan 19, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> Genuine question, spring - why do you find the thread interesting? There's no way of saying this without sounding snide, but I honestly don't mean it in a snide way.



No offense taken.

I'm not sure why I find it interesting.

I never paid it any mind when the thread was first started, but then, I've slowed down a bit since then.

I think I find it interesting because, for me, it is something new and I'm enjoying it.

Really didn't like that neocon thing, though.  To me, I found him arrogant and I'm not a big fan of arrogance.

Since he left, I revisited the thread and stayed to learn a bit.


----------



## kebabking (Jan 20, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> Genuine question, spring - why do you find the thread interesting? There's no way of saying this without sounding snide, but I honestly don't mean it in a snide way.



Mate, it's an anthropological research trip into the weirdest society ever.

Or, it's like an episode of Radio 4's The Reunion about some religious loons living in a Crack Den, except this one is much more fun because they can't stand each other, and at least one of them is still on the pipe.

A lot of it is fucking _dark_, perhaps a little like the Banality of Evil, you're reading it and then your eyes pop out on stalks with a _you did fucking what_?....


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 20, 2022)

kebabking said:


> Mate, it's an anthropological research trip into the weirdest society ever.
> 
> Or, it's like an episode of Radio 4's The Reunion about some religious loons living in a Crack Den, except this one is much more fun because they can't stand each other, and at least one of them is still on the pipe.
> 
> A lot of it is fucking _dark_, perhaps a little like the Banality of Evil, you're reading it and then your eyes pop out on stalks with a _you did fucking what_?....



The way some people are still lost in the dark is what's most interesting to me. The politics are irrelevant, as you imply you could swap in some apocalyptic religious dogma and nothing would change.


----------



## kebabking (Jan 20, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> The way some people are still lost in the dark is what's most interesting to me. The politics are irrelevant, as you imply you could swap in some apocalyptic religious dogma and nothing would change.



Absolutely - the political stuff is less interesting than the human stuff, which could be relatable to any cult, weird religious group, or mad, oppressive family.

I'd be interested in reading about attitudes to the Soviet Union/other socialist-communist states - where they considered saviours/partners, irrelevant, or just as bad as anyone else, did that change according to what they were doing, or what SL were thinking that week?


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 20, 2022)

kebabking said:


> I'd be interested in reading about attitudes to the Soviet Union/other socialist-communist states



The "defence" of the Soviet Union and all other workers states (their definition) was an article of faith. They still think North Korea is a more historically advanced form of society than western Europe. Of course they didn't actually do anything to defend the Soviet Union, they just wrote newspaper articles with lots of declarative slogans. I think they once talked about sending an international brigade to Afghanistan but this was a fantasy which came to nothing.


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 20, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> but this was a fantasy


I watched the new Adam Curtis the other month and now I can't read that phrase without hearing it in his voice.


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 20, 2022)

kebabking said:


> Absolutely - the political stuff is less interesting than the human stuff, which could be relatable to any cult, weird religious group, or mad, oppressive family.
> 
> I'd be interested in reading about attitudes to the Soviet Union/other socialist-communist states - where they considered saviours/partners, irrelevant, or just as bad as anyone else, did that change according to what they were doing, or what SL were thinking that week?


Yes, but spring-peeper is an actual normal person (unlike most U75ers). I suppose normies have to take a "walk on the wild side" every now and then.

The kind of shrill, demented, denunciation of enemies that the Sparts specialised in is something you can get for free on the internet these days, you don't need to join a cult for it.

One thing about the older stuff the Sparts put out though, is that often it was on the money. I found one of their papers on the internet where they talked about the last days of Smith's Rhodesia - the settlers who had been detailed to run the sanctions evading businesses had developed sticky fingers and put their hands in the till. I looked this one up on the New York Times archive and it checked out.


----------



## co-op (Jan 20, 2022)

kebabking said:


> Mate, it's an anthropological research trip into the weirdest society ever.
> 
> Or, it's like an episode of Radio 4's The Reunion about some religious loons living in a Crack Den, except this one is much more fun because they can't stand each other, and at least one of them is still on the pipe.
> 
> A lot of it is fucking _dark_, perhaps a little like the Banality of Evil, you're reading it and then your eyes pop out on stalks with a _you did fucking what_?....



Yes a lot of it sounds pretty crazy now but then again U75 reactions to it are interesting too; when posters on here tut tut over how the SL's members "were wasting so much time" (a fairly standard U75 response over the years to non-approved political activity) I find myself thinking, yes and what does the average U75 poster contribute to some grand transformation of society? 

And that's not meant to be snide, we all choose a path, it changes over the years, we do what seems best at the time, not under conditions of our own choosing etc. There's something quite defensive about dismissing or ridiculing the SL and its members - the main reason they appear absurd now is that they actually believed that a transformational political revolution from below was possible and they dedicated their lives to that project. Much of their apparent craziness follows quite logically from that belief.

That they appear ridiculous now speaks to how little belief there is left now that any transformation is possible.


----------



## JimW (Jan 20, 2022)

co-op said:


> Yes a lot of it sounds pretty crazy now but then again U75 reactions to it are interesting too; when posters on here tut tut over how the SL's members "were wasting so much time" (a fairly standard U75 response over the years to non-approved political activity) I find myself thinking, yes and what does the average U75 poster contribute to some grand transformation of society?
> 
> And that's not meant to be snide, we all choose a path, it changes over the years, we do what seems best at the time, not under conditions of our own choosing etc. There's something quite defensive about dismissing or ridiculing the SL and its members - the main reason they appear absurd now is that they actually believed that a transformational political revolution from below was possible and they dedicated their lives to that project. Much of their apparent craziness follows quite logically from that belief.
> 
> That they appear ridiculous now speaks to how little belief there is left now that any transformation is possible.


tbf they struck me as ridiculous at the time but get your bigger point.


----------



## co-op (Jan 20, 2022)

JimW said:


> tbf they struck me as ridiculous at the time but get your bigger point.



They struck me as ridiculous too but so did most left wing micro groups. I guess reading VNC's posts made me reappraise that a bit. The scale of self-belief that was needed to pull off a revolution - that probably is _generally_ delusional but I'm not sure it would happen without it. And in the 20thC revolutions still happened.


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 20, 2022)

co-op said:


> Yes a lot of it sounds pretty crazy now but then again U75 reactions to it are interesting too; when posters on here tut tut over how the SL's members "were wasting so much time" (a fairly standard U75 response over the years to non-approved political activity) I find myself thinking, yes and what does the average U75 poster contribute to some grand transformation of society?


I think Jim got it pretty much right there:


JimW said:


> This is nail on the head for me, imagine that energy channelled into something even half productive, imagine even half of those people not burnt out and disillusioned. It'd be just the same but slightly less shit





co-op said:


> And that's not meant to be snide, we all choose a path, it changes over the years, we do what seems best at the time, not under conditions of our own choosing etc. There's something quite defensive about dismissing or ridiculing the SL and its members - the main reason they appear absurd now is that they actually believed that a transformational political revolution from below was possible and they dedicated their lives to that project. Much of their apparent craziness follows quite logically from that belief.
> 
> That they appear ridiculous now speaks to how little belief there is left now that any transformation is possible.


Nah, I think you're over-stating your case here. Believing that a transformational political revolution from below is possible is one thing, I don't think our current social arrangements are going to last forever. Believing that "professional revolutionaries" have a particularly vital role to play in that process is another thing. Not everyone who thinks that revolution is possible and desirable is a Leninist, and even among those who are, most people don't end up like the Spartacists - there must be a fairly high proportion of posters on here who've passed through Leninist orgs at one time or another, but most of us haven't been part of trying to pressure anyone into having a miscarriage. So I'm not sure the craziness follows quite as logically as all that.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 20, 2022)

This is Bill Logan in 1989 talking about the SL/ANZ in 1974:

"Well, we had a pretty apocalyptic view of things. A sense that the new world was about to be ushered in. We believed that the setting up of a real bolshevik organisation in Australia would lead fairly rapidly to a solution to the crisis of proletarian leadership. More importantly, perhaps, we believed that the final opportunities for the world proletarian revolution were imminent. You’ve got to remember the context. We were the children of sixty-eight. The reality which woke us to political consciousness was the reality of a profound historical discontinuity. The years of our childhood and youth were the fifties and the early sixties—conservative years, each one much like the last. The early sixties were in fact relatively more conservative in Australasia than in America.

And then in 1968 it all exploded: student power, the May events in Paris, the Prague Spring, the Tet offensive. In Wellington on 26 June 1968 I helped lead the student component of a demonstration at the opening of Parliament, in which the Federation of Labour led a huge workers’ contingent. The Governor General had to go in a side entrance. The Australian High Commissioner had not been as wise and had gone to the front entrance. His car was trampled in. We smashed through the lines of troops, with their ceremonial uniforms and bayonets, and were probably only stopped by police at the top of the steps through a sudden falling off of will—what the hell would we do if we got inside?

To people recruited to revolutionary politics in the early 1970s international revolution was not just something read about and understood from books. It seemed a palpable, felt reality. But we also had a sense of the danger of things falling back into the rut of the fifties, or if we had more historical imagination the more pessimistic sense of the imminence of barbarism. In any case we believed that if the opportunities of the day were not fully exploited then revolution might be put off the agenda indefinitely."

The whole talk is here: Appendix B(ii)

There are two analytical problems here in my view. Firstly the estimation of the situation in society was badly wrong. Secondly, had they been in the midst of a revolutionary situation the SL/ANZ, an organisation of 10 or maybe 15 middle class twenty-somethings many of whom lived in the same house, could not conceivably have made a difference to the outcome. And it's the failure to see the latter stone-cold reality when looking back from much later point in time that is most troubling particularly because it's this which justified some highly abusive behaviour.



Idris2002 said:


> Yes, but spring-peeper is an actual normal person (unlike most U75ers). I suppose normies have to take a "walk on the wild side" every now and then.
> 
> The kind of shrill, demented, denunciation of enemies that the Sparts specialised in is something you can get for free on the internet these days, you don't need to join a cult for it.
> 
> One thing about the older stuff the Sparts put out though, is that often it was on the money. I found one of their papers on the internet where they talked about the last days of Smith's Rhodesia - the settlers who had been detailed to run the sanctions evading businesses had developed sticky fingers and put their hands in the till. I looked this one up on the New York Times archive and it checked out.



And yes, because of their vantage point way out on the fringes of society the Sparts could sometimes see what no else saw or maybe wanted to see. And I think if they had just stuck to their literary side and dropped all the "we are the party of the Russian revolution" stuff they could have made a contribution. But this was not what Robertson was about, because without the revolutionary delusions there would have been a literary society of maybe a couple of dozen, not enough to pay his rent.


----------



## kenny g (Jan 20, 2022)

co-op said:


> Yes a lot of it sounds pretty crazy now but then again U75 reactions to it are interesting too; when posters on here tut tut over how the SL's members "were wasting so much time" (a fairly standard U75 response over the years to non-approved political activity) I find myself thinking, yes and what does the average U75 poster contribute to some grand transformation of society?
> 
> And that's not meant to be snide, we all choose a path, it changes over the years, we do what seems best at the time, not under conditions of our own choosing etc. There's something quite defensive about dismissing or ridiculing the SL and its members - the main reason they appear absurd now is that they actually believed that a transformational political revolution from below was possible and they dedicated their lives to that project. Much of their apparent craziness follows quite logically from that belief.
> 
> That they appear ridiculous now speaks to how little belief there is left now that any transformation is possible.


They were absurd at the time. Anyone who was involved in left activities in the 80s or 90s and came in contact with them thought they were nuts. The few remaining still are. They were always outliers. It is not that the ground has changed but that they were always in space.


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 20, 2022)

Funny thing, though - they've never been accused of being state assets, deployed for purposes of disruption, have they?


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 20, 2022)

I met an American Spart in Belfast once, at a may day thing. He looked like a shorter version of Jim Croce, of "if I could keep time in a bottle" fame. They were a little bit of the early 70s, preserved in aspic by their cultic leanings.


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## Carl Steele (Jan 20, 2022)

co-op said:


> There's something quite defensive about dismissing or ridiculing the SL and its members - the main reason they appear absurd now is that they actually believed that a transformational political revolution from below was possible and they dedicated their lives to that project. Much of their apparent craziness follows quite logically from that belief.



They believed a transformational political and social revolution was possible _only with their leadership_. Without their leadership the revolution would inevitably fail. Everything flowed from this.


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## spring-peeper (Jan 20, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> They believed a transformational political and social revolution was possible _only with their leadership_. Without their leadership the revolution would inevitably fail. Everything flowed from this.




That was the impression I got from neo-con.
We needed his guidance to bring about world peace, or something along those lines.


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 20, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> They believed a transformational political and social revolution was possible _only with their leadership_. Without their leadership the revolution would inevitably fail. Everything flowed from this.





spring-peeper said:


> That was the impression I got from neo-con.
> We needed his guidance to bring about world peace, or something along those lines.


I was going to post that this is typical Leninist behaviour, but then I thought you have other examples of the breed who can at least pretend to be normal people. The Spartoid family who turned up and heckled at the Joe Higgins meeting I went to about the GFA were dismissed by him as "living in cloud cuckoo land".  The Madness of King Spartacist remains a riddle wrapped within a puzzle, enclosed within an enigma.


----------



## kenny g (Jan 20, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> I was going to post that this is typical Leninist behaviour, but then I thought you have other examples of the breed who can at least pretend to be normal people. The Spartoid family who turned up and heckled at the Joe Higgins meeting I went to about the GFA were dismissed by him as "living in cloud cuckoo land".  The Madness of King Spartacist remains a riddle wrapped within a puzzle, enclosed within an enigma.


Is the GFA in that context the Gaelic football association?


----------



## co-op (Jan 21, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> They believed a transformational political and social revolution was possible _only with their leadership_. Without their leadership the revolution would inevitably fail. Everything flowed from this.



Yes and obviously this is the bit that makes them look crazy now - but I was talking about the belief in the transformational political and social revolution, that it was possible and even imminent. 

I don't think there's really anyone on the left who actually thinks that now - and to be honest if I met one who did, I'd tend to think _they_ were crazy. 

We're reduced to formulations like Hitmouse's above "not thinking that our current social arrangements are going to last for ever" - well sure of course they won't, if nothing else the dynamic nature of globalised neoliberal capitalism certainly makes for a cycle of political/economic instability, collapse and reconstruction. But where's the belief that these open up anything more than temporary spaces giving some of us a little respite, a belief in transformation? 

I hope it's obvious I'm not defending Leninism here, I was able to resist its temptation in the 70s and 80s, I'm not likely to succumb now. But reading these posts - I mean it's reminiscent to me of reading political/religious tracts of the Levellers - the certainty of deliverance, the building of the new Jerusalem - incomprehensible faith now.


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 21, 2022)

co-op said:


> Yes and obviously this is the bit that makes them look crazy now - but I was talking about the belief in the transformational political and social revolution, that it was possible and even imminent.
> 
> I don't think there's really anyone on the left who actually thinks that now - and to be honest if I met one who did, I'd tend to think _they_ were crazy.
> 
> ...


I remember reading the chapter in _The World Turned Upside Down _about the Diggers, and thinking "this sounds like Jonestown".


----------



## co-op (Jan 21, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> I remember reading the chapter in _The World Turned Upside Down _about the Diggers, and thinking "this sounds like Jonestown".


I think I meant to say Diggers not Levellers. And I'm probably working off memories of the same chapter.


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 21, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> I remember reading the chapter in _The World Turned Upside Down _about the Diggers, and thinking "this sounds like Jonestown".


You ever read much about Münster?


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 21, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> You ever read much about Münster?


Nopeski - there's still a street named after him in Halle, though, a relic of the GDR.


----------



## co-op (Jan 21, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> You ever read much about Münster?


The anabaptist rising there?


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 21, 2022)

co-op said:


> The anabaptist rising there?


Yep, that's the one. Confusingly the Germans had Müntzer the person and Münster the place, but it was the latter I was thinking of, with John of Leiden and all that, as having serious Jonestown-y vibes, from what I've read of it.


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## Carl Steele (Jan 21, 2022)

co-op said:


> Yes and obviously this is the bit that makes them look crazy now - but I was talking about the belief in the transformational political and social revolution, that it was possible and even imminent.
> 
> I don't think there's really anyone on the left who actually thinks that now - and to be honest if I met one who did, I'd tend to think _they_ were crazy.



The Spartacist League of Britain, after a long and deafening silence and a protracted faction fight, have recently denounced themselves for various deviations from the revolutionary program and proudly announced a return to the good old days of 1978. And they seem rather pleased to be able to tell the world that they've learned nothing new in the last 44 years.

And this is the point about what Logan is saying in the quote in a previous post of mine. When he talks about how back in 74 he thought the revolution was imminent he's not doing this to investigate how he could have got things so wrong.  He's trying to justify his (and other's) deranged behaviour. Organisations like the Sparts and the Bolshevik Tendency and Logan's Permanent Revolution Group do not learn from experience. They go on and on, repeating the same behaviour.

VNC's claims about the early Spartacist League and the struggle to build the revolutionary party are pure fantasy. I didn't get into that with him because I've been around that block a couple of times and it's pointless and exhausting. No doubt some of those in the Spartacist League believed in the possibility of social transformation, but many didn't, they were there for other reasons. And from what I can tell, probably as early as 1968, Robertson was there for other reasons.


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 21, 2022)

kenny g said:


> Is the GFA in that context the Gaelic football association?


Meanwhile, in Normie land:


----------



## Kevin Oakleigh (Jan 21, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> Yes, Kevin is a troll. I've thought this since he first appeared.





Carl Steele said:


> Yes, Kevin is a troll. I've thought this since he first appeared.


Carl, Concerning my posts you have also written:“Nothing rings true” and “...he clearly has no idea who she (M.H.) is” and “...he keeps talking about the "dues". In the Sparts the money you paid was a Pledge...”
I have long torn up my bulletins, notes, and most books in successive painful stages of putting the iSt \ ICL behind me. Not unusal when trying to create a new identity. What I have written so far was based on memory which has proven hazy on one occasion. I’m going to scrounge the web over the next days to find what documents are still available and will have something to say in the future.

Of course I know who M.H is as we were members of a small organisations and sometimes members of the same local. If she is the Australian woman you knew well in the SLB then she certainly knows as true what I wrote concerning sterilisation. I’m not going to mention names, real or party names unless they are publicly known and perhaps not even then. As I have written, this concerned only a small number of comrades involved in one way or another in this sad Vicky story and as it was lived, in my opinion, is a mitigating factor and not an "genuine aberration" in a final judgement on this affair.

The Australia organisation often used American terminology so a branch was called a Local and a Pledge was called Dues. The organisation was funded by its members according to an incomes schedule and consequently it was clear to all what money was“due.” Pledge I find completely inappropriate as it rings of a voluntary boy scoutish donation. Half of windfalls went to the organisation.

Some recollections of the founding conference of the ICL follow that you won’t find on Internet.  For those who were present it should be obvious that I’m not a AI App based on a Goggle data base. (To understand what this meant I had to research internet):

Logan found guilty was expelled. Robertson said the party statues guarantee recourse but its the party that decides when and where. The time and place would be immediate there and then. Those who didn’t want to listen could leave. I didn’t want to so walked backstage where I met a black America comrade who shared the same distaste. We exchange a couple of words.

The Samarakkody delegation walked out of the conference and Robertson ranted they left taking the rest of the financial subsidy given to them to participate insinuating malpractice if not theft.

The conference concluded singing the International then Gorge F quickly arose telling all to wait and presented Robertson with a book, written by a namesake James Robertson, entitled “Power, Money and Sex” Lots of laughter and clapping by those present.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 21, 2022)

Kevin Oakleigh said:


> Carl, Concerning my posts you have also written:“Nothing rings true” and “...he clearly has no idea who she (M.H.) is” and “...he keeps talking about the "dues". In the Sparts the money you paid was a Pledge...”
> I have long torn up my bulletins, notes, and most books in successive painful stages of putting the iSt \ ICL behind me. Not unusal when trying to create a new identity. What I have written so far was based on memory which has proven hazy on one occasion. I’m going to scrounge the web over the next days to find what documents are still available and will have something to say in the future.
> 
> Of course I know who M.H is as we were members of a small organisations and sometimes members of the same local. If she is the Australian woman you knew well in the SLB then she certainly knows as true what I wrote concerning sterilisation. I’m not going to mention names, real or party names unless they are publicly known and perhaps not even then. As I have written, this concerned only a small number of comrades involved in one way or another in this sad Vicky story and as it was lived, in my opinion, is a mitigating factor and not an "genuine aberration" in a final judgement on this affair.
> ...



Don't know who this guy is or where his basement is.

The term "pledge" came from the SL/US. Logan was expelled at the first international conference of the iSt in 1979, not the founding conference of the ICL. The iSt became the ICL in 1989. Compare this to the posts by Doug, VNC as he's now known. The trial was a highly-charged event but this is sterile and impersonal.

Kevin has spent two days putting this together and still makes basic mistakes. There's lots of stuff on the internet about the Logan trial - for $10 you can buy the 200 page Logan dossier, and there's lots more around for free.

Like I said, Kevin is a troll.


----------



## kenny g (Jan 22, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> Like I said, Kevin is a troll.


Worth keeping in mind that something like this would be a great little exercise to give trainee state bods..


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 22, 2022)

kenny g said:


> Worth keeping in mind that something like this would be a great little exercise to give trainee state bods.



If this is the case he's getting about 4/10 at the moment. The sterilisation story is plausible (though I've no reason to believe it's true) and fits easily into the context. But the rest is lamentable - the basic errors and the terrible, flat writing.



Kevin Oakleigh said:


> Logan found guilty was expelled. Robertson said the party statues guarantee recourse but its the party that decides when and where. The time and place would be immediate there and then. Those who didn’t want to listen could leave. I didn’t want to so walked backstage where I met a black America comrade who shared the same distaste. We exchange a couple of words.



This is bugging me, I'm sure I've read this little story somewhere in the dim and distant past (the part about leaving the conference room), can't for the life of me remember where.



Kevin Oakleigh said:


> The Australia organisation often used American terminology so a branch was called a Local and a Pledge was called Dues. The organisation was funded by its members according to an incomes schedule and consequently it was clear to all what money was“due.” Pledge I find completely inappropriate as it rings of a voluntary boy scoutish donation. Half of windfalls went to the organisation.



From The Organizational Rules and Guidelines of the Spartacist League/US (Article IV, Membership)

3. Every member shall pay a monthly *sustaining pledge*. A progressive taxation scale (including appropriate deductions as specified by party financial guidelines) shall be established by the CC and adjusted from time to time as found necessary, as a minimum pledge. Any individual exception from this standard below the minimum must be approved by the national treasurer, subject to approval by the PB. Sympathizers should be encouraged to make regular sustaining pledges to the SL/U.S.

4. *Pledges *are due by the last day of each month. Any member more than one full month in arrears in sustaining pledge ceases to be in good standing. Only members in good standing may vote or hold office in the SL/U.S. Any member more than three full months in arrears in sustaining pledge shall be dropped from the SL/U.S. after notification.



Kevin Oakleigh said:


> I have long torn up my bulletins, notes, and most books in successive painful stages of putting the iSt \ ICL behind me



When you left the Sparts you were required to return your internal bulletins, so tearing them up was not an option. And why would you tear up your books?



Kevin Oakleigh said:


> The Samarakkody delegation walked out of the conference and Robertson ranted they left taking the rest of the financial subsidy given to them to participate insinuating malpractice if not theft.



Samarakkoddy's involvement is heavily documented. This may be accurate, I don't know.



Kevin Oakleigh said:


> The conference concluded singing the International then Gorge F quickly arose telling all to wait and presented Robertson with a book, written by a namesake James Robertson, entitled “Power, Money and Sex” Lots of laughter and clapping by those present.



Possible, rings a vague bell. I may have read this or something similar somewhere.



Kevin Oakleigh said:


> Of course I know who M.H is as we were members of a small organisations and sometimes members of the same local.



He obviously doesn't know who she is. In his previous post he said she was "on a mission" in the SLB (i.e. passing through for a specific purpose). MH was in the SLB for at least 3 years to my knowledge, she was a member of the Central Committee and I think she was National Organiser for a while. She's mentioned frequently in the Logan trial documentation.



Kevin Oakleigh said:


> Some recollections of the founding conference of the ICL



As I said previously the founding conference of the ICL took place 10 years after the Logan trial. But this is the sort of mistake you will make if you're juggling a lot of details.



Kevin Oakleigh said:


> I’m going to scrounge the web over the next days to find what documents are still available and will have something to say in the future.



Can't wait!

He could at least interweave some lurid personal stories to spice things up a bit.


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 22, 2022)

Carl Steele seems to have kicked this guy to the curb - I'll just say that pretending to be an ex-Spart is even stranger behaviour than we're used to around these parts.


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## nogojones (Jan 22, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> Carl Steele seems to have kicked this guy to the curb - I'll just say that pretending to be an ex-Spart is even stranger behaviour than we're used to around these parts.


No, I'm a Spartacist!
​


----------



## Kevin Oakleigh (Jan 22, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> This is bugging me, I'm sure I've read this little story somewhere in the dim and distant past (the part about leaving the conference room), can't for the life of me remember where.


Answer: you haven't read this anywhere


Carl Steele said:


> When you left the Sparts you were required to return your internal bulletins, so tearing them up was not an option. And why would you tear up your books?


I didn't  say internal bulletins; there were those sold to the public.
"Why would you tear up your books": well it's very clear from what you have written, at least recently, that you are, even at a distance of  more than 35 years, not even past the first stage of separating youself from the past, which granted, is very difficult to do


Carl Steele said:


> Possible, rings a vague bell. I may have read this or something similar somewhere.


You haven't read it anywhere


Carl Steele said:


> He obviously doesn't know who she is (M.H.)


See a fairly recent photograph down loaded from the Web that I'll try to append.  She is one of the four and I'm sure you will recognise her as I did


Carl Steele said:


> ... terrible, flat writing.


I'm not sure what you mean, I was never a writer and why does this matter?


Carl Steele said:


> As I said previously the founding conference of the ICL took place 10 years after the Logan trial. But this is the sort of mistake you will make if you're juggling a lot of d
> ANSWER: Yes I am juggling a lot of memories trying to be precise





kenny g said:


> Worth keeping in mind that something like this would be a great little exercise to give trainee state bods..


I don't know what a" trainee state bod" could be


----------



## Kevin Oakleigh (Jan 22, 2022)

Kevin Oakleigh said:


> Answer: you haven't read this anywhere
> 
> I didn't  say internal bulletins; there were those sold to the public.
> "Why would you tear up your books": well it's very clear from what you have written, at least recently, that you are, even at a distance of  more than 35 years, not even past the first stage of separating youself from the past, which granted, is very difficult to do
> ...


----------



## locomotive (Jan 22, 2022)

nogojones said:


> No, I'm a Spartacist!
> ​



No, I'm a Spartacist!


----------



## kenny g (Jan 22, 2022)

Kevin Oakleigh said:


> I don't know what a" trainee state bod" could be


 takes one to not know one..


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 22, 2022)

Kevin Oakleigh said:


> See a fairly recent photograph down loaded from the Web that I'll try to append. She is one of the four and I'm sure you will recognise her as I did



I don't recognise anyone in the photo. But then I haven't seen Marie for about 40 years so she will have changed somewhat. And I notice you called the photo _Maria_.

Where did you get the photo and why do you think one of them is Marie H? ETA see my next post!!

It could be you are an ex-Spart behaving like someone who's pretending to be an ex-Spart, but if you want to be believed (by me at least) you need to say a little more about an event such as the Logan trial than stuff you can find in a Bolshevik Tendency article. Supposedly you were in the SL/B throughout the whole process - installation of the Logan leadership in Britain, removal of the Logan leadership, revelations from Australia, trial and expulsion of Logan. So what do you think was going on? You say you came from the SL/ANZ so you knew Bill and Adaire for 7 or 8 years. What did you think of them? What made them tick?

And here's something else very odd. We just had Doug Hainline on the thread talking quite extensively about Bill. While this was going on there was not so much as a peep from you, despite the fact that (according to your story) you knew Doug and Doug knew you. The two of you would have been at the Logan trial, maybe you sat next to each other. Then as soon as Doug disappears up you pop. I am sure Doug would know whether your claims about sterilisation/vasectomy are true.

Why didn't you engage with Doug?


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 22, 2022)

Kevin's photo is here: creative caring

This is Marie. I didn't recognise her forty years on. But the photo gives her name, so does the plot thicken or not? If kenny g is right getting her full name is not a problem.  But otherwise it would be difficult to get her name.

btw how do you get the effect with the user name where it's highlighted and the user gets a notification?


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 22, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> Kevin's photo is here: creative caring
> 
> This is Marie. I didn't recognise her forty years on. But the photo gives her name, so does the plot thicken or not? If kenny g is right getting her full name is not a problem.  But otherwise it would be difficult to get her name.
> 
> btw how do you get the effect with the user name where it's highlighted and the user gets a notification?


Put an @ symbol directly in front (no space) of the username.


----------



## kenny g (Jan 22, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> Kevin's photo is here: creative caring
> 
> If kenny g is right getting her full name is not a problem


Wonder what Kevin Oakleigh 's game is then? Feel a bit bad that the Doug H has left in a flounce but perhaps he has come back?


----------



## Dom Traynor (Jan 22, 2022)

kenny g said:


> Wonder what Kevin Oakleigh 's game is then? Feel a bit bad that the Doug H has left in a flounce but perhaps he has come back?


Nah its not VNC, completely different style.


----------



## Kevin Oakleigh (Jan 23, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> Kevin's photo is here: creative caring
> 
> This is Marie. I didn't recognise her forty years on. But the photo gives her name, so does the plot thicken or not? If kenny g is right getting her full name is not a problem.  But otherwise it would be difficult to get her name.
> 
> btw how do you get the effect with the user name where it's highlighted and the user gets a notification?



I’ve expressed concern about privacy a couple of times and wrote in my last post:

“ I’m not going to mention names, real or party names unless they are publicly known and perhaps not even then.”

So you somehow traced back the source of the photograph I uploaded and linked the article to this thread complete with the full name of M.H. Well done. I’m VERY upset about this.


----------



## Idris2002 (Jan 23, 2022)

It's child's play to identify the source of a photo like that.


----------



## Dom Traynor (Jan 23, 2022)

Ok I thought Carl was being a bit paranoid but that last post makes it obvious that Kevin is indeed a weird thing.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 23, 2022)

Kevin Oakleigh said:


> So you somehow traced back the source of the photograph I uploaded and linked the article to this thread complete with the full name of M.H. Well done. I’m VERY upset about this.



You posted the photo. And when you did you made Marie's full name public. It took me 5 minutes to trace it. Anyone who's interested could do it in a few minutes. Besides which Marie's full name linked to the Spartacist League is around on the internet. And I don't think it matters much.

Do you have anything else to say?


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 23, 2022)

Dom Traynor said:


> Ok I thought Carl was being a bit paranoid but that last post makes it obvious that Kevin is indeed a weird thing.



To be honest I'm in two or three minds about this, Kevin's posts are continually disconcerting in different ways. Let's see.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 30, 2022)

To draw a line under Kevin's main claim to fame it seems sterilisation was rewarded financially under the Logan regime. This is from the preface to the Logan Dossier:

"The corresponding clause crafted in the 1973 “Memorandum from the [SL/ANZ] Central Committee on Finance” (18 June, 13 August, 26 August 1973 [Document 6]) stated the opposite: “No member shall be able to claim as a dependent for financial purposes any child conceived after joining the organisation. (This rule will not apply retroactively.)” Another provision in the Memorandum stipulated: “*The organisation will pay comrades reasonable expenses for sterilisation*.” When Karen W. arrived in 1976, she was horrified to learn that such rules had existed; new rules were adopted after her arrival ..."

And this is from a letter by Len Meyers (ex-editor of Spartacist Britain):

"The most intimate details of comrades’ personal lives were manipulated, with couples broken up or sexual relations manufactured by Logan in the guise of “building the party.” Children were verboten, and *sterilization and abortion were upheld as a party duty by Logan*. He sadistically pressured a young woman comrade to have an abortion and, when that failed, to give up her child for adoption, driving her to attempt suicide."

As so often with Kevin, what he writes is somewhere in the public domain. There is no evidence I can find of anyone actually being sterilised or having a vasectomy but I assume the claims made here by the Sparts are true.


----------



## RebelSpart (Jan 31, 2022)

spring-peeper said:


> That was the impression I got from neo-con.
> We needed his guidance to bring about world peace, or something along those lines.


The idea that only a given revolutionary group could lead a revolution or, as in the case of the Sparts, _form the nucleus _of a future revolutionary leadership, is common to almost all leninist groups. After all, if they did not think they had very strong differences with rival leftist groups, they would seek a merger.


----------



## A380 (Jan 31, 2022)

Gosh, every time I think that my reformist wanker-ism isn't the best way to deliver a fairer more equitable society and I should return to my  childhood / teenage revolutionary ideals  I read this thread, and similar resources, and think:

Nope.


----------



## hitmouse (Jan 31, 2022)




----------



## Carl Steele (Jan 31, 2022)

The Sparts were not looking to lead the revolution at some indefinite point in the future. Here's what Bill Logan had to say in 1971

_"One of my most profound memories was Nixon’s new economic policy, announced in 1971 on the same day Adaire and I arrived in the United States. It was discussed at the expanded Central Committee Plenum which took place shortly afterwards, the biggest gathering of the Spartacist tendency which had ever taken place up to that point, and, of course the biggest communist meeting I had ever been at. This was the Plenum at which the Communist Workers Collective fused with the SL/U.S., and at which the transformation of the Spartacist League was initiated, with the institution of a monthly Workers Vanguard and the implementation of a serious plan of industrialisation.

Nixon’s new economic policy marked, and we knew it marked, the beginning of the end of American hegemony over the capitalist world. It laid the basis for a drift into trade war and posed the spectre of inter-imperialist world war. We knew this, and we were in a world where over the last few years most events had moved very rapidly. We expected the events foreshadowed by Nixon’s new policy to unfold with great rapidity. I remember Jim Robertson and Marv Treiger winding the organisation up for the transformation with talk about how we didn’t have much time—a few years and we’d have our final shot at it.

The expectation was that huge class battles were looming, battles in which we would have our last chance."_

The analysis was completely wrong, but that didn't really matter because it was never intended as a guide to action in the real world. The imminence of the coming revolution was an ideological cudgel used for internal control. Did Robertson believe any of this? It's hard to say though I think he probably didn't. As for Marv Treiger, well he was out of the Sparts a year or so after this meeting so it seems he didn't take it too seriously.

And it may have been that in 1973 Bill and Adaire really believed that the coming revolution could be derailed if a young woman was allowed to give birth to a child, but if they did they were both suffering from a borderline psychotic disconnect from reality.


----------



## JeffTipps4 (Feb 2, 2022)

Long article by Tom Riley on this subject.









						Jimstown as we knew it - Bolshevik Tendency
					

Last August a debate over the history of the moribund Spartacist tendency took place on the website of former Bolshevik Tendency (BT) member Fischerzed. The exchange, which included a post by our…




					bolsheviktendency.org


----------



## DaveCinzano (Feb 2, 2022)

Moribund, you say..?


----------



## planetgeli (Feb 2, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> The analysis was completely wrong, but that didn't really matter because it was never intended as a guide to action in the real world. The imminence of the coming revolution was an ideological cudgel used for internal control. Did Robertson believe any of this? It's hard to say though I think he probably didn't.



"What was it Jim that first attracted you to the idea of a revolutionary money-making machine?"


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 2, 2022)

JeffTipps4 said:


> Long article by Tom Riley on this subject.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I've looked at this article, read a few passages and skimmed the rest. I don't think I'll get around to reading the whole thing. Maybe I'll drop Tom a line.

I would say though, Tom's way of looking at the world makes him incapable of understanding the very simple and (what should be) rather obvious points I'm making.

And, to write at this length (!!) does he have nothing better to do?  Or did I write something which got under his skin?


----------



## kenny g (Feb 2, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I've looked at this article, read a few passages and skimmed the rest. I don't think I'll get around to reading the whole thing. Maybe I'll drop Tom a line.
> 
> I would say though, Tom's way of looking at the world makes him incapable of understanding the very simple and (what should be) rather obvious points I'm making.
> 
> And, to write at this length (!!) does he have nothing better to do?  Or did I write something which got under his skin?


Fuck  me, even my rapid reading skills have hit a blank with that one. It is as dense as lard and as easy to digest as rusk. Can well understand your willingness to forgo.


----------



## hitmouse (Feb 2, 2022)

I suppose it's an interesting test of the human tendency to narcissism - can you read the world's longest and dullest article if it's about you? Although that's only an interesting test if you're Carl, for the rest of us the answer is just "no, can't read that".


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 2, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> I suppose it's an interesting test of the human tendency to narcissism - can you read the world's longest and dullest article if it's about you? Although that's only an interesting test if you're Carl, for the rest of us the answer is just "no, can't read that".



To be fair, it's not really about me, it's about Tom Riley.  Though I think it's something of an achievement to be the catalyst for the "world's longest and dullest article", which this surely is. And by the look of it, it was a lot of work. He's quoting hand-written letters from 1984. Who keeps that stuff? It does amuse me, I have to confess, to think of Tom late at night, fishing through the filing cabinet, pacing the floor and grinding his teeth, tapping away on his keyboard, refuting the renegade Steele.

As I've had cause to say before, you couldn't make this stuff up.


----------



## belboid (Feb 2, 2022)

I didn’t realise that SL were another group (the original?) to completely disdain the use of editors.  My god, the awful punctuation and sentence structure in there!


----------



## JeffTipps4 (Feb 2, 2022)

Yes it was very very long! If you are a trainspotter like me with a fascination for the Spartacists and their split offs / Trotskyist history then it is also pretty entertaining. 

Riley does hit on some interesting questions but without necessarily answering them - how did the SL put out 'technically' correct propaganda on a whole number of issues whilst clearly being a clearly troubling organisation? There are also docs circulating around saying the BT / IBT was as bad as the Sparts - the Road out of Rileyville.


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 2, 2022)

JeffTipps4 said:


> Riley does hit on some interesting questions but without necessarily answering them - how did the SL put out 'technically' correct propaganda on a whole number of issues whilst clearly being a clearly troubling organisation? There are also docs circulating around saying the BT / IBT was as bad as the Sparts - the Road out of Rileyville.



What do you mean by correct propaganda?


----------



## JeffTipps4 (Feb 2, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> What do you mean by correct propaganda?


Their pamphlet Genesis of Pabloism for example (written by Jan Norden) for example, looking at the political degeneration of the FI / analysis of Eastern Europe.


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 2, 2022)

JeffTipps4 said:


> Their pamphlet Genesis of Pabloism for example (written by Jan Norden) for example, looking at the political degeneration of the FI / analysis of Eastern Europe.



It's a long time since I read this but from what I can recall it's gibberish. I know the Sparts are especially proud of this article but in the post war period Trotskyist organisations were incapable of affecting the world. Recognising that other organisations (like the Sandinistas, for example) were the agents of real but "imperfect" social change was not a bad idea. Was this degeneration or just a recognition of an uncomfortable reality?


----------



## JeffTipps4 (Feb 2, 2022)

I actually liked that pamphlet and the subsequent PRL document expanding on it. They almost admit Ted Grant was right as well (almost!). That's the point I am getting at -  very good analysis of Russia, SWP, Pabloism etc but actually very unstable.


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 2, 2022)

JeffTipps4 said:


> I actually liked that pamphlet and the subsequent PRL document expanding on it. They almost admit Ted Grant was right as well (almost!). That's the point I am getting at -  very good analysis of Russia, SWP, Pabloism etc but actually very unstable.



I'm not being sarcastic, but I have no idea what this means. Why do you think the analysis of Pabloism was very good?


----------



## ItWillNeverWork (Feb 3, 2022)

All you old farts need to move on


----------



## imposs1904 (Feb 3, 2022)

ItWillNeverWork said:


> All you old farts need to move on



Everybody's an old fart on Urban 75.


----------



## krtek a houby (Feb 3, 2022)

imposs1904 said:


> Everybody's an old fart on Urban 75.



old farts/old sparts?


----------



## Jeff Robinson (Feb 3, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> At this point, I feel like this thread was probably single-handedly responsible for reviving the SLB by reminding them that they exist.
> Having had a look, there's an absolutely classic graphic here:
> 
> 
> ...



This is probably the best poster ever made. And this thread is truly outstanding, an absolute stone-cold classic.


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 3, 2022)

Jeff Robinson said:


> This is probably the best poster ever made. And this thread is truly outstanding, an absolute stone-cold classic.



Watch this space, there may be something coming down the pike.

For those who have had the misfortune to venture into the Tom Riley article, on all the irrelevant stuff about me in the 1980s I'd just say that this was undoubtedly my worst decade, I talked absolute shite on a daily basis for the entirety of it (and also for about half of the 70s). In the 90s I appraised the experience and reconnected with reality. And rejected the entirety of what Riley wants to uphold. It's a hatchet job with nothing to chop up since there is nothing there I would defend.

Riley is an unreconstructed Spart who is not used to being disagreed with let alone criticised, hence the ridiculous length of the article.


----------



## JeffTipps4 (Feb 3, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> Watch this space, there may be something coming down the pike.
> 
> For those who have had the misfortune to venture into the Tom Riley article, on all the irrelevant stuff about me in the 1980s I'd just say that this was undoubtedly my worst decade, I talked absolute shite on a daily basis for the entirety of it (and also for about half of the 70s). In the 90s I appraised the experience and reconnected with reality. And rejected the entirety of what Riley wants to uphold. It's a hatchet job with nothing to chop up since there is nothing there I would defend.
> 
> Riley is an unreconstructed Spart who is not used to being disagreed with let alone criticised, hence the ridiculous length of the article.



I wonder if the Workers Vanguard will ever be published ever again? I thought the Hammer was dead but it came back.


----------



## nastyned (Feb 3, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> Watch this space, there may be something coming down the pike.
> 
> For those who have had the misfortune to venture into the Tom Riley article, on all the irrelevant stuff about me in the 1980s I'd just say that this was undoubtedly my worst decade, I talked absolute shite on a daily basis for the entirety of it (and also for about half of the 70s). In the 90s I appraised the experience and reconnected with reality. And rejected the entirety of what Riley wants to uphold. It's a hatchet job with nothing to chop up since there is nothing there I would defend.
> 
> Riley is an unreconstructed Spart who is not used to being disagreed with let alone criticised, hence the ridiculous length of the article.


Before I bother reading his article could someone let me know his view of the most pressing issue for the international proletariat i.e. whether the annexation of South Ossetia was imperialist?


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 3, 2022)

JeffTipps4 said:


> I wonder if the Workers Vanguard will ever be published ever again? I thought the Hammer was dead but it came back.



It's odd that the UK was the place where the corpse was reanimated - but they can't even commit themselves to a twice a year schedule. I don't think they have the literary capacity for WV in the USA. They struggle to produce a leaflet.


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 3, 2022)

imposs1904 said:


> Everybody's an old fart on Urban 75.



Where can I buy the t-shirt?


----------



## DaveCinzano (Feb 3, 2022)

imposs1904 said:


> Everybody's an old fart on Urban 75.


Things have moved on since core posters were leading lights in things like Anarchist Youth Network 🤣


----------



## JeffTipps4 (Feb 3, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> It's odd that the UK was the place where the corpse was reanimated - but they can't even commit themselves to a twice a year schedule. I don't think they have the literary capacity for WV in the USA. They struggle to produce a leaflet.


I was also surprised about that. A SL supporter on a FB forum said that they British faction fight was concluded, hence they could produce something but the international (and presumably the US) faction fight still going on, so that aren't in a position to. I find it staggering given the amount they had published on the black struggle, the pamphlet series and so forth, that they said literally nothing about BLM (as far as I know)


----------



## hitmouse (Feb 3, 2022)

nastyned said:


> Before I bother reading his article could someone let me know his view of the most pressing issue for the international proletariat i.e. whether the annexation of South Ossetia was imperialist?


If anyone does answer this, they should put it in spoiler tags to avoid giving the twist away for anyone who hasn't got up to that bit yet.


----------



## Idris2002 (Feb 4, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> If anyone does answer this, they should put it in spoiler tags to avoid giving the twist away for anyone who hasn't got up to that bit yet.


Ah now, this is just being mean.


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 4, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> If anyone does answer this, they should put it in spoiler tags to avoid giving the twist away for anyone who hasn't got up to that bit yet.



I just figured out what spoiler tags are. Now I understand the sentence 

Even without talking about South Ossetia it's a very strange document. It seems there is a progressive deterioration in the ability to relate to reality the longer someone remains locked in the Spart/BT mindset. I said on a blog somewhere that I joined the Sparts for psychological/emotional reasons rather than because of the politics. Tom keeps going on and on, "but in 1983 you said it was because you agreed with ... (insert list of Spart political positions)", in 1986 you said this ... And then it's "maybe you've forgotten why you joined the Sparts, maybe you are embarassed (about what? I don't get that). And I'm thinking, maybe it's because I've reappraised everything, in the intervening period. But the idea that someone could join a tiny sect with an abstruse and abstract ideology for anything other than explicit political reasons really seems to unsettle him.

And then I remembered a conversation I had with Tom in the early 80's. He'd had a few drinks and he was telling me, after he was ejected from the Sparts he went to art classes to try and fill in the aeons of free time he now had. But the classes were boring, not at all satisfying, and not much of a substitute for being involved in building the revolutionary party (or nucleus thereof) ...  and then he founded the External Tendency  (forerunner of the Bolshevik Tendency). Now I'm not saying ... but hmm.


----------



## planetgeli (Feb 4, 2022)

I believe...I believe..in something. Anything. I need to believe. 

Yeah I get the cult/sect shit. Belonging.

But some of us, and it can't just be me, follow this thread from a 'you really thought you were leading the working class to the Marxian revolutionary inevitability?' type thing. 

I was brought up in poverty to be subjected to this shit? As my God?

Gtf.


----------



## kebabking (Feb 4, 2022)

planetgeli said:


> I believe...I believe..in something. Anything. I need to believe.
> 
> Yeah I get the cult/sect shit. Belonging.
> 
> ...



I'm not sure you're being quite grateful enough for the leadership of the proletariat that the Sparts have provided. Without their sacrifice, intellectual and moral rigour, and laser-like focus on the objective, the workers paradise you currently enjoy would never have been achieved...


----------



## xenon (Feb 4, 2022)

You’re all wasters, useless and irrelevant. 

Thank you for making me feel better about my own life time wasting.


----------



## A380 (Feb 4, 2022)

Jeff Robinson said:


> This is probably the best poster ever made. And this thread is truly outstanding, an absolute stone-cold classic.


I always like the way hammers in posters are drawn. Obviously by someone who’s never actually had to use one…


----------



## hitmouse (Feb 4, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> And then I remembered a conversation I had with Tom in the early 80's. He'd had a few drinks and he was telling me, after he was ejected from the Sparts he went to art classes to try and fill in the aeons of free time he now had. But the classes were boring, not at all satisfying, and not much of a substitute for being involved in building the revolutionary party (or nucleus thereof) ...  and then he founded the External Tendency  (forerunner of the Bolshevik Tendency). Now I'm not saying ... but hmm.


Don't make me post bits from the Didion essay about Comrade Laski cos I will absolutely post bits from the Didion essay about Comrade Laski with minimal provocation.


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 4, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> Don't make me post bits from the Didion essay about Comrade Laski cos I will absolutely post bits from the Didion essay about Comrade Laski with minimal provocation.



I wasn't aware of this but I've just looked it up and if you don't post something I most certainly will.


----------



## hitmouse (Feb 4, 2022)

_As it happens I am comfortable with the Michael Laskis of this world, with those who live outside rather than in, those in whom the sense of dread is so acute that they turn to extreme and doomed commitments; I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people manage to fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History._
That's the main bit I was thinking of, but it's all good.


----------



## nogojones (Feb 4, 2022)

A380 said:


> I always like the way hammers in posters are drawn. Obviously by someone who’s never actually had to use one…


Less of this:



More of this


----------



## A380 (Feb 4, 2022)

nogojones said:


> Less of this:
> 
> View attachment 308773
> 
> More of this


STOP!


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 4, 2022)

And this Wikipedia quote is perfect:

"Laski is perhaps most famous for being the subject of an essay by Joan Didion, entitled "Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)", which was later compiled into her 1968 anthology _Slouching Towards Bethlehem_. As summarized by _The Observer_ in 2015, she described Laski as a man "_whose love of an ordered world made his political faction not just small but averse to the chaos necessary for actual social change_", exemplifying the narcissism of small differences."

Brilliant, and I love the phrase "the narcissism of small differences."


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 4, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> _As it happens I am comfortable with the Michael Laskis of this world, with those who live outside rather than in, those in whom the sense of dread is so acute that they turn to extreme and doomed commitments; I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people manage to fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History._
> That's the main bit I was thinking of, but it's all good.



It's a great quote, really have to think about that.


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 5, 2022)

I found the Joan Didion essay, Comrade Laski, in the internet archive.

Particularly loved this:

_The world Michael Laski had constructed for himself was one of labyrinthine intricacy and immaculate clarity, a world made meaningful not only by high purpose but by external and internal threats, intrigues and apparatus, an immutably ordered world in which things mattered._

Joan Didion could have written this about Tom Riley. Maybe I'll send him the quote.

ETA corrected spelling of name


----------



## JeffTipps4 (Feb 7, 2022)

Canadian ICL getting bit of a pasting here


----------



## Idris2002 (Feb 7, 2022)

JeffTipps4 said:


> Canadian ICL getting bit of a pasting here



A pasting from a woke liberal? Like being savaged by a dead sheep.

This truckers' blockade does seem like bad news - but shouldn't there be at least some attempt to reach out and offer a sane alternative to these people?

 It should be embarassing for the Canuck left that it was left to the ambassadors from Planet Loon to do this.


----------



## hitmouse (Feb 7, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> A pasting from a woke liberal? Like being savaged by a dead sheep.
> 
> This truckers' blockade does seem like bad news - but shouldn't there be at least some attempt to reach out and offer a sane alternative to these people?
> 
> It should be embarassing for the Canuck left that it was left to the ambassadors from Planet Loon to do this.


What definition of "woke liberal" are you using here? Lad seems like a trot to me.


----------



## Idris2002 (Feb 7, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> What definition of "woke liberal" are you using here? Lad seems like a trot to me.


"And are the woke liberals in the room right now?"

Yeah, you may be right, there is a bit of the old sectarianism in the lad's post there.


----------



## Dom Traynor (Feb 7, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> "And are the woke liberals in the room right now?"
> 
> Yeah, you may be right, there is a bit of the old sectarianism in the lad's post there.


He's a leading activist in a trot group I think he's IMT/Socialist Appeal whatever their Canadian franchise is. 

And actually I don't think it's worth engaging with these protestors at the point of protest. It is worth engaging with them in their own communities, workplaces, families etc. 

I tried engaging with their equivalent round here on Saturday at a demo I was walking past and just got shouted at by froth mouthed eye bulgers. However at work I've had quite a few productive conversations even seen people converted from anti vax to getting vaccinated.


----------



## Matt Kelly (Feb 9, 2022)

Jeff Robinson said:


>


This is Lionel, a more hard-working and dedicated comrade you'd be hard-pushed to find. Not the most socialised person, but the ICL's problems are not caused by him.


----------



## Jeff Robinson (Feb 9, 2022)

Matt Kelly said:


> This is Lionel, a more hard-working and dedicated comrade you'd be hard-pushed to find. Not the most socialised person, but the ICL's problems are not caused by him.



I can tell he’s hardworking, NK has acquired nuclear weapons since that sign was made, so he must be doing something right!


----------



## spring-peeper (Feb 9, 2022)

I'm confused about all these new members signing on to U75 with the sole purpose of posting on this thread.

Is there some memo sent to Spartacists to come here to meet up and convince us (U75 members) of their cause?


----------



## JimW (Feb 9, 2022)

spring-peeper said:


> I'm confused about all these new members signing on to U75 with the sole purpose of posting on this thread.
> 
> Is there some memo sent to Spartacists to come here to meet up and convince us (U75 members) of their cause?


As likely that it was such a significant part of people's lives to have been a member that even now they've left and it's mostly defunct they still look for related stuff online and want somewhere to discuss what the hell it was all about, would be my guess.


----------



## Magnus McGinty (Feb 9, 2022)

spring-peeper said:


> I'm confused about all these new members signing on to U75 with the sole purpose of posting on this thread.
> 
> Is there some memo sent to Spartacists to come here to meet up and convince us (U75 members) of their cause?



Perhaps they’re still in touch? Or engage in vanity googling.


----------



## Matt Kelly (Feb 9, 2022)

I followed this group because as an ex-member I have an interest in their demise and thought that someone here might be able to shed some light on recent happenings. The only thing I care about, to be honest, is the fate of the Prometheus Research Library.

Their current programme doesn't suit my thinking and their mode of operation certainly doesn't, although with the former it is more a case of them moving on.

What I found instead was a load of bellyaching and pseudo-psychology from people who regret their time in the Spartacists but never seemed to realise that it was a voluntary organisation. It might have been cultish, but it was never a cult. They might have taken themselves too seriously, but they were serious about building an alternative to the English Labour Party, unlike most of what passes for the English left.

I have no idea why Doug H expended so much effort explaining himself here. Ex-members speak well of him, but he has clearly chosen a non-socialist political path. Don't hold your breath waiting for Judith S. From what I have heard she has moved much further away from any semblance of socialism and I doubt if she would ever have given any time to ye lot.

A friend of mine, after glancing at some of the shite here, reminded me of words of Trotsky that I think still hold good, despite it being nearly a century since they were penned:

_"Without a party, apart from a party, over the head of a party, or with a substitute for a party, the proletarian revolution cannot conquer."_​
Matt.


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## Carl Steele (Feb 9, 2022)

spring-peeper said:


> I'm confused about all these new members signing on to U75 with the sole purpose of posting on this thread.
> 
> Is there some memo sent to Spartacists to come here to meet up and convince us (U75 members) of their cause?



You can take the boy out of the Spartacist League, but you can't take the Spartacist League out of the boy.
(you can but it's not easy).

So there's the brute fact of the thread's existence for which we can thank Idris2002 

And then there's:


JimW said:


> As likely that it was such a significant part of people's lives to have been a member that even now they've left and it's mostly defunct they still look for related stuff online and want somewhere to discuss what the hell it was all about, would be my guess.



Being a Spart is much like being a Scientologist or JW, once you leave it's hard to make sense of why you did it in the first place and it leaves a very deep impression on you.

And then I'm here saying it was all crap, and that's very triggering for some - Tom Riley took time off from building the revolutionary party to write maybe the longest document on his website denouncing me. And I'm not even politically active.

And then:


Magnus McGinty said:


> Perhaps they’re still in touch? Or engage in vanity googling.



Both of these things. Blame the world wide web.

So there you have it, question answered by committee


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## hitmouse (Feb 9, 2022)

Matt Kelly said:


> This is Lionel, a more hard-working and dedicated comrade you'd be hard-pushed to find. Not the most socialised person, but the ICL's problems are not caused by him.


Does he know how famous he is?


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## Kevin Oakleigh (Feb 10, 2022)

I’ve recently read the exchange on the “Notes from Underground”blog and Tom Riley's “Jimstown as we new it.” His earlier “Jimstown” (1985) I had never read before while sections (but not all) of “On the Logan show trial” I knew. 
From an ex comrade I retrieved some of my own letters written some 14 /15 years ago. An extract from one I’ve uploaded here concerning the very early SLANZ and and a member, Ken M, who was driven out. I’m sure he was seen as a possible alternative leadership in a situation where one could have arisen. I believe this purge set the basis for the 100% Bill and Adaire regime in Australia.

What is written between [ ] I’ve added and a deletion with an ellipse


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## AmateurAgitator (Feb 10, 2022)

Matt Kelly said:


> I followed this group because as an ex-member I have an interest in their demise and thought that someone here might be able to shed some light on recent happenings. The only thing I care about, to be honest, is the fate of the Prometheus Research Library.
> 
> Their current programme doesn't suit my thinking and their mode of operation certainly doesn't, although with the former it is more a case of them moving on.
> 
> ...




When you say that the Sparts ain't a cult I just hear the voice of Douglas Reynholm saying " a religion *not a cult*!"


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## Magnus McGinty (Feb 10, 2022)

Shame this country is ruled by ten thousand idiots clever enough to pull it off.


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## danny la rouge (Feb 10, 2022)

This thread is fascinating. By “fascinating”, I of course mean “one I studiously avoid unless I end up here by accident, whereby I am always baffled by its mind numbing blend of the bonkers and the banal”.


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## nogojones (Feb 10, 2022)

Matt Kelly said:


> I followed this group because as an ex-member I have an interest in their demise and thought that someone here might be able to shed some light on recent happenings. The only thing I care about, to be honest, is the fate of the Prometheus Research Library.
> 
> Their current programme doesn't suit my thinking and their mode of operation certainly doesn't, although with the former it is more a case of them moving on.
> 
> ...


I love these ex-sparts who, even though they think we are beneath their level of comprehension and debate, still rock up here to entertain us.

Thanks guys.


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## Magnus McGinty (Feb 10, 2022)

nogojones said:


> I love these ex-sparts who, even though they think we are beneath their level of comprehension and debate, still rock up here to entertain us.
> 
> Thanks guys.


Don't scare them off!


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## nogojones (Feb 10, 2022)

Magnus McGinty said:


> Don't scare them off!


They're the only true, big bold revolutionaries round these parts. There's no way little old me could scare them.


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## The39thStep (Feb 10, 2022)

danny la rouge said:


> This thread is fascinating. By “fascinating”, I of course mean “one I studiously avoid unless I end up here by accident, whereby I am always baffled by its mind numbing blend of the bonkers and the banal”.


On the other hand it’s the only place on the internet where ex Sparts have found a home . I wonder if we put some titbits out and were very quiet that we could attract ex members of Workers Power who we are one time the largest smallest Trot org in the U.K.


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## nogojones (Feb 10, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> On the other hand it’s the only place on the internet where ex Sparts have found a home . I wonder if we put some titbits out and were very quiet that we could attract ex members of Workers Power who we are one time the largest smallest Trot org in the U.K.


I do hope so. One of their leading members, who when intervening in meetings always came over as a proper robo-trot and headbanger, eventually gave up on me and turned out to be a real sweetie and quite a laugh.


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## The39thStep (Feb 10, 2022)

nogojones said:


> I do hope so. One of their leading members, who when intervening in meetings always came over as a proper robo-trot and headbanger, eventually gave up on me and turned out to be a real sweetie and quite a laugh.


I think at one time they had about 25% of their membership on here , and then like that, in a flash , they were gone .


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## hitmouse (Feb 10, 2022)

Matt Kelly said:


> A friend of mine, after glancing at some of the shite here, reminded me of words of Trotsky that I think still hold good, despite it being nearly a century since they were penned:
> 
> _"Without a party, apart from a party, over the head of a party, or with a substitute for a party, the proletarian revolution cannot conquer."_​


What if the proletarian revolution just has a work event, would that do it?


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## Magnus McGinty (Feb 10, 2022)

It's a thing of beauty albeit for a niche audience. Maybe in several million years time when the next version of humans find all the hard drives after reawakening from the capitalist apocalypse it'll become a cult classic!


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## Dom Traynor (Feb 10, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> I think at one time they had about 25% of their membership on here , and then like that, in a flash , they were gone .


We could have former members of Permanant Revolution led by CockneyRicePudRebel arguing with WP loyalists about a leaflet written in 2003 and which feels like my 1983.


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## newbie (Feb 10, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> I think at one time they had about 25% of their membership on here , and then like that, in a flash , they were gone .


somebody took the piss and scared them off!


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## Sue (Feb 10, 2022)

newbie said:


> somebody took the piss and scared them off!


Orders?


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## JeffTipps4 (Feb 10, 2022)

Was anyone here at the Seymour - Mandel debate in New York? I read the report of it and would pay good money to attend something like that. Probably makes me a little strange but who cares!


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## nogojones (Feb 11, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> What if the proletarian revolution just has a work event, would that do it?


As long as we take the state by surprise by ambushing it, the jobs a good 'un.


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## krtek a houby (Feb 11, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> On the other hand it’s the only place on the internet where ex Sparts have found a home . I wonder if we put some titbits out and were very quiet that we could attract ex members of Workers Power who we are one time the largest smallest Trot org in the U.K.


spartan 75


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## JimW (Feb 11, 2022)

krtek a houby said:


> spartan 75


Urban 300


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## deeyo (Feb 12, 2022)

JimW said:


> Urban 300


sparts comes in spurts.


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## A380 (Feb 12, 2022)

JimW said:


> Urban 300


URBAN!!!


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## JimW (Feb 12, 2022)

Come back _carrying _this trestle table of defences of the North Korean deformed workers' state - or _on _it!


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## kenny g (Feb 12, 2022)

This is quite eye opening with regards to the IBT NZ operations..









						Appendix I to Letter of Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency
					

[Appendix I to Letter of Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency by Samuel Trachtenberg] Posting To alt.politics.socialism.trotsky –“Publish and be damned” Newsgroup…




					rr4i.milharal.org
				






> Making a proper example of Peter and driving him into political suicide was the desirable outcome of the 25th May meeting.
> 
> 
> 
> I do not think that Bill’s characterisation of Peter as a ‘pathetic piece of human material’ was inappropriate or unnecessarily abusive, I just think it was unscientific and insufficiently insulting.


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## kenny g (Feb 12, 2022)

Bit more context:. The International Bolshevik Tendency “Explains” Its Demise


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## Idris2002 (Feb 12, 2022)

"I do not think that Bill’s characterisation of Peter as a ‘pathetic piece of human material’ was inappropriate or unnecessarily abusive, I just think it was unscientific and insufficiently insulting. "

In fairness, I could see many members of our own tribe that hides from man saying something like this in the heat of the moment of a urban bunfight.


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## Carl Steele (Feb 12, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> "I do not think that Bill’s characterisation of Peter as a ‘pathetic piece of human material’ was inappropriate or unnecessarily abusive, I just think it was unscientific and insufficiently insulting. "
> 
> In fairness, I could see many members of our own tribe that hides from man saying something like this in the heat of the moment of a urban bunfight.



In fairness:

"I think it would be useful to address how the PRG would have dealt with the traitor Peter in the context of proletarian insurrection or a civil war between revolutionary proletarian forces and capitalist forces. A revolutionary organization leading such a desperate struggle would have promptly physically disposed of the traitor after extracting information from him by whatever means were found necessary.

In the present situation the tasks for the PRG were to get rid of Peter in a manner which accomplished two purposes:-
One: *render him ideologically and emotionally incapable of doing the PRG damage*.
Two: drive home to the PRG membership the full scope of Peter’s betrayal and his uselessness to revolutionary Marxism."


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## nogojones (Feb 12, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> In fairness:
> 
> "I think it would be useful to address how the PRG would have dealt with the traitor Peter in the context of proletarian insurrection or a civil war between revolutionary proletarian forces and capitalist forces. A revolutionary organization leading such a desperate struggle would have promptly physically disposed of the traitor after extracting information from him by whatever means were found necessary.
> 
> ...


Serious business. 

I had a quick read and I couldn't figure out what PRG stands for. Anyone?


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## Shechemite (Feb 12, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> In fairness:
> 
> "I think it would be useful to address how the PRG would have dealt with the traitor Peter in the context of proletarian insurrection or a civil war between revolutionary proletarian forces and capitalist forces. A revolutionary organization leading such a desperate struggle would have promptly physically disposed of the traitor after extracting information from him by whatever means were found necessary.
> 
> ...



This is madness


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## Carl Steele (Feb 12, 2022)

nogojones said:


> I had a quick read and I couldn't figure out what PRG stands for. Anyone?


Permanent Revolution Group



Shechemite said:


> This is madness


Yes it is.


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## hitmouse (Feb 12, 2022)

"Menshevik bulge" is pure poetry. Is that a Menshevik bulge in your PRG or are you just pleased to see me, etc?



kenny g said:


> Bit more context:. The International Bolshevik Tendency “Explains” Its Demise


I also liked 
"More significantly, we failed to win over members of the Coletivo Lenin (CL) in Rio de Janeiro, some of whom eventually aligned themselves with Sam T., a talented but troubled former IBT member" - I guess that's meant to be a diss, but it sounds more like they're setting him up for the role of the brooding antihero for the HBO adaptation. When the essential revolutionary leadership of the working class is in crisis, only Sam T, a talented but troubled former IBT member, can etc etc.


nogojones said:


> Serious business.
> 
> I had a quick read and I couldn't figure out what PRG stands for. Anyone?


I couldn't work it out either. I hope they're not deranged enough to call themselves a Provisional Revolutionary Government but who the fuck can say?


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## kenny g (Feb 12, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> "Menshevik bulge" is pure poetry. Is that a Menshevik bulge in your PRG or are you just pleased to see me, etc?
> 
> 
> I also liked
> ...


I was thinking series 3 when I found that site. You would need shed loads of stamina to craft it all into a drama. Docu series maybe could work. Bill comes across as a kind bloke on the TV interview I've seen where he is talking about gay legal reform in NZ so it is all the more remarkable to read this kind of thing. But I suppose when you are preparing for world revolution and only have a few handfuls of members the gloves do need to come off...


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## Carl Steele (Feb 12, 2022)

hitmouse said:


> "Menshevik bulge" is pure poetry. Is that a Menshevik bulge in your PRG or are you just pleased to see me, etc?


 Very good! I'm not sure of the etymology of the term but the Sparts did use it from time to time (I think there were a variety of possible "bulges", they weren't all Menshevik).


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## Carl Steele (Feb 12, 2022)

kenny g said:


> I was thinking series 3 when I found that site. You would need shed loads of stamina to craft it all into a drama. Docu series maybe could work. Bill comes across as a kind bloke on the TV interview I've seen where he is talking about gay legal reform in NZ so it is all the more remarkable to read this kind of thing. But I suppose when you are preparing for world revolution and only have a few handfuls of members the gloves do need to come off...



Bill is a therapist, so shades of the Sopranos, you could have him counselling clients and trashing his PRG members.

And I'd forgotten, but towards the end of my tenure in the Sparts I went to therapy sessions. I couldn't afford to pay so a therapist found me a trainee who was willing to do it for free to get experience. She was a nice young woman who did her best, but my descriptions of Spart branch meetings often left her lost for words - apart from "it sounds like insanity" - particularly because I kept insisting most of it was perfectly reasonable, if admittedly unpleasant.


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## Dom Traynor (Feb 12, 2022)

This thread has led me down a rabbit hole on some of the nuttier elements of the NZ left, and it's interesting to see how many are still around on the fringes plowing the same furrow.


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## Carl Steele (Feb 13, 2022)

kenny g said:


> Appendix I to Letter of Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency
> 
> 
> [Appendix I to Letter of Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency by Samuel Trachtenberg] Posting To alt.politics.socialism.trotsky –“Publish and be damned” Newsgroup…
> ...



One of Tom Riley's big problems with me is that I dispute his claim that the Sparts were a once healthy revolutionary organisation that degenerated from about 1978 onwards. There are a lot of things wrong with the claim. There is testimony, including some of his own, which contradicts this. And it's just too convenient - everything started to go wrong around the time the organisation turned on him. But fundamentally it shows his failure to understand how an organisation like the Sparts or the BT functions. 

The madness described in the above Appendix is the underlying reality of these grandiose/socially disconnected organisations. It's not though always in plain sight. It bubbles up or erupts periodically depending upon the pressures or personalities in play. There will be periods of relative calm, when the literary side comes to the fore and the elemental insanity merely lurks beneath the surface. And then something happens, the great leader perceives a threat, the revolution is in jeopardy, the traitor must be driven out ...


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## Carl Steele (Feb 18, 2022)

Matt Kelly said:


> What I found instead was a load of bellyaching and pseudo-psychology from people who regret their time in the Spartacists but never seemed to realise that it was a voluntary organisation. It might have been cultish, but it was never a cult. They might have taken themselves too seriously, but they were serious about building an alternative to the English Labour Party, unlike most of what passes for the English left.



Just wanted to respond to this complaint.

Let's go back to basics.

"It was a voluntary organisation" - that's kind of the whole point.

An analogy: let's say you visit a friend, and he's in his back garden, and there's stuff strewn all over - balls of string, lengths of piping, tools of various types, lumps of metal, empty oil drums, boxes of fireworks. And he's hard at work, hammering, drilling, and so on. And you ask, what are you doing? And he says, "I'm building a space rocket, I want to go to the moon." You may be forgiven for thinking his behaviour is best explained by his psychology (which is not the same as saying his behaviour is best explained by a psychologist).

So let's say you have fifty people, mostly young and middle class, socially disconnected, alienated from society, who produce a newspaper which drives away other middle class people who are ideologically closest to them, and you ask, "what are you doing?" And they say, "we are building an alternative to the Labour Party." You might be forgiven for thinking there are matters of psychology involved.

The idea that a party that could lead the working class to the revolutionary seizure of power could be constructed by corralling together middle class twenty-somethings from the WSL, IMG and Workers Power was deranged.

There is a reason why the Sparts failed, and there is a reason why the Bolshevik Tendency (both of them) has failed so abjectly. And the reasons are not hard to see, unless you make them so.


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## PTK (Feb 19, 2022)

I have not logged on to this site for a couple of months, and tonight I did so and was pleasantly surprised. So many posts!

I found Doug’s posts interesting. I knew him briefly, and I thought he was a nice person, and perhaps he is, but he has exposed a serious character flaw.

I happen to have grown a very long beard during the pandemic, and I am going to cut it back severely in the next week or so, as I am going to a funeral.

The funeral will be very upsetting, but cutting the beard will not be at all traumatic. Cutting the hairs on my face not at all be comparable to having an abortion. Doug’s penis is simply a collection of cells, but I am sure that he would feel rather differently about being told to have it amputated than he would being told to have a shave.

That Doug can write about this issue in this way demonstrates a severe lack of empathy. He strikes me as not lacking empathy altogether, so I suspect that he is a misogynist. He just cannot imagine how a pregnant women would feel about her pregnancy.

Doug seems unable to accept that the man with whom he has such a great friendship could ever do anything grossly immoral. Doug is not alone in suffering from such a weakness.


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## PTK (Feb 19, 2022)

hitmouse said:


>


Down with this kind of thing!


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## PTK (Feb 19, 2022)

co-op said:


> Yes and obviously this is the bit that makes them look crazy now - but I was talking about the belief in the transformational political and social revolution, that it was possible and even imminent.
> 
> I don't think there's really anyone on the left who actually thinks that now - and to be honest if I met one who did, I'd tend to think _they_ were crazy.
> 
> ...


I was very young in the early 1970s. It is difficult to convey the spirit of the times. There were titanic class struggles in Britain, and all around the world. It did not seem stupid to think that there could be a revolution in Britain.


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## Carl Steele (Feb 19, 2022)

PTK said:


> I found Doug’s posts interesting. I knew him briefly, and I thought he was a nice person, and perhaps he is, but he has exposed a serious character flaw.



I found it difficult to tell when he meant what he said, and when he was just trolling. Came across as very cynical.


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## PTK (Feb 19, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I don't recognise anyone in the photo. But then I haven't seen Marie for about 40 years so she will have changed somewhat. And I notice you called the photo _Maria_.
> 
> Where did you get the photo and why do you think one of them is Marie H? ETA see my next post!!
> 
> ...





Carl Steele said:


> The Sparts were not looking to lead the revolution at some indefinite point in the future. Here's what Bill Logan had to say in 1971
> 
> _"One of my most profound memories was Nixon’s new economic policy, announced in 1971 on the same day Adaire and I arrived in the United States. It was discussed at the expanded Central Committee Plenum which took place shortly afterwards, the biggest gathering of the Spartacist tendency which had ever taken place up to that point, and, of course the biggest communist meeting I had ever been at. This was the Plenum at which the Communist Workers Collective fused with the SL/U.S., and at which the transformation of the Spartacist League was initiated, with the institution of a monthly Workers Vanguard and the implementation of a serious plan of industrialisation.
> 
> ...


This analysis is not completely wrong. The Nixon Shock, as it is called, meant the end of the post-War Keynesian settlement, and marked the beginning of a transitional period that ended in neo-liberalism. It is understandable that at the time people thought that this presaged a crisis so huge that it would call into question the existence of the capitalist system.

Most Leninists have to believe that capitalism is about to undergo a terminal crisis. This is what keeps them going. Therefore they tend to imagine there are greater possibilities in each crisis than there actually are. However, the Nixon Shock was a significant point in the history of the most developed economies, that would lead to opportunities for a left-wing group to intervene.


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## PTK (Feb 19, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I found it difficult to tell when he meant what he said, and when he was just trolling. Came across as very cynical.


Doug seems to be joking at times. If he actually believes his comments about Iraq, then he is profoundly ignorant. I am unsure why he would want people to think that he is ignorant.


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## Carl Steele (Feb 20, 2022)

PTK said:


> This analysis is not completely wrong. The Nixon Shock, as it is called, meant the end of the post-War Keynesian settlement, and marked the beginning of a transitional period that ended in neo-liberalism. It is understandable that at the time people thought that this presaged a crisis so huge that it would call into question the existence of the capitalist system.



When I said the analysis was "completely wrong" I was referring to this:

_"I remember Jim Robertson and Marv Treiger winding the organisation up for the transformation with talk about how we didn’t have much time—a few years and we’d have our final shot at it. The expectation was that huge class battles were looming, battles in which we would have our last chance."_

The meeting Logan is describing took place in 1971. As far as I know there was a lull in strike action in USA in the following few years (despite serious problems in the economy). It certainly wasn't the last chance saloon.



PTK said:


> Most Leninists have to believe that capitalism is about to undergo a terminal crisis. This is what keeps them going. Therefore they tend to imagine there are greater possibilities in each crisis than there actually are. However, the Nixon Shock was a significant point in the history of the most developed economies, that would lead to opportunities for a left-wing group to intervene.



There is a big difference between "a terminal crisis" and "opportunities for a left-wing group to intervene."

And it is one thing to believe a terminal crisis is around the corner, and quite another to believe that your miniscule organisation can lead the masses out of the crisis and establish a new social order. Though I suppose the two things are often related.



PTK said:


> I was very young in the early 1970s. It is difficult to convey the spirit of the times. There were titanic class struggles in Britain, and all around the world. It did not seem stupid to think that there could be a revolution in Britain.



Nothing wrong with a bit of youthful optimism but Jim Robertson was 43 years old in 1971.


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## charlie mowbray (Feb 22, 2022)

Four or five Sparts on the UCU strike demo in London today. Tried to engage us in talk about lockdown but we told 'em to do one.


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## Idris2002 (Feb 22, 2022)

charlie mowbray said:


> Four or five Sparts on the UCU strike demo in London today. Tried to engage us in talk about lockdown but we told 'em to do one.


THEY WALK AMONG US


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## nogojones (Feb 22, 2022)

charlie mowbray said:


> Four or five Sparts on the UCU strike demo in London today. Tried to engage us in talk about lockdown but we told 'em to do one.


What a wasted opportunity  You should have told them to come on here and explain their position at length as we're crying out for serious debate.


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## Sue (Feb 22, 2022)

nogojones said:


> What a wasted opportunity  You should have told them to come on here and explain their position at length as we're crying out for serious debate immensely long wtf posts.


CFY.


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## AmateurAgitator (Feb 22, 2022)

charlie mowbray said:


> Four or five Sparts on the UCU strike demo in London today. Tried to engage us in talk about lockdown but we told 'em to do one.


About two thirds of their membership! Wow! You folks were most honoured.


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## charlie mowbray (Feb 22, 2022)

“_For the last year, the position of the ICL was to accept the lockdowns as necessary. We repudiate this position. It was a capitulation to the “national unity” rallying cry that all classes should support the lockdowns because they save lives._“ FFS, no way will I engage with these clowns.


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## kenny g (Feb 22, 2022)

charlie mowbray said:


> “_For the last year, the position of the ICL was to accept the lockdowns as necessary. We repudiate this position. It was a capitulation to the “national unity” rallying cry that all classes should support the lockdowns because they save lives._“ FFS, no way will I engage with these clowns.


Were any of them featured in the photo's on this thread?


----------



## charlie mowbray (Feb 22, 2022)

kenny g said:


> Were any of them featured in the photo's on this thread?


Not really inclined to go back over 27 pages of posts to find out. By the way, the demo was piss poor. Only about 200 on it, and well Trotted out. Apart from the Sparts there was SWP, Counterfire, Socialist Party, Socialist Appeal, Socialist Alternative, Workers Power, WRP (Newsline) but didn't see any AWL or RCG/FRFI, BT


----------



## hitmouse (Feb 22, 2022)

charlie mowbray said:


> but didn't see any AWL...


Is that cos they're all in disguise in hopes that they'll be allowed to remain in Labour if no-one can spot them?


----------



## petee (Feb 22, 2022)

i envy you trots your problems. at least youse engage.


----------



## hitmouse (Feb 22, 2022)

Something something hard as steel, clear as a poster who's been put on ignore.


----------



## imposs1904 (Feb 22, 2022)

petee said:


> i envy you trots your problems. *at least youse engage*.



With each other? Swapping (no pun intended) leaflets?


----------



## petee (Feb 23, 2022)

imposs1904 said:


> With each other? Swapping (no pun intended) leaflets?



it's more than the International Cricket Conference does!


----------



## imposs1904 (Feb 23, 2022)

petee said:


> it's more than the International Cricket Conference does!



Are they still knocking about NYC?


----------



## tim (Feb 23, 2022)

Can't see the trees for the trots


----------



## JeffTipps4 (Feb 23, 2022)

More sign of 'life' this in Canada on the truckers.

Icl-fi.org


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 25, 2022)

petee said:


> i envy you trots your problems. at least youse engage.



Yes, it's just great, if you like dysfunctional families


----------



## Idris2002 (Feb 25, 2022)

I was thinking earlier today that it's a remarkable that a tendency or tradition whose roots date back to the 1890s/1900s, and which still has doctrinal continuities with those roots (unlike the social democratic parties), should even exist, and retain the ability to be players, in a small way, in a few countries (I mean Trotskyism in general, not just the Sparts).


----------



## petee (Feb 25, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> Yes, it's just great, if you like dysfunctional families



at least you have a family!


----------



## Idris2002 (Feb 25, 2022)

petee said:


> at least you're a family!


Their house is a museum.


----------



## petee (Feb 25, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> Their house is a museum.



at least they have a house!


----------



## kenny g (Feb 26, 2022)

Although I have found this thread fascinating it is pretty tragic that it is one of the most active in terms of "protest, direct action and demos". Are we all that broken?


----------



## JimW (Feb 26, 2022)

Do we have their line on Ukraine?


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 26, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> I was thinking earlier today that it's a remarkable that a tendency or tradition whose roots date back to the 1890s/1900s, and which still has doctrinal continuities with those roots (unlike the social democratic parties), should even exist, and retain the ability to be players, in a small way, in a few countries (I mean Trotskyism in general, not just the Sparts).



What you mean by doctrinal continuities? There are certainly political continuities from Eduard Bernstein to Jeremy Corbyn, but maybe you mean something else.

Trotskyism is a fairly subjective term. Kshama Sawant's Socialist Alternative (who have done some good work in Seattle) think of themselves as Trotskyists as do the Internationalist Group (1990's split from the Sparts). But the two organisations really are chalk and cheese.


----------



## The39thStep (Feb 26, 2022)

JimW said:


> Do we have their line on Ukraine?


Perfect opportunity to rebuild the fourth international


----------



## DaveCinzano (Feb 26, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> Perfect opportunity to rebuild the fourth international


Rebuilding the Fourth International is the political equivalent of repainting the Forth Bridge


----------



## Carl Steele (Feb 26, 2022)

DaveCinzano said:


> Rebuilding the Fourth International is the political equivalent of repainting the Forth Bridge



You'd better get started then


----------



## The39thStep (Feb 26, 2022)

DaveCinzano said:


> Rebuilding the Fourth International is the political equivalent of repainting the Forth Bridge


That’s why Workers Power’s Fifth International used Cuprinol


----------



## Dom Traynor (Feb 26, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> That’s why Workers Power’s Fifth International used Cuprinol


They balanced the millennium foot bridge in London


----------



## Carl Steele (Mar 3, 2022)

I'll put this here because I don't want to pollute the discussion on the war.

This is from Tom Riley's Bolshevik Tendency. The particulars of the analysis don't interest me very much. The belief that what they write on their website is of historical significance is more interesting. This is the product of living in your head (and never setting foot outside) for 50 years or more:

_We know that the ranks of the TF, IG and even the WSWS, are mainly composed of serious subjective revolutionaries. We appeal to them to think through the politics and potential geopolitical stakes in the current confrontation. The WSWS correctly describes it as “in essence, and in fact, a war between NATO and Russia”—in this war Trotskyists have a side, despite the unpleasant character of Putin’s reactionary bonapartist regime. It is not too late to break with muddleheaded centrism and the “anti-war” pacifist neutrality which, at bottom, represents a capitulation to imperialist ideological pressure.

This is no time for sitting on the fence—if Russia successfully “de-Nato-izes” Ukraine, it will make the world a safer place for the Chinese deformed workers’ state, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and the many other countries targeted by the rapacious US imperialism and its allies. A NATO triumph over Russia in Ukraine will represent the opposite, and bring humanity one step closer to the risk of annihilation.

Down with social-pacifist neutrality—Ukraine has no ‘right’ to join NATO!

The international workers’ movement must defend Russia against imperialist encroachment!

Smash capitalism through world socialist workers’ revolution!_


----------



## hitmouse (Mar 3, 2022)

Does this mean that Riley's lot will be sending volunteers weapons huge stacks of unsold newspapers to support the Russian war effort?


----------



## kebabking (Mar 3, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I'll put this here because I don't want to pollute the discussion on the war.
> 
> This is from Tom Riley's Bolshevik Tendency. The particulars of the analysis don't interest me very much. The belief that what they write on their website is of historical significance is more interesting. This is the product of living in your head (and never setting foot outside) for 50 years or more:
> 
> ...


----------



## Idris2002 (Mar 4, 2022)

"This whole thing stinks of imperialists encroachment" I shout, as I flip the table over and turn the National Day of Reconciliation and Accord into the National Day of Shit.


----------



## hitmouse (Mar 4, 2022)

This is a fantastic line as well: _Over the years we have had many important political differences with the IG, and have been sharply critical of its refusal to repudiate the social-patriotic flinches of the grotesquely degenerated Spartacist League, our common political ancestor._

The bit about _We know that the ranks of the TF, IG and even the WSWS, are mainly composed of serious subjective revolutionaries _is also an interesting concept - "looked at objectively, you're a fucking clown, but subjectively, you're very serious inside your head"?


----------



## Carl Steele (Mar 4, 2022)

Our common ancestor, a grotesquely degenerated Spartacist


----------



## Carl Steele (Mar 9, 2022)

As a distraction in these stressful times here are a few more wise words from James Robertson, great revolutionary leader, about one year before his sudden, shocking and totally unexpected degeneration. He's talking in 1977 about how the Spartacist League was first given life:

"The Spartacist League of the U.S. has been built through regroupment and recruitment and in the flowing continuity of the history of Trotskyism, it has not been built the way that a pearl is built. When you unfold all the layers of a pearl, at the bottom you find a piece of hard quartz. The first act in the creation of the Spartacist League was sexual, that is to say, two components came together in a regroupment. And the sexual experience of accretion has continued since. Some comrades don't understand this and since they come in as outsiders, right, in a regroupment, they continue to feel themselves strangers. This is a pathological reaction that is false and I encourage all the comrades to examine where all the rest of us came from. It was all sexual."

Interesting imagery, is it not?

It's from a Talk on Party History in this internal bulletin. The whole talk is 15 pages long and impossible to follow unless you already know the history (so what's the purpose of the talk?)


----------



## belboid (Mar 9, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> As a distraction in these stressful times here are a few more wise words from James Robertson, great revolutionary leader, about one year before his sudden, shocking and totally unexpected degeneration. He's talking in 1977 about how the Spartacist League was first given life:
> 
> "The Spartacist League of the U.S. has been built through regroupment and recruitment and in the flowing continuity of the history of Trotskyism, it has not been built the way that a pearl is built. When you unfold all the layers of a pearl, at the bottom you find a piece of hard quartz. The first act in the creation of the Spartacist League was sexual, that is to say, two components came together in a regroupment. And the sexual experience of accretion has continued since. Some comrades don't understand this and since they come in as outsiders, right, in a regroupment, they continue to feel themselves strangers. This is a pathological reaction that is false and I encourage all the comrades to examine where all the rest of us came from. It was all sexual."
> 
> ...


That is one of the ickiest things I've ever read


----------



## Dom Traynor (Mar 10, 2022)

If one of the groups was much younger than the other, that might explain the support for R Kelly.


----------



## JimW (Mar 10, 2022)

Get up, get up, get up, get up
Let's make pamphlets tonight
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up
'Cos you do it right

And when I get that feeling
I want sexual accretion


----------



## JeffTipps4 (Mar 20, 2022)

The SL were at the anti racist demo today with a placard saying donate Trident to North Korea.

Apart from anything else complete illusions in the capitalist state!


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Mar 20, 2022)

I was at the RMT demo in Dover on Friday and was offered a copy of the Worker's Hammer when I arrived. WRP were there trying to sell their paper aswell.


----------



## nogojones (Mar 20, 2022)

JimW said:


> Get up, get up, get up, get up
> Let's make pamphlets tonight
> Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up
> 'Cos you do it right
> ...


Oh, now you've put me in the mood. 

I want to make love to you on top of a big pile of Workers Hammers.


----------



## Idris2002 (Mar 20, 2022)

Imagine him standing over you, with his lad in his hand.


----------



## DaveCinzano (Mar 20, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> Imagine him standing over you, with his lad in his hand.


At it hammer & sickles


----------



## Idris2002 (Mar 20, 2022)

Pass the sick bag, Alice.


----------



## DaveCinzano (Mar 20, 2022)

Ruling class tremblers and proletarian chain-play


----------



## hitmouse (Mar 20, 2022)

Is that a Workers' Hammer in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?


----------



## DaveCinzano (Mar 20, 2022)

Spartacist a girl and I liked it


----------



## Carl Steele (Mar 20, 2022)

This discussion gives the term "a steel-hardened Bolshevik cadre" a whole new meaning. Who could resist?


----------



## Lurdan (Mar 26, 2022)

twitter link

🤣


----------



## belboid (Mar 27, 2022)

_Donate Trident to North Korea_ is fucking beautiful


----------



## imposs1904 (Mar 27, 2022)

belboid said:


> _Donate Trident to North Korea_ is fucking beautiful



I was going to donate my Trident to Age Concern but if North Korea want it  -  and are prepared to collect it - then they can have it.


----------



## petee (Mar 27, 2022)

imposs1904 said:


> I was going to donate my Trident to Age Concern but if North Korea want it  -  and are prepared to collect it - then they can have it.



good idea, maybe they're great gum-chewers.


----------



## Carl Steele (Mar 27, 2022)

it's a piece of street theatre, it's what they've always done. Gerry Clarke described the phenomena back in 1974:

"The simultaneous rise of the black struggle and the struggle against the war gave the SL an opportunity to “come alive” and put forth its revolutionary line on nationalism and imperialist war. However, this work was carried out, due to force of habit, in a sectarian fashion: leaders and organizations were denounced as usual, communist slogans were advanced everywhere and at all times; lengthy statements were issued on the necessity of class struggle; the red banners were unfurled and the record was made. After all this was done, the SLers disappeared back into their cosy meeting rooms and apartments and planned their next "strategy." No one could say - and let history record it! - that the revolutionary Trotskyists did not speak out against reformism and class collaboration!"

Gerry Clark, April 24, 1974
IDB 23, August 1974


----------



## Carl Steele (Apr 10, 2022)

I've just sent Tom Riley a reply to his novella, _Jimstown as we knew it._ It's attached here. I've ignored the personal vitriol in his document and done my best not to reply in kind. Tempting though. Riley's document is very strange in places. The details he relates often contradict the general point he's trying to make.


----------



## JeffTipps4 (Apr 12, 2022)

Thanks Carl very interesting. I wonder if Tom R and the BT will venture a reply on that. I hope so as I would like to hear their views on it.


----------



## Carl Steele (Apr 12, 2022)

JeffTipps4 said:


> Thanks Carl very interesting. I wonder if Tom R and the BT will venture a reply on that. I hope so as I would like to hear their views on it.



I was quite reluctant to write the response which is why it took me so long to do it. Riley will feel compelled to reply, he has to set the record straight (in the cosmic history book). I'll give it a miss next time unless Riley says something interesting (not likely - it'll probably get quite toxic).

I'm sorry this thought didn't make it in (only occurred to me this morning), but Joseph Hansen who was Trotsky's secretary in Mexico and later a leader of the SWP(US) dismissed Robertson as "a talented archivist." Apparently Robertson's apartment was full of boxes of dog-eared documents, minutes, letters etc. from various Trotskyist groups. And I wonder if he got lost in his reading, maybe he became a character in the docudrama, and built the Spartacist League as a place where he could act out his revolutionary fantasy life (a bit like wacky King Ludwig II and the construction of Neuschwanstein).


----------



## PTK (May 15, 2022)

I have not looked at this forum for months. 
I just looked at the Sparts website, and found that there is a special supplement of Workers Hammer on the election in the Phillipines. There is, sad to say, nothing on this document on the issue of the day: the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial.



			https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wh/2022-philippines-election/wh-2022-philippines-election.pdf


----------



## PTK (May 15, 2022)

I have not looked at this forum for months. There is some interesting stuff. It inspired me to look at the Sparts website, and I found that there is a special supplement of Workers Hammer on the election in the Philippines. There is, sad to say, nothing on this document on the issue of the day: the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial.



			https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wh/2022-philippines-election/wh-2022-philippines-election.pdf


----------



## spring-peeper (May 15, 2022)

PTK said:


> I have not looked at this forum for months.
> I just looked at the Sparts website, and found that there is a special supplement of Workers Hammer on the election in the Phillipines. There is, sad to say, nothing on this document on the issue of the day: the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial.
> 
> 
> ...




bit long.....


----------



## JeffTipps4 (May 19, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I was quite reluctant to write the response which is why it took me so long to do it. Riley will feel compelled to reply, he has to set the record straight (in the cosmic history book). I'll give it a miss next time unless Riley says something interesting (not likely - it'll probably get quite toxic).
> 
> I'm sorry this thought didn't make it in (only occurred to me this morning), but Joseph Hansen who was Trotsky's secretary in Mexico and later a leader of the SWP(US) dismissed Robertson as "a talented archivist." Apparently Robertson's apartment was full of boxes of dog-eared documents, minutes, letters etc. from various Trotskyist groups. And I wonder if he got lost in his reading, maybe he became a character in the docudrama, and built the Spartacist League as a place where he could act out his revolutionary fantasy life (a bit like wacky King Ludwig II and the construction of Neuschwanstein).


No reply from TR yet, could be a big one building. What look very strange if he didn't reply, would be sort of accepting your points


----------



## Carl Steele (May 21, 2022)

JeffTipps4 said:


> No reply from TR yet, could be a big one building. What look very strange if he didn't reply, would be sort of accepting your points


I don't think a non-reply would indicate an acceptance of my points because it's all agenda driven. He doesn't seem to notice how muddled it all is.

Anyway, since you seem to enjoy this so much here is the text of Riley's 1980 resignation letter from the Sparts. It's standard "I am not worthy of this wonderful revolutionary organisation" stuff  - the work of someone who's been trashed - with the added twist that the Sparts considered Riley so unworthy they told him to resign.

The letter was reprinted in Spartacist Canada (page 14).

----------------------

September 6, 1980

Dear Comrades:

I never thought I'd be writing out a resignation from the iSt, the only revolutionary organization in the world, but here it is. At the request of the organization I am resigning from the TLC.

In my 6 1/2 years in the organization I have never really assimilated any Cannonism -- instead on the org. question I have always tended to New Leftism. [The National Chairman] was probably right when he said that to make it in the org. I would have to undergo a "personality transformation"--something that's not going to happen as far as I can see.

So I guess it's best that I leave--Although I am very reluctant to do so. I have no bitterness towards the org.--and of course I agree with the political program. I'm just very sorry that I couldn't have fitted in.

[Tom] Riley

--------------------------------------------

Riley relates the bizarre story of his demise in _Jimstown as we knew it,_ where for obvious reasons he only quotes the first two sentences of his letter.


----------



## JeffTipps4 (May 22, 2022)

Thanks Carl that really is a classic! Imagine actually writing that?!


----------



## hitmouse (May 22, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> The letter was reprinted in Spartacist Canada (page 14).
> 
> ----------------------
> 
> ...


And no, I don't want no spart, a spart is a guy that can't get no love from me, etc etc.


----------



## Carl Steele (May 23, 2022)

JeffTipps4 said:


> Thanks Carl that really is a classic! Imagine actually writing that?!


I think I may have written something similar (can't quite remember), it's an expression of intense shame. Of course, as Riley was keen to point out, I actually wrote 2 resignation letters. I recall on the second occasion waiting some weeks to write it so as to allow the sense of shame and guilt to abate before putting pen to paper.

From Riley's own account it seems he hoped his resignation would give him a chance of being readmitted to membership - a bit like getting a divorce to save a marriage (as David Cameron put it in a different context).


----------



## Shechemite (May 23, 2022)

Several threads this could go in


----------



## Cerv (Jun 1, 2022)

belboid said:


> _Donate Trident to North Korea_ is fucking beautiful


it's a step up from "defend the North Korean worker's state right to nuclear weapons"
or was that some other group?


----------



## Dom Traynor (Jun 3, 2022)

Cerv said:


> it's a step up from "defend the North Korean worker's state right to nuclear weapons"
> or was that some other group?


Nope that was them.


----------



## PTK (Jun 3, 2022)

Shechemite said:


> Several threads this could go in



This is a significant change in style for the Spartacist League/Britain. For one thing, it never before employed such attractic graphics.


----------



## PTK (Jun 3, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I've just sent Tom Riley a reply to his novella, _Jimstown as we knew it._ It's attached here. I've ignored the personal vitriol in his document and done my best not to reply in kind. Tempting though. Riley's document is very strange in places. The details he relates often contradict the general point he's trying to make.


"When my description of the trashing of David Strachan appeared in 1917"

I am puzzled. You wrote an article for the ET/IBT's joural "1917" while you were still in the SL?


----------



## PTK (Jun 3, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> I've just sent Tom Riley a reply to his novella, _Jimstown as we knew it._ It's attached here. I've ignored the personal vitriol in his document and done my best not to reply in kind. Tempting though. Riley's document is very strange in places. The details he relates often contradict the general point he's trying to make.


There is minor error in your document, I believe. Was not the slogan "No to the Shah, No to the Mullahs"? It was “retrospectively” corrected at an international conference, when a member from, if I recall correctly, Germany pointed out that this was in effect abstentionist. The corrected slogan was “Down with the Shah, No the Mullahs”. As you point out, the Spartacists did nothing in practice in Iran, and perhaps if they had done so, they would not have come up with such a faulty slogan.

I like your document. I enjoyed reading it, and it made some good points.

It seems to me that the Spartacist League was never really part of the Labour movement. It was frightened of being genuinely involved in the movement. It appealed to people who felt separate to some extent from society. It made such people feel part of something, but on the other hand it made them more isolated from society.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jun 4, 2022)

PTK said:


> There is minor error in your document, I believe. Was not the slogan "No to the Shah, No to the Mullahs"? It was “retrospectively” corrected at an international conference, when a member from, if I recall correctly, Germany pointed out that this was in effect abstentionist. The corrected slogan was “Down with the Shah, No the Mullahs”.


The slogan was Down with the Shah! Down with the Mullahs! (don't forget the exclamation marks!). Retrospectively "correcting" a slogan which had no practical application kind of sums up the Spart project, in particular because the "correction" doesn't actually change the meaning and probably nobody apart from the Sparts knew about it. When Geoff White wrote (way back in 1968)  _"I question whether our basic orientation is not toward making a good record in some cosmic history book, rather than making history itself"_ he was so right.



PTK said:


> "When my description of the trashing of David Strachan appeared in 1917"
> 
> I am puzzled. You wrote an article for the ET/IBT's joural "1917" while you were still in the SL?


After I "quit" the sparts for the first time I wrote a letter which I never sent. I did however send a copy of the letter to Judith Shapiro to get her comments. Judith passed the letter on to Riley. Later, after I had rejoined the sparts, Riley published excerpts of the letter in an article in his journal, _1917_. My dalliance with what Judith referred to as "the Tom and Cathy brigade" (otherwise known as the ET/BT), was known to the sparts and they were unconcerned about the article. 

Incidentally it was probably Riley who sent Doug Hainline (aka VirulentNeocon) here to defend Jim Robertson's revolutionary virtue. Doug and Judith, Tom and Cathy, are buddies from way back, from the good times they spent together with Bill and Adaire in Britain.

And for the connoisseurs on this thread here's a bonus, a laughably obsequious tribute to Jim Robertson complete with photo.


----------



## PTK (Jun 4, 2022)

“Robertson ranks among the great heroes of revolutionary Marxism and the worldwide workingclass struggle for socialist liberation”. Indeed. There are reports that birds fell silent, and winds abated worldwide when the Eternal Archivist departed this world.

Either my memory of the Spartacist slogan on Iran is faulty, or reality has altered. I find that reality often alters as I become older. Reality was much more stable when I was young.
The Spartacists were, on paper, more in touch with reality with respect to the revolution in Iran in 1979 than the rest of the left, who uncritically allied with religious reactionaries.​


----------



## Carl Steele (Jun 4, 2022)

PTK said:


> The Spartacists were, on paper, more in touch with reality with respect to the revolution in Iran in 1979 than the rest of the left, who uncritically allied with religious reactionaries.


Are you shouting at me?

When you talk about "the rest of the left" who do you mean? Probably you are thinking of the IMG, SWP, Workers Power, Socialist Organiser and the RCP. Check out the post on page 18 from hitmouse where he provides links to 2 Anarchist groups whose commentary pointed out the reactionary nature of the Mullahs, It really was not so difficult to see how reactionary the Mullahs were. The Trot left failed because of their formulaic, knee-jerk anti-imperialism.

The problem for a serious political group was what to do, and here the Sparts failed just as dismally as their ORO competitors:

_"Only the intervention of an Iranian Trotskyist vanguard party can push the strike movement beyond its current demands and win the proletariat to a program for power: the revolutionary struggle for an Iranian workers and peasants government."_ - see the article I linked to in my previous post.

This was pure fantasy, utterly disconnected from reality  - the usual meaningless call for every uprising to follow the same path as the Russian October revolution.

Iran is the last gasp go-to for those who want to salvage something positive from their virtual-reality experience with the old pick-pocket Robertson. I made the point in an earlier post in this thread (and alluded to it at the end of my reply to Riley) - had the Sparts dropped all the "we are the party of the Russian Revolution" bullshit and stuck to political commentary they may have been able to contribute something. But this wasn't Robertson's game.

ETA - and I would add, there is a difference between looking at a political situation and getting it wrong, which certainly most of the Trot left did on Iran, and believing you are Napoleon Bonaparte, or Vladimir Lenin, or Leon Trotsky, or the predestined leadership of the revolutionary vanguard of the working class, which is how the Sparts thought of themselves (well maybe not Napoleon!).


----------



## PTK (Jun 5, 2022)

Carl Steele said:


> Are you shouting at me?
> 
> When you talk about "the rest of the left" who do you mean? Probably you are thinking of the IMG, SWP, Workers Power, Socialist Organiser and the RCP. Check out the post on page 18 from hitmouse where he provides links to 2 Anarchist groups whose commentary pointed out the reactionary nature of the Mullahs, It really was not so difficult to see how reactionary the Mullahs were. The Trot left failed because of their formulaic, knee-jerk anti-imperialism.
> 
> ...


For some reason that I could not control, the last part of my post was in a larger font, and in bold. I was not trying to indicate shouting. 
The Stalinists also supported the Mullahs, and in terms of poltical weight they were far more important than the Trotskyist groups.


----------



## Carl Steele (Jun 5, 2022)

PTK said:


> The Spartacists were, on paper, more in touch with reality with respect to the revolution in Iran in 1979 than the rest of the left, who uncritically allied with religious reactionaries.


You could also have a look at what Big Flame said. Their articles are quite thoughtful - certainly not cheering on the Mullahs.


----------



## The39thStep (Jun 13, 2022)




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## JeffTipps4 (Jul 21, 2022)

No reply to Carl Steele, but Tom Tiley found time to write this









						Exchange with a former member of the Spartacus Youth League - Bolshevik Tendency
					

The following is a recent exchange between a former member of the Spartacus Youth League (SYL–the youth group of the Spartacist League/U.S. [SL]) and Tom Riley of the BT. Greetings…




					bolsheviktendency.org


----------



## JeffTipps4 (Aug 13, 2022)

I hear that a new issue of Spartacist is out now? Anyone seen it?


----------



## spring-peeper (Aug 14, 2022)

I was wondering if the Canadian branch of spartacist league will be aligning itself with The United People of Canada (TUPC) ?
I'm asking because the spartacist league showed up during the Freedumb occupation in Ottawa last February.

They have set up an embassy in Ottawa, and plan on opening more embassies throughout the country.  They have recently set up their own security forces because they feel that the Ottawa police are not taking the vandalism (someone wrote CULT on their building) and theft of  one of their flags properly.









						Diverse Intergenerational Fraternal Organization | The United People Of Canada
					

The United People of Canada: Together, through appreciation and celebration of our unique culture and heritage, we offer a network of locations across Canada - and beyond.  We build strong communities, offering safe access to education, networking, community events and new friendships.




					www.tupoc.ca
				




This is the lastest news article about them.



			https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/united-people-of-canada-st-brigids-security-force-1.6546148


----------



## The39thStep (Aug 23, 2022)

Dr Chuck Wilson -  Fuse ( The magazine of PNL Student Union)


----------



## imposs1904 (Aug 23, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> Dr Chuck Wilson -  Fuse ( The magazine of PNL Student Union)
> 
> View attachment 339261View attachment 339263



Didn't the RCP control the PNL Student Union at one point?


----------



## DaveCinzano (Aug 23, 2022)

imposs1904 said:


> Didn't the RCP control the PNL Student Union at one point?


Certainly I spent far too much of my time as a schoolkid at UNL in the early/mid 90s. Even dragged my parents to an IFM meeting there about the Downing Street Declaration 🤦


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## Sue (Aug 23, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> Dr Chuck Wilson -  Fuse ( The magazine of PNL Student Union)
> 
> View attachment 339261View attachment 339263


Hmm, not really the kind of casuals I used to come across back in the day.

('A right bunch of nutters' seems like a reasonable description of various groups mind. )


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## The39thStep (Aug 23, 2022)

imposs1904 said:


> Didn't the RCP control the PNL Student Union at one point?


Not during the Harrington Out/ Miners Strike period that Wilson was covering . The Labour leaning Exec was voted out and a Harrington Out ticket ( anti fash/SWP/non aligned coalition)  voted in .


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## The39thStep (Aug 23, 2022)

Sue said:


> Hmm, not really the kind of casuals I used to come across back in the day.
> 
> ('A right bunch of nutters' seems like a reasonable description of various groups mind. )


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## imposs1904 (Aug 23, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> View attachment 339269



What's worse? Student politics or student journalism?


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## The39thStep (Aug 23, 2022)

imposs1904 said:


> What's worse? Student politics or student journalism?


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## imposs1904 (Aug 23, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> View attachment 339280



Looks like Paul Mason in the flattened Busby.


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## The39thStep (Aug 23, 2022)

imposs1904 said:


> Looks like Paul Mason in the flattened Busby.


It is , and that's the answer to your very pertinent question


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## imposs1904 (Aug 23, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> It is , and that's the answer to your very pertinent question






I was just pissing about. Is that him in his Workers' Power days?


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## imposs1904 (Aug 23, 2022)

People who haunt a thread like this have probably already seen this but here's a clip of Paul Mason from 1987. (2 minutes in.)


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## The39thStep (Aug 23, 2022)

imposs1904 said:


> I was just pissing about. Is that him in his Workers' Power days?


Yup .


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## DaveCinzano (Aug 23, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> View attachment 339280


Mind map ground zero


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## The39thStep (Aug 23, 2022)

DaveCinzano said:


> Mind map ground zero


Long term pro Putin sleeper


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## Idris2002 (Sep 14, 2022)

Some one still remembers.


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## imposs1904 (Sep 14, 2022)

Now on social media.


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## David Clapson (Sep 17, 2022)

Having a meeting in Brixton on Monday.


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## hitmouse (Sep 17, 2022)

imposs1904 said:


> Now on social media.


Seems like that must be the final deathblow to Facebook, if even the Sparts have decided that they can't be arsed with it.


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## PR1Berske (Sep 19, 2022)




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## Dom Traynor (Sep 19, 2022)

Wow 50 people for a Spart organised demo, that's good for them.


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## kebabking (Sep 19, 2022)

To be fair, it wasn't just an anti-monarchist demo, they brought something for all the nutters...


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## hitmouse (Sep 20, 2022)

kebabking said:


> To be fair, it wasn't just an anti-monarchist demo, they brought something for all the nutters...
> View attachment 343570


Disappointed to realise this is just you copying a picture off twitter and not you having been there in person.


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## Fozzie Bear (Oct 2, 2022)




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## PTK (Nov 20, 2022)

What happened to the hand-written placards? The Spartacist League was famous for its hand-written placards. It was enjoyable making them. It looks like this is yet another traditional craft destroyed by the mad rush into modernity.


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## PTK (Nov 20, 2022)

The39thStep said:


> View attachment 339269


Brilliant!


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## PTK (Nov 20, 2022)

Fozzie Bear said:


> View attachment 345439


The Spartacist League/Britain [it has an antipathy to the use of “of”] has had the capability to print its posters since at least 1989, but it faithfully continued to employ broad felt-tipped pens for a few decades. Now, since the death of James Robertson, decadent bourgeois practices have come to the fore, and these latter-day Shachtmans make war on hand-writing.


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## AmateurAgitator (Dec 23, 2022)

Ted Grant was mentioned earlier in this thread. An older comrade of mine was queer bashed by Militant members for advancing the inclusion of LBGTQ people in Glasgow District Council's equal ops policy (back when he was in the Labour Party). Britains largest Trot cult said homosexuals were a disease of capitalism, and once Uncle Ted was in charge every one would be straight. Ted Grant died and suddenly all the little Militants changed their minds- so much for vangaurds.


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