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The SPGB and the Standard of socialism

30/7/2021

I was just leaving a second-hand bookshop the other day having made a few interesting purchases when I spotted on a top shelf three bound volumes of Socialist Standard. Wow! It's not often you see something like that.

So of course I bought the volumes - they weren't cheap - and they now stand alongside the small collection of bound political journals on my own bookshelves.

The Socialist Standard started as a monthly in 1904. The run of copies I now have - all in excellent condition - begins in September 1907 and continues without a break for eleven fascinating years.

The Standard was - is (it's still going!) - the paper of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, sometimes known as 'the Monument' from its unwillingness to change and as 'the Clapham party' from its HQ in Clapham High Street. The SPGB are regarded as 'impossiblists' because they believe it's impossible to achieve meaningful change through reforms within the capitalist system.

The SPGB believes not in seizing power through revolution but in the Parliamentary road and stands candidates in elections - with a conspicuous lack of success. It is Marxist but not Leninist, and is opposed to the idea of the revolutionary vanguard.

And famously its declaration of principles hasn't changed since the party's foundation, including the 'hostility' clause, in which the SPGB expresses a determination to 'wage war against all other political parties'.

Throughout its long history, the SPGB has placed emphasis on soapbox-style outdoor oratory. In the earliest of the issues I bought there's a list of its London outdoor pitches and a rota of speakers.

Among the rota is Jack Fitzgerald, a legendary figure within the party and the closest it has to a founder ... and also Tommy Jackson, who later became a prominent Communist (and whose SPGB roots were sometimes hushed up in biographical notes about him).

In the month in question, September 1907, Fitzgerald is listed as having as many as ten outdoor speaking slots - and that's on top of the more formal indoor speaking engagements and branch meetings. (Jolly Butchers' Hill, by the way, was in Wood Green).

The copies in the volume - either four or eight pages - include the SPGB's line on the First World War ...

... during which it sometimes faced problems getting its message out.

And then there was the great drama of the Russian Revolution ...

... it need hardly be said that the SPGB disapproved.

I already have a lovely piece of SPGB ephemera ... this rather grainy postcard size photo of those attending the party's 1921 annual conference.

I do wonder who the three young girls are, so smartly dressed. The photo reinforces the impression of the SPGB as a very masculine party - the three girls apart, I can only see two women in the photo.

I knew and interviewed Harry Young, who - after fifteen years or so in the Communist Party (several of them sent in Moscow) - joined the SPGB in the mid-1930s and became one of its best-known orators. Towards the end of his long life, he was part of a split within the SPGB - a small group broke away complaining that the majority had deviated from the party's founding principles. (This all reminds me of the manner in which some US Supreme Court justices interpret the clauses of the American Constitution).

I wrote an article about Harry for the New Statesman:

In 2004, much to my surprise, I was invited to the SPGB's centenary knees-up at Regent's College in London - a pleasant, and pleasantly non-doctrinaire, occasion. SPGBer Adam Buick wrote up the event for History Workshop Journal.

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Bending the Knee on Romney Marsh

19/7/2021

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It wasn't intended as a church spotting weekend, but that's how it worked out. We were in Romney Marsh, in the south of Kent close to the border with Sussex. And on the marsh, and nearby, there were some really wonderful churches:

St Rumwold's, Bonnington

St Rumwold died young. The hagiographical account is that he lived for just three days in the seventh century - he was a grandson of King Penda of Mercia. But he still managed to deliver a sermon. How's about that for a holy prodigy!

This church at - or to be more accurate, outside - the tiny village of Bonnington feels as if it's in the middle of nowhere.

It is one of four surviving dedications to Rumwold (or Rumbold). It's Grade 1 listed and dates from the twelfth century. The small graveyard incudes the burial place of the Labour peer, Lord Vaizey.

St Thomas a Becket, Fairfield

It's difficult to imagine a church more isolated than that of St Thomas a Becket at Fairfield. It dates from the twelfth century, though the brick and tiles you now see are eighteenth century. The village it served is long gone. And the marsh and waterways mean that for much of the year, the building is only accessible by a narrow grass-covered causeway.

And if you think that the photo above exaggerates the isolation of this wonderful remnant of our past, think again:

The church has a service on the first Sunday of the month. The interior is said to house pristine Georgian box pews, scripture boards and pulpit.

And if you think the scene looks familiar, Fairfield church has featured in screen versions of Great Expectations and much more - you can see why!

St Mary in the Marsh

Much of the church of St Mary the Virgin, which has given its name to this marsh village not far from Dymchurch, is twelfth and thirteenth century. This is more ample in size than the other churches featured here, with a splendid vaulted roof and some wonderful brasses in the nave.

Edith Nesbit, Fabian socialist and author of The Railway Children, is buried here.

St Mary Magdalene, Ruckinge

A real gem! Ruckinge's parish church is predominantly twelfth century - and it peeps out beguilingly as you approach the village from the marsh land on the other side of the Royal Military Canal

Ruckinge has a distinctly unadorned early nineteenth century Methodist chapel too - and both places of worship are still in use. Both the pub and village shop have closed. But souls are still being saved here!

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Aldermaston, Wethersfield: Why we are marching!

9/7/2021

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I bought an early copy of New Left Review recently. The journal started in 1960 with Stuart Hall as editor - and with a very different feel and format to the title it became (and of course NLR has been the great survivor and is still going strong). This issue is from early 1961.

Inside there was, in mint condition, a CND leaflet promoting the 1961 Aldermaston march. This annual peace march which was such an important rallying point for the New Left started in 1958. That first march was to Aldermaston; later marches started there and ended at Trafalgar Square.

So the Easter 1961 event was the fourth Aldermaston march. The 1963 march - during which a breakaway surrounded a supposedly secret Regional Seat of Government, a bunker prepared in the event of nuclear war - was the last large-scale Aldermaston event.

Aldermaston in Berkshire, the 'factory of death', was the site of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment - established in 1950 at a onetime RAF base and still going.

In 1961, there was a second march to London from Wethersfield in Essex, which was a United States Air Force base until 1970 and is now the HQ of the Ministry of Defence Police.

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The Battyeford Self-Help Co-operative Society: UPDATED - SEE END OF BLOG

4/7/2021

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On 25th October 1872, a group of men in Mirfield in West Yorkshire set up a co-op - the Battyeford Self-Help Co-operative Society.

The name is instructive. The impetus of the co-operative movement - spawned by the Rochdale Pioneers a little under thirty years earlier - was that ordinary people were getting a raw deal in life, and no one was going to help them redress that situation but themselves.

The minutes of the first three years of this co-operative venture were set down in a black exercise book - now battered and bruised, but in tact.

I'm blogging about the Battyeford Co-op because, in an act of generosity and friendship (thanks Jackie!), I have just been given this minute book, chronicling the endeavours of Battyeford's best to establish and manage their store.

The record of resolutions proposed and seconded - none seem to have been rejected - only hints at some of the difficulties and dilemmas these co-operators must have faced. And I haven't - at least as yet - done the delving to uncover just who these pioneers were - where they lived, what jobs they did, what were their circumstances. There will be a follow-up post when I can tell you more.

Much of the minute book is given over to details of what exactly the store would stock - how much was being purchased and at what price. At least initially, the store seems to have offered a very limited range of groceries.

The minutes also chronicle just how diligent the committee were in attending meetings.

The society clearly thrived - within eighteen months, the committee was considering building a new store:

Wind forward 150 years - and Battyeford still has a Co-op, on the wonderfully named Nab Lane. By the look of it (photo courtesy of the Huddersfield Examiner), it's at least possible that this is still situated in the store built by local co-operators back in the 1870s.

The Wilsons Arms, the venue of the meeting which founded Battyeford's Self-Help Co-operative Society, is also still going - and was recently given the sobriquet of Britain's roughest pub. I'll report back when I've had a chance to sample a pint or two there.

LATER UPDATES

Since posting this blog, I have received new information.

The Co-op store that the Battyeford pioneers established is not that on Nab Lane but, it seems, was at 1-5 Bank Street. The friend who gave me the minute book says her father had a small factory making fruit machines on the site of the original co-op. The building had a large circular grain store on the ground floor. It also had a double-fronted showroom. The minute book was found by my friend in the attic.

The building is still standing but has been converted into residential use.

I've also heard that the Wilsons Arms has closed and the property is now in use as a health and beauty spa.

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Anyone for Canasta?

2/7/2021

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The great things about birthdays is the gifts. This is a wonderful item - thanks Brian! An exquisite card box made for an officer (surely!) in the Indian Army. I'm not sure what the wood is - any ideas? But the engravings indicate the section of the army in which the lucky owner of this box served.

The box bears the crest of the REME - the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, which was formed in October 1942 to repair and maintain all British Army equipment. It also has the crest of REME's Indian offshoot, the Indian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers formed in 1943. The corps motto of 'omnia facimus' translates as 'we can do everything'. There's confidence for you!

This crest, including 'INDIA' inscribed in a five-pointed star, remained in use until 1955, by which time - in the aftermath of independence - the IEME had been renamed the Corps of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

The box is also inscribed with the initials of its owner - PWM. I would be intrigued to know who this might be.

We can't be sure that the contents of the box - two packs of cards, two sets of poker dice, billiard chalk and a couple of similar items - are original, but they could well be.

You can see how this would be a Godsend during the long evenings and the perpetual waiting which was a large part of army life. And the craftsmanship of the box reflects how important cards and gambling was to ease the soldiers' privations.

Canasta, by the way, is a type of rummy which was devised in the 1940s and became hugely popular in the following decade - it's been described as 'the most recent card game to gain worldwide status as a classic'.

Its popularity has waned but Canasta is still around - and it's played with two decks of cards.

Canasta, just to let you know, is Spanish for basket.

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Andrew Whitehead's
Blog

The SPGB and the Standard of socialism

Bending the Knee on Romney Marsh

St Rumwold's, Bonnington

St Thomas a Becket, Fairfield

St Mary in the Marsh

St Mary Magdalene, Ruckinge

Aldermaston, Wethersfield: Why we are marching!

The Battyeford Self-Help Co-operative Society: UPDATED - SEE END OF BLOG

LATER UPDATES

Anyone for Canasta?

Andrew Whitehead's blog

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​Andrew Whitehead'sBlog

The SPGB and the Standard of socialism

Bending the Knee on Romney Marsh

St Rumwold's, Bonnington

St Thomas a Becket, Fairfield​

St Mary in the Marsh​

St Mary Magdalene, Ruckinge​

Aldermaston, Wethersfield: Why we are marching!

The Battyeford Self-Help Co-operative Society: UPDATED - SEE END OF BLOG

LATER UPDATES​

Anyone for Canasta?

Andrew Whitehead's blog

Archives

Categories

Andrew Whitehead's
Blog

St Thomas a Becket, Fairfield

St Mary in the Marsh

St Mary Magdalene, Ruckinge

LATER UPDATES