The Virtual Stoa

Traffic has recently gone through the roof at the ironically-named Socialist Unity Blog, as Andy Newman has been giving us all invaluable blow-by-blow coverage of the split in the Respect coalition [now here and here]. And having built up a huge readership for the blog, it can finally turn its attention to the issues that matter — so Tawfiq Chahboune has been brooding on the issue that bugged me here and here, concerning Martin Amis, camels and wheels. Continue over the fold for the relevant portion, or visit the original over here.

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Oliver Kamm makes the correct point that Paul Foot’s book on The Rise of Enoch Powell is really very good indeed; Mary Beard provides a classicist’s perspective on his notorious speech; and Simon has a very interesting discusison of West Midlands Toryism.

UPDATE [4.45pm]: So, here’s Hastilow’s article; here’s the transcript of the “rivers of blood” speech, and there’s some blog-discussion by Tories here, here, here [ConservativeHome] and here [Iain Dale]. Also Michael White and Sunder Katwala on CiF.

… to the Liberal Conspiracy.

Sen Katayama, alternatively Sugataro Yabuki, founding member of both the American and the Japanese Communist Parties; born in Japan, 1859, died in the USSR, 5 November 1933.

The BBC has just done a survey of family life in Britain, and both on the Today programme this morning (probably, I was half asleep) and on the webpage today they’ve been reporting the results as a “surprise”:

Compared with historical polling, people are more optimistic about their family’s future, more people describe their family as close and they are more likely to say their parents did their best for them. Despite all the changes, we remain remarkable happy with family life - 93% of us describing it as fairly or very happy.

I’m just puzzled as to what the surprise is supposed to be. There’s more to do at home than there once was; women have better exit options from bad marriages than ever used to be the case; parents have more control over reproduction; the food is better; more homes have decent heating; and today’s families are less likely to have been badly affected by war or childhood mortality. Why on earth shouldn’t we be happier?

It’s been pointed out to me recently that although the pubs in Britain smell a lot less smoky after the introduction of the smoking ban, they now smell much more of the other people in the pub, and that’s not obviously an improvement.

There’s this piece on the weird Canadian film-maker Guy Maddin on the website of the London Film Festival. And he [Mike, not Guy] tells me that the interview he did with everyone’s favourite Czech animator Jan Švankmajer for Vertigo (whatever that is) earlier in the year is now freely available here.

John William Gott, freethinker. A tailor and draper in Bradford, he became secretary of the Bradford branch of the National Secular Society in 1891 and by 1900 was editor and publisher of Truth Seeker, a monthly freethought periodical that ran to at least 1915. Around 1909 he founded the Freethought Socialist League; in 1911 he was jailed for blasphemy for his Rib Ticklers, or, Questions for Parsons, though he was released early after his wife Ada died following a stroke. Various convictions followed for selling profane books, blasphemous libel, obstruction, and sending obscene books (“How to Prevent Pregnancy”) through the post. A final conviction for blasphemy in 1921 (nine months with hard labour) was the last time anyone in Britain was imprisoned for blasphemy. As the ODNB notes, “The works for which he was imprisoned seemed harmless a century later.” Born at Cowling, Yorkshire 17 January 1866, died in Blackpool, 4 November 1922.

Over here.

Even a disappointed Collectivist or Communist does not retire into the exclusive society of beavers, because beavers are all communists of the most class-conscious solidarity. He admits the necessity of clinging to his fellow creatures, and begging them to abandon the use of the possessive pronoun; heart-breaking as his efforts must seem to him after a time.

From “The Superstition of Divorce” (1920)

Sukha Sagar Datta, socialist doctor. After his nationalist brother was jailed for the murder of two British women in Alipore, Datta was told by his mother, “Please go away to England. I do not wish to lose another son to the Raj.”  He hung around with Indian revolutionaries in London and tried to go off and fight the Spanish in Morocco, but his rifle was impounded when passing through Gibraltar, he never got further than Algiers, and he turned against violent politics shortly afterwards. He married Ruby Sarah Elizabeth Young in 1911, and after a spell in Milan training as an opera singer returned to her native Bristol to study medicine and then work as a doctor in local hospitals until he retired in 1956. Active in the Bristol Labour Party, he seconded the successful motion at the national conference in 1944 calling for Indian self-rule:

When Labour stands at the threshold of power, the key to the unlocking of that prison house is lying on the floor of this conference. You, as men who stand by the faith which you profess, who stand by the brotherhood of men, irrespective of colour and race, you should take up that magic key, you have the power to unlock those gates.

Born in Bengal in 1890, he died in Bristol, 3 November 1967.

Lucio Colletti, Marxist philosopher turned Forza Italia deputy, born 8 December 1924, died 3 November 2001.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal concerned itself, among other things, with the promotion of American children’s beaver-consciousness, via the activities of the WPA. Here’s a poster for “Revolt of the Beavers“:

The Federal Theatre Project produced a variety of children’s plays. The great majority were warmly received. The Revolt of the Beavers, however, stirred political passions from the moment it premiered. In the play, two small children are transported to “Beaverland,” where society is run by a cruel beaver chief. “The Chief” forces the other beavers to work endlessly on the “busy wheel,” turning bark into food and clothing, then hoards everything for himself and his friends. With the help of the children, a beaver named Oakleaf organizes his brethren, overthrows The Chief, and establishes a society where everything is shared. The show played to packed houses during its brief New York City run, but its message drew fire. Theater critic Brooks Atkinson labeled it “Marxism à la Mother Goose.”

See here for a stirring image from the play. And there’s more on Revolt of the Beavers, which was revived earlier this year by the Brooklyn Family Theater here. [Thanks!!, PM]

Not so good, I’m afraid. The entry for “Castor” in the Dictionnaire just says, “ancien Auteur. Voiez la Remarque O de l’Article DEJOTARUS”, which is over here.

Go over the fold for the article on beavers from the second volume of the mighty Encyclopédie (pp.750-753) [warning: in French, c.4,000 words] [link]

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Marc’s blog’s been silent for a bit, but he’s now posting great big chunks of the article nobody wanted to publish on why Marx thought the proletariat would become socialist here, here, here and here, with more to come.

Arthur Cook, trade unionist. Originally an agricultural worker, Cook migrated to the South Wales coalfield in 1901, becoming an ILPer a few years later. Active in the union, he was associated with the Unofficial Reform Committee, which published The Miners’ Next Step in 1912. Opposed to the First World War, he was charged with sedition under the Defence of the Realm Act in 1918 and jailed for two months, returning after his release to union activity in the Rhondda. As a member of the executive of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain he was involved in the 921 lock-out and again sentenced to two months’ hard labour for incitement and unlawful assembly. He was elected general secretary of the MFGB in 1924 and in 1926 led the miners through the nine days of the General Strike and seven months of the miners’ strike. Born Wookey, Somerset, 22 November 1883; died Golders Green, 2 November 1931.

The Stoa has long been interested in universities, Fabians and beavers, so I’m interested to learn that the newspaper of the LSE student union is called The Beaver. But can anybody tell me why?

Regular Stoa-readers will recall that the end of October and the start of November is traditionally the season for a quick bout of beaver-blogging. I’m not sure I’ve got anything beaver-themed to report right now (apart from this, obviously), but with luck we’ll have some beaver stories up here over the next few days. And do please get in touch if there’s any beaver-related item you’d like to see blogged.

George Bernard Shaw, Fabian socialist; born 26 July 1856, died 2 November 1950.

“Most people will tell you that Communism is known in this country only as a visionary project advocated by a handful of admirable cranks. Then they will stroll off across the common bridge, across the common embankment, by the light of the common street lamp shining alike on the just and the unjust, up the common street, and into the common Trafalgar Square, where on the smallest hint on their part that Communism is to be tolerated for an instant in a civilized country, they will be handily bludgeoned by the common policeman, and hauled off to the common gaol.”

That’s from “The Impossibility of Anarchism”, a talk from 1891, published in Socialism and Individualism, 1911, p.42.

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian poet, born 5 March, 1922, murdered 2 November, 1975. [Also here and here.]

Over here. [thanks BG]