Airstrip One

Remember when?

Its not instant feedback, but its feed back nonetheless. On a piece I wrote in March 2000 on the demise of Living Marxism (which has since been relaunched as Spiked Online), I got this understandably miffed missive from a former comrade of the Revolutionary Communist Party:

It's all rather old hat now, but I had to laugh when I saw your 'the RCP told its followers to vote Tory' nonsense. As an ex-RCP supporter, it still amazes me what people will believe when it comes to the muck spreading of the old radical left. Let's imagine for a moment that the RCP did think it was a good idea to do such a thing. Well, with such a minuscule amount of followers, how could you make any noticeable difference to anyone's percentage of the vote?! The truth is that that the radical left was, almost without exception, wedded to the labourist tradition, whether they called themselves Trots or not. Hence when an organisation came along that, rather traditionally in fact (in the revolutionary sense), suggested that telling people to do what they were already doing (i.e. voting labour 'without illusions') was hardly the best way to promote a revolutionary alternative, they were castigated for being 'Tories'. It's a shame that arguing for a wholly independent political alternative was taken to be so controversial; indeed, it was considered so controversial that the space cadets on the left 'argued' that not voting labour was identical to voting Tory. Pathetic.


The CIA, eh? Anything different was characterised as a front for the British state by paranoid lefties. Incidentally, I was an anti-racist political activist for 5 years before I joined the RCP. I don't recall anything nutty about them whatsoever, and I have to say again, the idea that voting Tory as a tactic for 'bringing revolution closer' is so fantastic a notion that it beggars belief. The sectarian strife of the 1980s of course produced some bizarre rumours, but that really takes the biscuit. I have fond memories nevertheless of all kinds of, shall we say, eccentric behaviour on the radical left. My personal fave was a groupuscule called, I believe, the Spartacists standing in an underpass in Birmingham burning the American flag and shouting 'death to American Imperialism!' or some such like. Predictably, it terrified mums with toddlers passing by and invited the question from others, 'why do you hate Americans?'.

And this on their rumoured connection with the CIA:

The CIA, eh? Anything different was characterised as a front for the British state by paranoid lefties. Incidentally, I was an anti-racist political activist for 5 years before I joined the RCP. I don't recall anything nutty about them whatsoever, and I have to say again, the idea that voting Tory as a tactic for 'bringing revolution closer' is so fantastic a notion that it beggars belief. The sectarian strife of the 1980s of course produced some bizarre rumours, but that really takes the biscuit. I have fond memories nevertheless of all kinds of, shall we say, eccentric behaviour on the radical left. My personal fave was a groupuscule called, I believe, the Spartacists standing in an underpass in Birmingham burning the American flag and shouting 'death to American Imperialism!' or some such like. Predictably, it terrified mums with toddlers passing by and invited the question from others, 'why do you hate Americans?'.

Any way my apologies to the Revolutionary Communist Party and all members and past members.

It must be said that I'm fairly confident that they won't take me to court!

More on Russia

Bearing in mind Steve Sailer's warnings here's some more on Russia, from the National Review. Obviously the West, here should make common cause with Russia.