Month: May 2019

How my first job shaped my life …..Monkeys, Mondism and LD50

I left school at 16 because my Mum, by then a single parent, simply could not afford for me to stay on to do A-levels. I needed to go out to work and earn a living.

It was 1969, and back then in the UK you could choose more or less what you wanted to do if you had any qualifications. I had 5 O-levels, which was enough for most jobs. You really only needed more if you wanted to do A-levels and go on to University. That wasn’t then an option for me. Or even a vague idea.

So I went to work for ICI Pharmaceuticals Ltd in Alderley Edge, Cheshire. I moved from my council house in the industrial working-class town of Barrow-in-Furness to the one of the most wealthy, leafy, areas of Britain. It was a shock.

Continue reading “How my first job shaped my life …..Monkeys, Mondism and LD50” →

Change UK and the Brexit Party – collective versus authoritarian leadership?

by Colin Talbot

Change UK, the TIGgers, the Indepenent Group, or whatever they are called this week seem to be having problems.

Rachel Johnson, who is top of the new Party’s list for the southwest of England in the EU Elections, in a rather candid moment said “they want to focus group everything and they have a leadership team of about 11 people”. Change UK only have 11 MPs.

To be fair Ms Johnson is not the only one to criticise the apparent indecision and muddle in the way the new Party has launched itself. The general verdict from the political commentariat, even those sympathetic to the new project, is that it has been a bit of a shambles. The question is why? Continue reading “Change UK and the Brexit Party – collective versus authoritarian leadership?” →

Is Farage’s New ‘Brexit’ Party Fascist?

A lot of people, including me, have been pointing out that Nigel Farage’s new “Brexit Party” has some very strange members.

 

Claire Fox, a former leading light of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and two other RCP graduates, have been put on the Brexit Party slates for the EU Parliament elections. (for more on this see John Rogan’s excellent exposes here).

The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist Leninist) has apparently endorsed his new Party (although I’m not sure if they really exist anymore?).

This all seems slightly odd, and most of us who remember the far-left from the 1970s and 80s (because in my case I was part of it) have concentrated on exposing their extremist positions.

Most obvious of which was the RCPs and Claire Fox’s effective endorsement of the Warrington bombing by Irish Republicans in March 1993 that killed two children. Continue reading “Is Farage’s New ‘Brexit’ Party Fascist?” →