Party News (1987)

From the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dundee election campaign

In May, Dundee Branch of The Socialist Party will contest three district wards around the city in the local elections.

We are planning a wide range of activities, including:

• Public Meetings
• Leaflet distribution
• Selling literature
• Debates and Forums
• Canvassing
• Distributing a free sheet
• Literature stall in town centre.

All readers and sympathisers in the area should take this opportunity to get involved in the vital, rewarding work of putting socialism firmly on the political agenda.

Come to our informal weekly meetings in the lounge bar of the Tay Bridge pub (Perth Road) on Mondays at 8pm or see address in the Branch Directory (inside back page) under Dundee.

Socialist activity in Aberdeen

A wide range of activities will spread the ideas of world socialism in the Aberdeen area in the near future.

Sympathisers, readers of the Socialist Standard and anyone interested in the case for a sane socialist alternative should get in touch with The Socialist Party:

lan Ratcliffe 

5 Ellon Road.

Bridge of Don

Aberdeen

(Tel. 0224 822XXX)

We want your help in developing the growing interest in the ideas of socialism in North East Scotland.

Members of Eccles Branch manned a literature stall in Wythenshaw Park during the annual fair, organised by the Manchester City Council in September. Literature sales, and the useful contacts made, proved this event to be a worthwhile party activity.

Wally Preston sitting down. Andy Pitts in the foreground.

Obituary: Wally Preston (2000)

Obituary from the November 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to have to announce the death of Wally Preston. Wally first came across the Party in the 1930s joining Manchester Branch after the war before drifting out at the end of 1950s and rejoining in 1979. He was a tool-maker by trade and a stalwart of the engineering union over decades. It was his union activity that led him to become involved in the early 1970s in the International Socialism group, the organisation which was eventually to become the SWP. For a period Wally was a member of its National Committee and was the editor of Advance, the IS paper for rank-and-file workers in the power industry.

It would be fair to say that Wally was something of a “workerist” and one of his typical contributions was captured by Ian Birchall in his history of IS:

“At one IS conference an industrial worker denounced a document being circulated as 'so bad it must have been written by a sociologist'. He was cheered to the echo by the audience, a fair percentage of whom were sociology students.” 'The History of the International Socialists' by Ian Birchall in International Socialism 77 (first series).

The irony of this would certainly not have been lost on Wally. Eventually the 'rank and file' trade union militants with which Wally was associated left IS dismayed at its mixture of opportunistic student radicalism and vanguard politics. It was after a few years in the wilderness that he finally returned to the ranks of the SPGB in his native Manchester.

Andy Pitts writes:

I first met Wally some 13 years ago as a new member joining the Eccles Branch. I was immediately taken with his enthusiasm and struck by his passionate pursuit of the socialist cause. It was a time of intense branch activity and it was Wally who encouraged the members to throw themselves into the action and at times we were organising and addressing meetings not only in Eccles but also (with the help of the old Merseyside branch) in Warrington for a good period of time too.

We travelled all round the Greater Manchester area and beyond organising meetings, postering, selling literature on the streets, attending our opponents' meetings, anywhere we could find an audience to put the case for socialism. Wally would think nothing of nipping up to Barrow or down to London in the evening to address or attend a meeting. Even at that time Wally was considerably older than the rest of us, but he was never one to sit back, and let others do the work. He involved himself energetically in all publicity work, travelling countless miles on public transport with his wife, Blanche, with his paste bucket and bundles of posters. Wally was a knowledgeable man, self-educated with a prodigious ability to recall facts to bamboozle the opposition. If things weren't proceeding to plan you could always rely on him to set things right and eloquently explain the socialist position on whatever question was on the table.

Wally was also, to his credit, one of the founding members of South-East Manchester Branch, yet another area in which he used his talent and energy. Wally was committed to bringing the case to as wide an audience as he possibly could and was involved in a number of election campaigns using all his passion, experience and boundless energy to try to advance the socialist position. He was a walking encyclopaedia when it came to things historical with a particular area of speciality in things to do with Manchester. His tours on Marx in Manchester were an education. I for one am indebted for the enormous amount of information he imparted and felt the Party was, as he said, "the university of the working class".

Wally lived life to the full, not one to compromise his deeply-held principles. He had not only a life-long interest in politics, and in Marxist politics especially, but he was a keen exponent of jazz music. It was difficult to go anywhere with him without meeting somebody who knew him.

Wally has no need for an epitaph as the actions of his life in encouraging the working class to see through the mist of lies that obscure the truth say all that needs to be said.

Working to live or living to work? (1999)

From the January 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Have you ever felt like reporting in sick?

At 8.15 I had convinced myself not to go to work. I plucked up courage, coughed to check I really was unable to function and phoned in my excuse. I had wandered for several minutes, nervous, guilty and had insisted on total silence from the children at the breakfast table. By 9 o'clock it was too late to reverse the situation. All guilt had evaporated and I was feeling much better. That was it. The only remedy for that sick feeling that precedes going to work was not going to work.

Work in modern society defines you. If someone asks you what do you do you tend to answer with the nature of your job. Too many of us do not leave our work at the workplace but carry it round wherever we may be, it lurks and inhibits what is known as leisure time. In fact a lot of so-called leisure time is simply time spent getting ready to go back to work. Clothes are got ready for the next day. Sandwiches need making, an evening shave saves time in the morning. We have early nights despite wanting to stay up for that great film on television because we have to be able to function properly for work. Work structures our lives.

Whilst plenty of people get some sort of fulfilment, job satisfaction, enjoy the company of their fellow workers and so on it is surely not something we would choose to do for so long a period of time. For a lifetime of work means just that. There is an old story about Pandora opening a box which contained all the evils in the world. On opening the box she released ponos the Greek word for work from which we derive our word punishment.

There is a saying that a hard day's work never did anyone any harm. Well that's not exactly true. Whilst I wouldn’t sniffle at the odd hard day I would argue that a lifetime of hard days has a nasty cumulative effect. Why else are so many days "lost" through sickness real—or, as in my case, imagined? Up pops guilt once again! Our working lives have impacted on the way we live when not physically at the place of work. We all know the fear of oversleeping, of being late and the headlong rush to be there on time. Witness the antics of normally calm, rational human beings on their daily commute to work, charging along to speed through traffic lights. Cutting each other up, fighting over ownership of a few precious yards of road, cocooned in the modern-day suit of armour, the car.

Our eating habits have changed. Real food is becoming a luxury, replaced by packaged, frozen, tinned, oven-ready instant meals. We have instant coffee. Whatever happened to the coffee bean, the smell of roasting beans? Instant potato that could be used for filling in holes in the walls. Meals have to be quick and easy to prepare for the simple reason that most of us don’t have the time to prepare them.

We come close to telling lies to get the job in the first place. We appear groomed and well-mannered. We give the answers we think the interviewing panel want to hear. We are not ourselves.

Just as dogs can be trained to leap gracefully through a hoop in return for a tasty titbit and seals will juggle balls in return for some tasty fish so we do that which we find unpleasant in return for money. If we didn’t get the money we would very quickly find that we would be unable to maintain the acceptable standards necessary to get the money.

Jobs need doing but . . .

It is self-evident that to maintain an effective modern society, one in which we continue to eat, have clothes to wear, somewhere fit to live and so on that a certain amount of work is necessary. Jobs need doing. I never heard of a house that built itself or of a cabbage that was self-planting, self-cultivating and somehow managed to get itself to a greengrocer's. But it is the difference between work and employment that throws up the dilemma. I would define work as socially necessary, needed for the functioning of society and the people that make up that society. Employment is what jumped out of Pandora's box and when you think about it is what gives rise to instant potato and getting up in what appears to be the middle of the night for three months of the year and going to a place you don’t want to go to do something you don’t want to do. You wouldn't treat a dog like that.

I am making the assumption that most people if given the chance would be able to give you plenty of examples of how their life could be improved. That society could in fact be organised in a way that actually improved the quality of our lives. To assume that, you have to consider changing things. Change is not something to fear and it is change that has enabled humanity to mould and shape the world that we live in. If you do not accept change then we are no more advanced than the dinosaur. It is as good a time as any to contemplate the possibility of doing jobs that need doing and of stopping doing jobs that are in fact only keeping us in a position that we do not in fact really approve of.

Society has evolved to a point where we can produce an abundance of what we need. Technology gives us the possibility of having less work and more possible leisure. But only if we concentrate on what needs doing and discard that which simply preserves and maintains the status quo. John Lennon summed it up beautifully in his song Imagine. Humanity possesses not only the imagination but also the physical ability to make such a society possible. A society that only produces goods and services if they can be sold for a profit is an anachronism for it creates injustice and suffering on a scale that beggars belief. Have you nothing better to do with your life?

Andy Pitts