SPGB Meetings (1987)

Party News from the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Blogger's Notes:

Too many meetings and, sadly, not enough space in the label section to include every speaker and every branch. 

I can't believe there isn't a recording of the debate with Lady Olga Maitland but it isn't in the audio section of the SPGB website, so who knows? However, there is an audio recording of an earlier debate with Lady Olga  - on a different subject - that dates from 1984 which is on the Party website:

DEBATE – IS BRITAIN WORTH DYING FOR? 

NO – Steve Coleman (SPGB)

YES – Lady Olga Maitland, (Women and Families for Defence)

Venue: Central Library, Islington

Date: 19th January 1984

There was also a written report of that meeting in the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard.

With regards to Bristol Branch's meeting, where Keith Graham spoke on the subject of the Battle of Democracy: Marx vs Lenin, Graham wrote a book with that same title, which was reviewed in the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard.

SPGB Meetings (1986)

Party News from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

• First mention of the SPGB Canterbury Group on the blog. 
• As there's an advert for issue 6 of the World Socialist journal included, here's a link to its contents that are currently on the blog. At the time of writing, the issue is only partially uploaded on the blog. Another thing to add to my to-do list.
• Conservative Families Campaign speaker, Graham Webster-Gardiner, was linked to the notorious Monday Club. He was the Conservative Party's parliamentary candidate in Newport East at the 1987 General Election.

The Pleasure Tendency

Their name piqued my interest so I asked about the group, the Pleasure Tendency, over at Urban75. Someone was good enough to provide the following reply:

"I'd known one them slightly when they lived in London. I dimly recall encountering the group in the context of the ill-fated Intercom project.

Don't remember a journal (although it was a long time ago). Just some pamphlets/leaflets. Think I may still have some stuff by them but not confidant I could easily put my hands on it. One text was called "Theses Against Cynicism". There's a blog post here 'adapted from it' whatever that means. Their pamphlet 'The Subversive Past' is online here. There's a leaflet by them at archive.org.

I understand some of them became involved in producing the journal 'Here and Now' (first produced in Glasgow and also involved in Intercom). (Libcom archive). There are articles by them (issue 2 for example) and issues were produced in Leeds.

ETA: at the Sparrows Nest archive there are also online copies of three more pamphlets:

- 'Life and it's replacement with a dull reflection of itself'

- 'Desire-value and the Pleasure Tendency'

- 'Return of the moral subject'

So that's all of the pamphlets that I remember seeing."