Corrections. (2001)

From the May 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unfortunately the gremlins were at work in our computer system last month, resulting in a number errors in last month’s Standard. Particularly affected was the article “Inside the Sports Industry”, though we trust it was still intelligible and also the editorial where readers will have automatically reinserted the “not” in “as long as this happens it does not matter which party is in office”. Our apologies.

There were a couple of minor human errors last month too.

In “Who Are the Socialist Alliance” we said that the SWP “has always been fiercely against standing in elections”. In principle this is true as the SWP is an undemocratic, Leninist organisation that believes in minority led insurrection rather than democratic action. However, during the last Labour government in the late 1970s they adopted the temporary tactic of fighting parliamentary by-elections. It was a transient and cynical manoeuvre that they are repeating under another guise now.

And in the article “Make A Difference” we commented that before the last election Blair had so impressed Viscount Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail, that “the Tory press baron swung his newspaper into support for ‘New Labour’ on the grounds that they were the ‘new Conservatives'”. While it is true that Rothermere crossed the floor and joined the Labour benches in the Lords, and also true that the Daily Mail‘s support for the Tories at the last election was the most muted in history, the paper still reluctantly backed the Conservatives. It was its Associated Newspapers stablemate, the London Evening Standard, which switched to Labour.