50 Years Ago: Mr Thurtle misfires (1996)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Ernest Thurtle, Labour M.P. for Shoreditch, sometime member of the Fabian Society and I.L.P., and sometime belligerent war-supporter turned pacifist turned war supporter, writes a weekly column of pontifical political comment and behind-the-scenes chit-chat for Beaverbrook’s Sunday Express under the title “ Labour Point of View.” On Sunday, September 1st, he wrote the following: —

"Sympathy for the little fellow struggling against the big one is natural, but in the present dispute between the little and big unions of the transport workers common sense appears to be on the side of the big battalion.

Mr. Frank Snelling, the national organiser of the little union, which is fighting so spiritedly, is what is known in Labour circles as an S.P.G.B’er. Decoded, this means a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, a strict Marxist sect of microscopic membership.

Because the little party had so few members, who oozed Socialist self-righteousness, the larger movement was wont to refer to them derisively as the Small Party of Good Boys.”

That is all Mr. Thurtle has to say. He gives no facts about the dispute and no reasons why he believes that all the common sense is on one side. He does not mention that the S.P.G.B. has members in the T. & G.W.U. as well as in the N.U.P.W., and it is evident that his sole object in. referring to the dispute was to provide a peg on which to hang the unoriginal remarks about the S.P.G.B.

[From Socialist Standard, October 1946.]