SPGB Meetings: Glasgow and Lewisham (1963)

Party News from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Interesting to note that one of the Glasgow Branch meetings featured a young Vic Vanni speaking on why he left the Labour Party.  I wonder if this was his first official speaking engagement for the SPGB? 

I wrote the following as a blogger's note back in 2018:

"Vic Vanni, prior to joining the SPGB, was the secretary of the Woodside constituency Labour Party. In choosing to leave the Labour Party for the SPGB, he passed up a potential fast tracked path into a career as a Labour Party politician. The secretary of a CLP was a big deal in those days.

. . . Woodside was a parliamentary constituency in Glasgow, Scotland, and the constituency Labour Party in Woodside was known as a left-wing stronghold in the 50s and 60s. Tony Cliff's International Socialists' - forerunners of the British SWP - gained a foothold in Woodside Labour Party Young Socialists (the late Paul Foot was recruited to the IS tradition in Glasgow at this time), and Young Guard newspaper at the time this article was published was a joint initiative by the IS and the RSL - forerunners of the Militant Tendency - who were both practising 'entryism' into the Labour Party." [From here.]

For more background on Vic, his obituary appeared in the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard.