I just discovered in the past couple of weeks the sad news of the passing of the longstanding Socialist Party member Alwyn Edgar. At the time of his passing, at the age of 97, Alwyn was probably both the oldest living SPGB member and longest serving member. He joined the Party in the late 1940s as a young man after hearing Socialist Party speakers at outdoor meetings at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park in London.
I'm not sure if he was ever a Socialist Party speaker, but his articles and reviews were a feature of the Socialist Standard going back to the late 1940s. For a number of years in the 1950s and 1960s he wrote the regular column in the Standard entitled the The Passing Show, and from the late 1970s onwards he wrote an occasional humorous column called The Diary of a Capitalist, which took great pleasure in puncturing the pomposity of the super-rich.
I've compiled below a chronological list of his articles, reviews and cartoons that appeared in the Standard over the years. This list will be updated as and when more of his writings are scanned in and posted on the blog.
Also, cut and pasted below, is a non-political obituary for Alwyn that appeared on the Eastern Daily Press website. A Bevin Boy, a barrister and a teacher: he definitely lived a full live. An obituary for Alwyn will appear in the Standard in the fullness of time.
Historian, schoolmaster and musician Alwyn Edgar has died
by Staff Reporter
27th August
An historian who devoted much of his life to researching the Scottish Highland Clearances and whose first two books were published in his nineties has died.
Alwyn Edgar, who was 97, also appeared as a resident historian on Radio Norfolk and performed as an actor and violinist into his eighties at the Sewell Barn Theatre in Norwich.
He had lived at Stratton Strawless since 1987 and was married for 67 years to Janet, a former nursery school headteacher in Norwich, who survives him.
A graduate of Oxford University, Alwyn taught history and English in schools and began writing about the Clearances in 1963.
He was fuelled by his sympathy for the displaced Highlanders and his belief that accounts of that period were generally inaccurate and written from the landlords’ perspective.
His work on the subject amounted to one and a half million words spread across five volumes.
Two have been published – Clans and Clearance and The Sutherland Clearances – and the remaining three, all fully written, will be brought out in due course.
Alwyn was born in 1928 in rural Canada, where his father was a Methodist minister.
The family returned to England just before Alwyn’s fourth birthday but his recollection of those early years in North America remained crystal clear throughout his life, even though he never returned there.
His father’s work led to a peripatetic childhood in which Alwyn attended four primary and five secondary schools in various parts of the country.
He lived in London during the Second World War, once having to move from the school hall to the basement halfway through an exam when an air-raid siren sounded.
A talented violinist, Alwyn rejected an offer to join the National Youth Orchestra, preferring to follow a path to university, but first he was required to undertake National Service.
For this, he chose to work in a coal mine in south Wales, a romantic notion in which he followed a path trodden by his ancestors, but he would later question his decision, not least when cheating death by seconds as a ceiling collapsed in a passage through which he had just walked.
After leaving Oxford he became a barrister but soon opted for teaching instead.
He left London to start a family in Lowestoft, where he and Janet became regulars at the Seagull Theatre.
In 1982, shortly before playing the part of Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, Alwyn took the theatrical exhortation to “break a leg” too seriously and had to portray the villainous character in plaster and with a limp.
After moving to Norfolk he and Janet joined the Sewell Barn, where he never passed up the chance to play the fiddle in a production.
He performed in – among other plays – Coriolanus, The Government Inspector, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Under Milk Wood.
The last of those, Dylan Thomas’s Welsh classic, underlined Alwyn’s proficiency for speaking in different accents, an ability he acquired, he said, through necessity as a child in order to fit in at new schools as he moved around the country.
He also made a couple of appearances at the Maddermarket, particularly enjoying his role in Guys and Dolls.
Although he focused on Scotland, Alwyn was also a keen student of Norfolk history and for two years from 1990 appeared each week on Keith Skipper’s Radio Norfolk lunchtime show in the Bran Tub feature.
A village would be drawn at random and Alwyn would visit its inhabitants and buildings to discover its past and report his findings on returning to the studio.
Alwyn had two children, Bob and Bill, and five grandchildren: Robert, Barnaby, Arthur, Josh and Hannah.
Articles
Nov 1949: Raw Recruits
Feb 1950: War Propaganda, Past and Present
Jun 1950: The Class Struggle
Apr 1952: The Jamaica Plan for World Peace
Aug 1953: Kenya and Berlin
Sep 1953: Who are the Victors in Korea?
May 1956: Workers' Paradise (Cartoon)
Jun 1956: Don't Be Sidetracked By Automation (Cartoon)
Feb 1959: How Labour Helps Capitalism
Apr 1959: The Church's One Foundation
Jul 1959: The Politics of Hate (Cartoon)
Oct 1959: The Use of
the Vote (Cartoon)
Jul 1960: Hagerty in Tokio
May 1963: Property-owning democracy
Sep 1967: Primitive Accumulation
Apr 1978: Natural and Supernatural
Nov 1978: Race—having it both ways
Oct 1979: Mountbatten: ruling class casualty
Jan 1980: The seventies
Jun 1980: Tito and Balkan Capitalism
Jul 1980: Carter, Reagan and the Cargo Cult
Jun 1982: Messages in the Media
Mar 1993: The Politics of Fire
Feb 1995: It's a bloody lottery!
Nov 1999: Overlords and underlings
Nov 2000: Oscar Wilde and Socialism
Apr 2003: Quiz – Ten questions to answer
Jun 2003: News from the madhouse
Aug 2003: News from the madhouse
Sep 2003: Violence at School: Contradictions in the classroom
Oct 2003: Capitalism, war and atrocity
May 2004: Labour and the reform of capitalism
Jan 2007: Iraq in Chaos
Jul 2007: The Hanging Gardens of Bombay
Jul 2007: The Haves and the Have-Yachts
Jun 2008: Las Vegas and the environment
Mar 2009: Boom, boom Brown
Apr 2009: Northern Ireland: a return to violence?
Jan 2010: Horror-Scope for Non-Socialists
Feb 2010: Christmas bombers
May 2010: Puppets on a string
Oct 2010: Aliens (Short story)
Dec 2010: All in it together?
Jan 2011: A mining incident
Dec 2011: Rouble-makers - Part 1
Jan 2012: Rouble-makers - Part 2
Feb 2012: Death of a Dictator
Apr 2012: Syria: Bashar Lives Up to His Name
Apr 2012: The Titanic: A Member Writes . . .
Aug 2013: An Unlikely Story (Short story)
Dec 2013: By The Way
Apr 2016: Tony Blair – Big Business, Big Dictators, Big Money
May 2016: The Panama Papers: All in it Together
Aug 2016: Why Do We Behave As We Do?
Nov 2016: Where is Everybody?
Dec 2016: The Last Trump?
Jan 2018: Burns Night
Book Reviews
Oct 1960: Ten Blind Leaders of the Blind by Arthur M. Lewis
Nov 1960: The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
Dec 1960: Thinking to Some Purpose by L. Susan Stebbing
Jan 1961: The Soul of Man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde
Jun 1961: The Waste Makers by Vance Packard
The Passing Comments columns
Jul 1950: Visit to Malaya
Aug 1950: The City
Dec 1950: China
Mar 1951: Why we don’t get the coal
Apr 1951: Tito
Jul 1951: General Election
Aug 1951: Reformists
Sep 1951: Mutual Admiration Society
Oct 1951: Unsolicited Testimonial to Mr. Gaitskell
Mar 1952: Aggression
The Passing Show columns
Sep 1952: Houses
Oct 1952: The Eternal Triangle
Dec 1952: Vote for Tallulah
Apr 1953: Ready-made argument
Jun 1953: Hay while the Sun Shines
Jul 1953: Indo-China
Mar 1956: Declaration of Washington
Apr 1956: I hire 'em, I fire’em
May 1956: Success . . . .
Jun 1956: The last days of Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen
Jul 1956: Cat out of the bag
Aug 1956: The Vanguard
Nov 1958: ’Ardies’ ’At
Dec 1958: Time and Money
Jan 1959: The Optimists
Mar 1959: Misrepresentation
Apr 1959: Another Colonial Plot
May 1959: The Cart Before The Horse
Jun 1959: Hand in hand
Jul 1959: National Anthems
Aug 1959: Gallant Christian Gentleman
Sep 1959: The Devlin Report
Oct 1959: The BMC Strike
Nov 1959: Change of Mood
Dec 1959: Well-being Promoters, Ltd.
Jan 1960: Churchill at Omdurman
Feb 1960: Fifth Column
Mar 1960: African Edition
Apr 1960: No excuse for less work
May 1960: South African Revolution
Jun 1960: Concentration Camps
Jul 1960: South African Realities
Aug 1960: The Truth about the Arandora Star
Sep 1960: Labour rebels
Oct 1960: Bare-faced Cheek
Nov 1960: Violence
Dec 1960: Freedom of the Press
Jan 1961: The fruits of leisure
Feb 1961: The Congo
Apr 1961: As such
May 1961: To guard the country
Jun 1961: Russian "Socialism"
Jul 1961: Democracy
Aug 1961: Public Opinion
Sep 1961: From the top
Dec 1961: Ghana Visit
Jan 1962: What it Means
Feb 1962: Goa
Mar 1962: Accidents
Apr 1962: Class co-operation
May 1962: Bill Sikes
Jun 1962: Censured
Jul 1962: Agitators
Aug 1962: The pace-makers
Sep 1962: The Psychologist
Nov 1962: Details
Dec 1962: Ambition
Feb 1963: The Aucas
Mar 1963: Implication
Apr 1963: Aggrieved
Aug 1963: Mr. Wilson on class
The Diary of a Capitalist columns
Apr 1978: Rolls-Royce
Aug 1978: Living the high life at Claridge's
Nov 1978: Christmas for the Super-rich.
Dec 1978: Princess Anne
Jan 1979: World cruises
Mar 1979: The British Super-rich
Jul 1979: British Landed Aristocracy
Nov 1989: Martin Edwards and Manchester United
Dec 1989: Shelter and homelessness
Jan 1990: The resignation of Nigel Lawson
