Socialist Party Meetings (1991)

 Party News from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Obituary: Ric Best (2026)

Obituary from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kenneth Alaric Best, who has died after a short illness, joined the Party in 1972 and soon after became a self-described hooligan in Bolton branch, after which he was a founder member of Lancaster branch. His merciless wit as a speaker, honed at a time when adversarial debate was considered a martial art, often left opponents feeling like they’d been machine-gunned. A smart and iconoclastic thinker, he ranged restlessly into all areas of socialist theory. People who spent time with him needed to stay on their toes, because he had little patience for those who couldn’t keep up.

But he also knew how to put the ‘social’ into socialist, with ganja-fuelled parties at his house after every public meeting, which is undoubtedly the reason why Lancaster meetings were so well-attended in the 1980s and 90s. He was an entertaining raconteur with a natural comic timing, and could make even young children laugh. He had a never-ending store of very funny and often salacious stories, sometimes at the expense of other Party members.

Bolton-bred, he spent his formative years in the fire brigade, then later became a computer engineer who embodied the Silicon Valley philosophy of ‘move fast and break things’, running several successful computer businesses. These commitments sadly caused him to drift away from Party involvement in his later years.

Our sympathies go to his wife Kay and children Jo, Jamie and Bill.

PJS

DAP adds:

Ric Best was the first Party member I ever met – it was early 1987 and a meeting in The Liverpool Pub in the business district of the city where what was to become Merseyside Branch gathered. Ric was studying for his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the University as a mature student, and I was a young politics undergraduate. We were different but got on, as we both liked debating. Ric told me he had joined the SPGB as the Party case was the best means he’d ever come across for winning arguments. I can testify that this is something he pursued with great vigour as many other students at the University at the time still vividly remember (as would our political opponents).

Ric was also a great advocate of democratic participation and all it implied. He claimed many times that the best weapon the Party had in its armoury was that it was scrupulously democratic and could – and should – attract people on that basis, being the most democratic political organisation in existence.

There is little doubt Ric was one of the Party’s great ‘characters’ – an overused word perhaps, but rarely more appropriate, and those who knew him will miss him and the energy he somehow imparted wherever he went.

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."

Obituary: Christopher Butler (2025)

Obituary from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Christopher (Christy) Butler died in September at the age of 82. Born in Ireland, he was a lifelong socialist and defender of secular education. When he finally escaped from wage-earning more than 20 years ago he established himself in a small town in the rural Vienne region in south-west France. In his living room visitors would notice huge piles of leaflets for the Socialist Party which he enjoyed distributing at demonstrations in the area and occasionally in the Paris region. He had been active in the working-class movement from an early age. He joined the WSPNZ in the early 1970s, taking part in their radio broadcasts and other activities. Before that he had been in the Irish Communist Organisation. When he returned to this part of the world in 1980 he joined the Bolton branch of the SPGB. Socialist activity is sporadic in France but demonstrations on single issues can be enormous and sustained. French workers are incredibly open to political arguments on the left and Christy was always ready to discuss points at issue. And all this in French.

Christy was very well informed on the history of the party and politics in general. He could more than hold his own in any discussion of the life of James Connolly and he established links with the society which managed the Connolly archive in Ireland. He also made contacts with some of the remaining Wobblies on a trip to the United States. So he was really narked to discover that some leading intellectuals in the French Communist Party had adopted a policy of defending wage-labour (le salariat) rather than its abolition. Indeed, Christy tried to get into contact with the leading historian of Guesdisme to find out why the ‘abolish wage-labour’ motto had disappeared from membership cards of France’s militant C.G.T. union. As a direct result, we found ourselves distributing leaflets on the abolition of wage-labour alongside trade unionists who were defending le salariat.

My remaining memory of Christy is when I saw him trying to convince an Irish tourist in Spain of the importance of reading Oscar Wilde’s ‘Soul of Man under Socialism’. Although I think the young man was mainly interested in relaxing in the sunshine – I have no way of knowing – Christy was doing what he enjoyed the best: making the case for socialism wherever he went.

Our condolences to his family and especially to Clare and Francis his daughters.

M.M.

SPGB Meetings (1984)

Party News from the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The March 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard carried a report of the SPGB's debate with Tom Sackville, the Conservative MP for Bolton West. The SPGB speaker in that debate, Howard Moss, revisited that debate in his Life and Times column in the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard.

SPGB Meetings (1986)

Party News from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

There were so many meetings advertised in the October 1986 Standard that I had to split the party news post into two. And I still didn't even get to include everyone listed in the label section. Apologies to Janie Percy-Smith, Cliff Begley, Steve Coleman, Pieter Lawrence, E. Hardy, Carl Pinel, Ralph Critchfield, Enfield & Haringey Branch, Islington Branch, Doncaster  . . . did I leave anyone out?

SPGB Meetings (1986)

Party News from the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The January 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard carried an article by Janie Percy-Smith giving an overview of the Women and Socialism meetings that took place in the autumn of 1986 to help promote the SPGB pamphlet of the same name.

Political Notebook: The tale of the arrogant man . . . (1979)

The Political Notebook Column from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tale of the arrogant man . . .

The Liberal Party goes on a lot about ‘The Great Spirit of Liberalism’ which it so passionately cherishes. In his essay ‘On Liberty’ John Stuart Mill argued that liberals should be prepared to debate all subjects from every point of view so as to arrive at the correct conclusion.

Cyril Smith is a Liberal MP. So when Bolton branch of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was looking for a defender of capitalism to debate with, they wrote to him anticipating a liberal-minded response. Smith replied thus:

Thank you for your letter. No, I do not provide audiences and publicity for my political opponents, much less ones with whom 1 totally disagree.

Firstly it is supreme arrogance on the part of the Liberal Party to imagine that we would have to rely upon the personality of Cyril Smith to provide us with an audience for a debate. Secondly we wonder which of his political opponents Mr Smith does not ‘totally disagree’ with. Thirdly it is a pity that the Honourable Member for Rochdale’s mind is not as broad as his backside.

. .  And the ignorant man

Dr Rhodes Boyson MP does not claim to be a liberal. He is a firm believer in the highly disciplined inculcation of the correct attitudes in schools and Universities. Which in layman’s terms means that he believes in training children to be efficient wage slaves. He recently received a letter of criticism from one member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (who presumably had a second-class stamp that she could find no better use for). She received a reply which demonstrates the confusion of the MP for Brent North’s mind. He wrote, “You may have noticed that, since the socialist reform and the comprehensive schools came in, less working class children are going to University.’’ 

What socialist reform does he mean? Socialists have never concerned ourselves with the reform of the capitalist education system. Rhodes Boyson makes the fundamental error of referring to Labour as a socialist party. He then goes on to use another incorrect definition of socialism:

All one would need is to look round the world where Socialist Governments are in control and see the inequalities there are far wider than in Britain . . .

Which socialist governments does he mean? If he is referring to the state capitalist dictatorships which the SPGB has consistently opposed, we would have expected him to show great admiration for the system of suppressing free trades unions, enforcing the law by means of brutal terror and organising education on the basis of strict discipline which has been mastered by the Russian and Chinese regimes. They are, after all, the very policies which he advocates in the name of freedom. Rhodes Boyson is clearly a man of many illusions, such as that Labour is socialist and state capitalism is socialism. He shares his illusions with millions of members of the working class. But Dr Rhodes Boyson is currently a government minister with responsibility for Higher Education. Talk about the blind leading the blind.

Free Press? Free Speech?

Copies of the following letter were sent to The Guardian, The Bolton Evening News and The Manchester Evening News. As they would not publish the letter, we reproduce it here.

Dear Editor,

That Britain is supposed to be a free country in which all shades of political opinion are given an opportunity to be heard is one of the more persistent myths of capitalism. On Saturday 28th September a crowd of over one hundred people in the Bolton shopping precinct were given a chance to observe socialist freedom of speech in action. An outdoor meeting of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was in progress; the speaker was presenting our party’s case for a society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution; a number of interested people were usefully and critically joining in what is a traditional and long established medium of free discussion. Then the police arrived. Not because they suspected our speaker of being a criminal or because they believed that there was any danger of violent disorder or even, because as members of the working class, they wanted to find out what was in their interest. Their announced intention was to stop the meeting because it did not have the prior authorisation of the police. One and a half hours later, after a long wait in an interview room at the Bolton Central police station, two members of our party were charged, nominally for causing an obstruction to the highway (which did not occur until the police arrived and shoppers came to see what was going on), but in fact for attempting to address people in public without consulting the police.

There are two principles involved here. Firstly, the opportunity to set up a platform and address a crowd without police authorisation has been an accepted political tradition in Britain for most of this century. If it is now to be denied to us, may we know whether this is a government decision or, as we suspect, a further example of the increased use of police powers at the expense of the freedom of the weak and the powerless? Secondly, we consider that the freedom of assembly of those of us who are prepared to commit rational ideas to public scrutiny in the shopping centres, the parks and the factory gates should be recognised at least as much as the freedom of others to hold military processions, commercial displays, slogan-shouting demonstrations and pre-election walkabouts.

When our members appear in court they will plead ‘Not Guilty’. If the magistrate is typical he will accept the word of the police regarding the obstruction and will be indifferent or hostile to the principle of freedom of speech as it affects the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Next time I am on an outdoor platform and I am told that such a privilege would not be allowed in Red Square (which is part of a system that we have consistently opposed since 1917), 1 shall remind those present that state oppression is not confined to the state capitalist dictatorships, but is alive and kicking on the streets of Bolton.

Steve Coleman

SPGB Meetings (1995)

Party News from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Party News (1985)

Party News from the March 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

About 100 people came to Bolton Central Library one evening in late November to hear a debate between local Conservative MP, Tom Sackville, and Socialist Party representative Howard Moss. The subject was. “Which Way to Freedom: Conservatism or Socialism?”

It was an occasion of which one Socialist Party member remarked afterwards: “I’ve never heard socialism itself discussed so much at a meeting”. And that was the kind of debate it was. What socialism means — a moneyless, stateless world society of free access and democratic control — was clearly defined very early on and the discussion remained on that subject. To Tom Sackville’s credit he never tried to shift it to different ground on which he would have been more comfortable. He admitted it was an idea he’d not heard before and that it obviously had nothing to do with the Labour Party or with what passed for socialism in Russia. He did bring up certain common objections such as “human nature” and “overpopulation”, but didn’t persist in them when contributions from the floor and from his opponent showed them to be untenable. He was left in the end in the position of having to say that he thought socialism was a good idea but that how it could be brought about hadn’t been demonstrated and that, since anyway it would be a long time coming, we had to get on with trying to deal with the world as it was now.

Howard Moss replied that it would indeed be a long time coming if people took no practical steps to achieve it and instead buried their heads in the sands of short term “practical politics”. If Tom Sackville thought, as he seemed to, that socialism would mean a freer and more democratic society than the present one, then he should resign from the Tories, join the Socialist Party and help to speed the day. The second son of the tenth Earl de la Warr showed no signs of wanting to do this. But clearly he’d been given a good deal to think about.

Bolton Branch

Blogger's Note:

This debate was recently mentioned by Howard Moss in his Life and Times column.

Life and Times: 4-Wheel Drive Toyota Tundra (2024)

The Life and Times column from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s Bolton Central Library on an evening in late November 1984. The large meeting room is full for a debate between myself representing the Socialist Party and the local Tory MP, Tom Sackville. The subject is ‘Is socialism compatible with freedom?’ and a well-known local cleric is in the chair. We both have 20 minutes to put our respective cases and another 10 minutes to respond. We do that, and then it’s thrown open to the floor. The hands go up for questions and observations and we both respond. I’m gratified that a lot of the discussion focuses on the definition and description of socialism I’ve tried to communicate – a democratically run society of voluntary cooperation, a moneyless, wageless, stateless world of free access to all goods and services based on the principle of from each according to ability to each according to need.

I was worried that we might get bogged down in discussing the old 57 varieties of ‘socialism’ (Russia, China, Cuba, Scandinavia, social reform, etc.), so I did my best to dismiss all that quickly at the beginning. And it seems to have worked, since hardly anyone – not even my Tory opponent – is trying to tar socialism with any of those brushes. I’m pleased too that it’s all calm, civil and good-natured, since those are always the best conditions for rational argument and useful exchange of ideas. At the end it probably can’t be said that anyone is the winner, but importantly, from my point of view, the socialist case has been aired clearly and unambiguously in front of a large audience. As an enthusiastic member of the Party’s local branch says to me afterwards: ‘I’ve never been to a meeting of this kind where the constant focus was on our view of socialism.’

That was a long time ago. Yet we’ve not stopped debating, since debating is our life blood as socialists. We’ve been doing it for the whole 120 years of our existence. But, apart from hustings at election times, face-to-face debate has become more and more difficult to organise in recent years, as discussion of all kinds increasingly takes place online. But though this lacks the immediacy (and often the politeness) of face-to-face exchange, it does not prevent discussion from continuing and, in fact, can reach far wider and more faraway audiences than is possible in a debating hall. The Socialist Party has adapted to this by having its own website and Facebook page and its members often participate in discussion and debate taking place on other sites organised by groups in various parts of the world with similar or closely allied ideas.

One of these is Moneyless Society, whose aim is ‘obsoleting money’, so sharing a key element of the society we are looking to see established. To give an example, a recent discussion on the Moneyless Society site involved a range of people, including SPGB members, debating with a distinctly non-socialist contributor. Casey began by quoting approvingly words from early 20th century free-market theorist, Ludwig von Mises, and then argued that we should be pleased with the market economy because it ‘puts the common man in the driving seat’ and ‘we average Joes get to enjoy luxuries not even conceived of 100 years ago thanks to the innovation capitalism breeds’. He added that he’d ‘like to hear from socialists in this bunch what’s wrong with this statement’. So not just an echo chamber, and a provocative start which sparked quick responses. The first one in fact was from me, stating: ‘The main thing to be said about the “average Joe” is that, far from being “in the driving seat”, he spends most of his life hanging on to the job he’s got (if he’s got one) and hoping and praying that the market system he lives in doesn’t determine he’ll lose it.’ Casey’s not ill-considered response was: ‘So society should allow Joe to continue working an obsolete job that no longer serves a purpose?’ At this point someone called David intervened to comment on how technology, both before and during the capitalist era, has made it possible to produce more with less work. And then it got a little tetchy when Casey mentioned, as evidence of the success of the market system, that he has a ’four-wheel drive Toyota Tundra with tons of features’ and so ‘capitalism for the win’. David’s sarcastic reply was: ‘I humbly suggest that we disband this list. After all, Casey says he drives a Toyota Tundra. What possible argument in favor of socialism could ever top that?’

But then it became more serious with Casey putting the argument that modern-day vehicles have many features that previous ones didn’t have and that make them more appealing. This has been achieved by competition, and so, ‘because of that we all benefit’. A further contributor, Michael, then intervened to dispute Casey’s earlier assertion that ‘capitalism breeds innovation’, arguing that ‘collective ownership’ can innovate just as well as ‘private ownership’. At this point it wasn’t clear whether for Michael ‘collective ownership’ meant state ownership (ie nationalisation) or socialism in our terms (ie, a common ownership and free access society). But Casey seized on this anyway to bring up the Soviet bogeyman and suggested a comparison between ‘the US and the USSR and the advancement of everyday life for everyday citizens’, together with a story about Boris Yeltsin being amazed as he toured a grocery store in Houston.

At this stage I felt obliged to jump in again myself and say: ‘What on earth has Yeltsin got to do with socialism? Absolutely nothing.’ The closing ‘speeches’ had Casey stating that ‘we are all better off for Bill Gates becoming a billionaire, not the other way round’, and two late contributors weighing in, the first one, Paul, saying that, in capitalism, ‘people are forced to buy not what they want but what they can afford, even if it’s cheap and nasty, out of what it’s profitable for companies to produce’, The second, Steven, on a slightly different tack: ’Less than 100 […] people in the world today own the equivalent of that owned by the poorest 50% – that’s 4 billion people. If that doesn’t tell you something is wrong, what will it take?’

All this is a far cry from Bolton Central Library in 1984. But what it shows is that debate still goes on, argument still goes back and forth and, if anything, now that most of it is online, it has a potentially bigger, more receptive and geographically wide audience than in the pre-internet days of outdoor platforms in town centres or parks or draughty meeting rooms in libraries or halls.

Howard Moss

SPGB Meetings (1982)

Party News from the November 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Audio recordings of the following meetings from the November 1982 Standard are available on the SPGB website.

DEBATE: DID LENIN DISTORT MARX? 

YES – Steve Coleman, SPGB

NO – Monty Johnstone, CPGB & ‘Marxism Today’

Venue: Islington Central Library, London

Date: 11th November 1982

BRONTERRE O’BRIEN AND WORKING-CLASS RADICALISM

Part of the series Socialist Thinkers – People Who History Made

Date: 21st November 1982

Speaker - Steve Coleman

BELFORT BAX AND THE ETHICS OF SOCIALISM

Part of the series Socialist Thinkers – People Who History Made

Date: 28th November 1982

Speaker - Steve Coleman

SPGB Meetings (1992)

Party News from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1987)

 Party News from the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1992)

Party News from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

I'm not sure if David Hines was a member of the SPGB but he was definitely a sympathiser. His play "Bondage" was adapted into the film the 'Whore', which starred Helen Mirren and was directed by Ken Russell.

SPGB Meetings (1989)

Party News from the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1991)

Party News from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1978)

Party News from the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1996)

Party News from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1984)

Party News from the October 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

There's an audio recording of the debate with the Communist Workers' Organisation at the following link.

Update:

Just realised that there's also an audio recording of the 12th October 1984 Islington Branch meeting, The Miners' Strike — a Marxist analysis. The speaker was Steve Coleman.