Sorry. The style's catching. I went to see Arthur Scargill speak on behalf of his Socialist Labour Party last night. There was a good turnout, some of them even members of the SLP rather than history gawkers.
We spoke to the comrade before the meeting - or rather he grabbed us for a private speech before the main event. Unfortunately, being rather better at oration than conversation, the comrade proceeded to deliver a very, very poor impression of an Irishman to my Irish comrade, who thereafter declined to say anything. Oh dear.
The actual meeting was fun - a real nostalgia rush. All the old slogans, expressions and subjects came flooding back to me from my days as an ultra-left idealist. I'm still ultra-left, just not an idealist. Arthur is a truly magnificent speaker: he'd have been a great Revivialist preacher, mixing stentorian jeremiads with humour, anecdote and sometimes even some detail. Unfortunately if you started listening to the actual words, the spell was broken: his analysis of the problems is fairly sound (except on Europe) but his solutions are hopelessly vague - and (being the former leader of the miners) he's convinced that the solution to global warming is, er, burning coal…
I'm glad he's around - we need clear-eyed opposition to capitalism. However, I'm not sure the SLP is anything more than a few romantics looking for a dose of old-time religion. Not that any of the other micro-parties on the left are any good: they're too busy clawing each other and falling out over invisible ideological points to actually, y'know, fight capitalism. This is the heartbreak of the serious left.
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