Udo, what do you make of Choonara? (politically & inc. biography - how old is he, what uni is he at? etc)
And the others out there on U75 can chip in too
I had a beer with Joseph Choonara once after a talk he did in my locale when I was in the SWP. The talk was good, but he seemed overly cerebral and a little too serious and reminded me a bit of Davros, creator of the daleks. I thought he needed to lighten up a bit (I have heard actually that he now occasionally cracks jokes and smiles in his talks, so maybe he has)
I'd put his age around thirty. I think his biography is something along the lines of - attended university studying science degree, worked in well paid graduate job for a year and paid off his loan, then got a job as an SWP organiser in an area of London (apparently he was quite poor as a political organiser), landed a job working with Chris Harman on the editorial board of the Interational Socialism Journal & now his good grasp of economics appears to have led him to becoming the national treasurer of the SWP & on their central committee.
What do I make of him? A very clever chap from middle class background with a particular flare for marxist economic theory, but at the same time too academic and theoretical. One thinks that he would do well to be on the dole for a few years, work in a factory or so on, to make his marxism a bit more organic and practical & develop the skills to communicate his good grasp of economics, to say, the people in the local boozer. He has got the theory, but it is not organically linked to praxis, hence the theory is not as sharp as it could be.
In fact, his biography, captures the limitations with the current SWP leadership. For example, people like Duncan Hallas led a soldiers mutiny in Egypt at the end of WW2, Tony Cliff was a political prisoner in British mandate Palestine, other leaders were people who rose to prominence as activists within the student movement of 68 and trade union rank and file militancy of the early 70s.
Now mostly you have ex-graduates who are put on the SWP payrole as organisers, then after a few years, these people end up on the leadership.
So instead of a leadership made up of people who are embedded in working class communities and life, who have attained positions of respect within trade unions and different campaigns, community groups and social movements, you have a layer of ex-graduates who have clawed up the party ladder and whose background is that they have . . . worked for the SWP.
Hence, partly the middle management culture and hackery of a group that once made quite creative contributions to marxism in Britain.
