Louis Theroux Meets the Spartacus League

[scumbalina]

Well I am not sure Class War counts as a sect, but it could have happened, had the BBC not chnaged their minds!

http://paulstott.typepad.com/i_intend_to_escape_and_co/2007/04/not_weird_enoug.html

Can see that and raise you....when I was in Norwich Anarchists we got a phone call from the researchers at Wife Swap asking us to take part

 

[Alkypone]

Doesn't Louis Theroux only get on the case of right-wing whackjobs? Look at the evidence:

The Phelps Cult
Nazis
Ann Widdecombe
Paul Daniels
Jimmy Savile

EDIT: I forgot about the Hamiltons

 

[Paul Marsh]

Can see that and raise you....when I was in Norwich Anarchists we got a phone call from the researchers at Wife Swap asking us to take part

And your answer was....?

 

[JHE]

Doesn't Louis Theroux only get on the case of right-wing whackjobs? Look at the evidence:

The Phelps Cult
Nazis
Ann Widdecombe
Paul Daniels
Jimmy Savile

EDIT: I forgot about the Hamiltons

Also, the charming Omar Bakri Mohammed


Maybe he doesn't ask left-nuts - or maybe he does and they have just about enough sense to see Theroux is going to mock them and so say no.

 

[mk12]

That's the Revolutionary Communist Group.

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!

you're a member aren't you?

 

[scumbalina]

And your answer was....?

How much will you pay us?

It wasn't enough. I think I was going to have to pretend to be living with Zonk

 

[Paul Marsh]

That would have been beyond the call of duty!

 

[cutandsplice]

Worth a go - Robertson himself is a nut job, though his fellow splitter in the 1960s Tim Wohlforth wasn't quite such a case and went a different way.

They're called Spartacist btw - the Spartacus League was a short lived youth group linked to the (British) International Marxist Group 1970-72 (I think) that 'fused' with the IMG - not mentioned on Wikipedia, but documented well enough at the Warwick MRC http://www.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/ead/433col.htm.

The history of the SL-Britain on Wiki is quite limited and misses out the small group of nutjobs who joined them in about 1980 from the IMG - somebody called LW was their leader IIRC.

I always used to wind them up on demos when they were selling "Workers Hammer", by asking whether they had a sister paper for those in rural areas - "Peasants Sickle".

At some event years ago, a spart was selling 'workers hammer' next to a guy selling 'workers power'. The latter didn't think it funny when it was pointed out that if they merged together, they could be 'workers power hammer'. To be fair, the spart laughed. Insanely.

 

[In Bloom]

Also, the charming Omar Bakri Mohammed


Maybe he doesn't ask left-nuts - or maybe he does and they have just about enough sense to see Theroux is going to mock them and so say no.

Nah, it's because left-nuts don't generally attack the things that liberals like Theroux hold dear

I can't even watch a lot of his stuff, all that self-conciously PC mewling makes my skin crawl.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

At some event years ago, a spart was selling 'workers hammer' next to a guy selling 'workers power'. The latter didn't think it funny when it was pointed out that if they merged together, they could be 'workers power hammer'. To be fair, the spart laughed. Insanely.

They could then be called the "B&Q Tendency" ...

 

[Suffolk Punch]

Slogans

"Hail the Red Army in Afghanistan!" was a classic headline too.

I still got a copy somewhere of "Hail the Red Army" it was in 1979. Sparts also had another great chant "Yanky Doodle, Thatchers Poodle, Neil Kinnock - Scab!". I mean that is better than most modern poetry.

Serious nuttyness were the Posadists.

They believed socialism will be introduced by little Green men because only a Marxist society would be able to build a UFO for inter-galactic travel.

http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/176_trots.shtml

The truth is out there - comrades.

 

[emanymton]

At some event years ago, a spart was selling 'workers hammer' next to a guy selling 'workers power'. The latter didn't think it funny when it was pointed out that if they merged together, they could be 'workers power hammer'. To be fair, the spart laughed. Insanely.

Are you or did you used to be in the SWP? I meet someone at Marxism years ago (1999 I think) who made the exact same joke.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

I still got a copy somewhere of "Hail the Red Army" it was in 1979. Sparts also had another great chant "Yanky Doodle, Thatchers Poodle, Neil Kinnock - Scab!". I mean that is better than most modern poetry.

Serious nuttyness were the Posadists.

They believed socialism will be introduced by little Green men because only a Marxist society would be able to build a UFO for inter-galactic travel.

http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/176_trots.shtml

The truth is out there - comrades.

Posadas was a serious revolutionary figure in Latin America until he received a crack on the head (metaphorically) sometime around 1957.

 

[In Bloom]

As much as I love to laugh at the Posadists for their nuttiness, that is true about Posadas. Quite tragic, really, he was tortured until his mind completely snapped, IIRC

 

[cutandsplice]

Are you or did you used to be in the SWP? I meet someone at Marxism years ago (1999 I think) who made the exact same joke.

I was until about 1991. This would have been around 1989/1990, because the guy who made the joke disappeared around then.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

As much as I love to laugh at the Posadists for their nuttiness, that is true about Posadas. Quite tragic, really, he was tortured until his mind completely snapped, IIRC

Yes I've heard that too - at that time he was an active fighter against dictatorships and stooges of imperialism, not an armchair theoretician. The posadist group had an armed section in the cuban revolution fighting alongside Castro.

 

[emanymton]

I was until about 1991. This would have been around 1989/1990, because the guy who made the joke disappeared around then.

Maybe several people have just come up with the same joke then.