While browsing in Housman's leftie bookshop in King's Cross earlier I discovered, to my unbridled joy, that the seminal 80s guide to Britain's numerous leftwing sects, "As soon as this pub closes", has been republished in a little pamphlet. Result. Holiday reading sorted.

Is that bookshop better than the one in Bloomsbury Street? I work opposite there sometimes.

Oooh

We need an updated version, mind.

I don't suppose there was a copy of "Quite right, Mr Trotsky" there, that you noticed?

Tubbs, no - it's in Caledonian Road, opposite grimly legendary old-school strippers pub the Flying Scotsman.

TonTon, there's a small foreword at the start of the pamphlet giving a brief synopsis of Where We Are Today.

Aha, nice one. It's hard to keep track when you're not right in it. It took me a while to work out that The Renegade Thornett and his Weasels were now the ISG, for example.

I know where it is, E10. I was asking if it's better than the Bloomsbury one where I am anyway.

D'oh. I really should learn to read, Tubbs. Apologies. Anyway, Housman's is scruffier than Bookmarks (the one you refer to, I presume), and also it's not tied to one party whereas Bookmarks (which is pretty good) is SWP-run. Hard to find a copy of Labour Briefing ir Tribune in the latter.

I've got to make a trip to Bookmarks soon. Haven't been for yonks.

Somewhere I've got a copy of Tony Benn's 'Arguments for Socialism'. In later years, when I think he was trying to stay onside with the Kinnock administration, I seem to remember he was saying some things that totally contradicted some statements in that book. One thing in particular really got to me, but I'm buggered if I can remember what it was now.

Well you need to pop and read the book again, then check all his speeches from October 83 to Juily 92, and see where he slipped up.

No. Bollocks to that. That is all. :-)

TonTon wrote:

QUOTE:
Aha, nice one. It's hard to keep track when you're not right in it. It took me a while to work out that The Renegade Thornett and his Weasels were now the ISG, for example.

For a minute I thought that was The Renegade Thornett and his Weasels was actually the name of a politial faction. Still, a great name for a sect. Or a really pretentious art rock band.

What's the book got to say about that bit of the Fourth International that was all about the link between socialism and alien intelligence? What's their name again?

The Renegade Thornett - that's how the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) used to describe him, and my parents (and I, briefly) were members when I was young, so the epithet stuck. The Weasels was our name for the Workers Socialist League (WSL), which is the group he formed after being expelled from the aforementioned WRP.

There's a maddening lack of apostrophes in all these names.

You're talking about the Posadists, I do believe.

The Renegade Thornett and his Weasels

I thought it was a band.