Socialism at the weekend

This weekend I was at Socialism 2008 – the annual weekend school of the Socialist Party.

After 25 years (!) of being involved I don’t really need to ‘hear the case for socialism’ but now that I’m not as active as I once was, I make a point of going each year to recharge my batteries a bit. And to get the day-to-day grind of life under this fuck-awful depressing system of capitalism into a bit of perspective.

It’s also a chance to see the Left at its best - and worst.

The best – a bit of inspiration like the guy from a small Trotskyist group inside China, risking so much to fight for democratic socialism in just about the hardest of circumstances.

Or less dramatically, just seeing old friends: Ordinary people with jobs and families who refuse to succumb to the pressures of daily life and continue year after year to do their own unspectacular bit to make the world better.

The worst – dickheads from one of the 57 varieties of loony group-lets who are attracted to these events. Like the bloke who criticised us for not supporting China in Tibet and defending North Korea’s right to nuclear arms. Stuck forever in 1941, he cited as justification for his current idiocy Trotsky’s position of sixty years ago: The Soviet Union as a deformed workers’ state should be defended at all costs from imperialist aggression - although he did forget to mention that this was at the time of the Nazi invasion . He was even trying to look like Trotsky – goatee beard, unruly curls and Russian workers’ cap. Funny - but a fucking liability to have around and confirming the worst Pythonesque stereotypes of the Left.