A Touch of Virtual Vanity

It's been one of those days where I've felt the need to blog, but didn't have a clue what to blog about. I could take the easy way out and stick up a Youtube vid or something, but I fear I've inflicted my musical tastes on AVPS enough already. This void in my head got me thinking of the days when I used to be a Weekly Worker columnist. Comrades who've been around the internet block a few times might remember Around the Web, a certain Phil Hamilton's (who?) look at the websites of individuals and organisations who had earned his sectarian ire. The abiding memory of those two happy years was the difficulty of coming up with a website to review, week after week. Occasionally either me or Peter Manson, the WW editor, would have an idea or a theme that would see me through a month's worth of articles, but most of the time it was seat of the pants stuff. Very often you could find me in the customer service desk at a certain branch of Sainsbury's on a Tuesday morning scribbling that week's outpourings onto the back of unused till receipts, and furtively flicking between the official corporate home page and the ra-ra-revolutionary rantings of the IBT. (In fact, the assignments for most of my first MA began life in this way, and yes, I still have all those till rolls somewhere. But I digress).

I could never resist having a sectarian dig if I was reviewing another left-wing website and I used to be really gratified if someone penned a moan about my witterings for the following week's letters page. You can imagine the excitement in the Hamilton/BC household when not one but four irate SPGB'ers took issue with my review of their website on the occasion of their centennial. Bless, I used to be so easily amused. Another classic was from a rather hurt Phillip Alan, who was stung by my review of the CWI's website. So enraged was the comrade that he hit me with the devastating "Phil has somehow propelled himself to celebrity ‘left’ status by virtue of never leaving the internet" and the classic "If Phil would like to go visit the CWI comrades in Kazakhstan or Kashmir and tell them they are not a “serious working class organisation”, I’d be more than happy to pay the cost of his airfare (one way)." One wonders what the tetchy comrade would think if he knew my "celebrity" had been gracing his organisation, and now mine, for the last two-and-a-half years? But what really tickled my vanity was my piece on various anti-abortion websites, that rather clumsily associated George Galloway with the reactionary SPUC. But still, it did the job - Galloway wrote in the following week.

Ah, things seemed so much simpler when I was an ultra-left adventurer. Well, fond memories aside, that's because this kind of politics is all very black and white. It's very easy to pontificate from the side lines when you or your organisation has no stake in and little connection to any kind of struggle. Things appear much clearer cut when you don't have to make yourselves relevant to working class people. So while Around the Web was fun, it is an object lesson in how a socialist should not behave, either toward comrades in the movement or people outside of it.