Monday 9 November 2009

Socialism 2009 Round-Up

As comrades are aware, I wasn't able to make it to the Socialist Party's annual weekend school and rally, Socialism. But I know some folk who did. Going off reports I've heard the weekend was visited by over 1,000 people, over £25 grand was raised and all the speakers at the rally were well received (I'm told even Peter Taaffe was kept to 20 minutes!)

Later on in the week I should be receiving a blog post or two from comrades who were there. In the mean time I'll content myself with bringing you a round-up of Socialism's internet coverage.


Dave from Though Cowards Flinch gives his overview of Saturday's events.

Iain of
Leftwing Criminologist and And Now For Something Completely Sectarian has posted his experience of the weekend, including the delightful time he had in the hostel. Sounds pretty much like my experience last year - but at least he didn't fall asleep in any of the sessions!

The other Dave (this time from Devon SP) has his impressions here.

The party itself has some
photos from the rally on Saturday, but somehow they were posted on May 26th. Strange.

There will be more updates as I come across them. Meanwhile, why not follow the Socialist Party on Twitter
here?

Also on Saturday there was the
RMT conference on working class political representation. Here's a report from 'Prianikoff' on Socialist Unity. Susan Press has this to say from her position on the conference's top table as a Labour Representation Committee member (she also uses her post to announce, sadly, that she's parking her blog). Lastly The Commune chime in with this very critical piece.

Thursday edit: Duncan's got round to posting his adventures at Socialism.

Sunday edit: Dave from Though Cowards Flinch has posted up loads more reports. There's this one on Taaffe's defence/appreciation of Leon Trotsky, some thoughts on the Vestas dispute, an interview with a Labour party member, and lastly a report on the closing rally.

Official reports and a video is now available here.

The cpgb's have produced a comprehensive set of reports too, on the rally, No2EU, building a new party, and the collapse of Stalinism.

Photo by Rob Emery.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for pointing that out VPS.
Although no one's actually commented on it yet. There seems to be a wall of silence around the issue!

prianikoff

skidmarx said...

You could link directly to the comment and save people the trouble of scrolling down:
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=4855#comment-163201

Phil said...

I never knew you could do that. Who says you learn nothing from blogging?

Phil said...

I heard that in the meeting in Afghanistan an IBT'er got up and said our slogan should be 'Troops Out - Dead or Alive!'

A slogan I'm sure that will win hundreds of thousands to the anti-war cause.

ModernityBlog said...

Any video clips or mp3s Phil, or is that scheduled for 2014, as part of the SP's next five year plan :)

Phil said...

Well a video is now available here. Whether there will be recordings made available I don't know, but I don't see why not. If memory serves they did eventually materialise last year.

Derek Wall said...

well I spent some time with the CPB at their university event, while I have a number of disagreements with them it was a friendly event which I would recommend.