Obituaries Organized Rage

The Marxist historian John Saville belonged to the group of Communist intellectuals who grouped around the Communist Party Historians Group. Unlike Eric Hobsbawn, the writer of the obituary below, Saville was one of the many members of the group who left the party after Khrushchev denounced the crimes of Stalin in a speech made to the 1956 CPSU Party Congress, and then later in the same year proved himself to be a charlatan and a willing apprentice of Stalin by sending the Red Army into Budapest with orders to turn its guns on the Hungarian working class. Along with E.P. Thompson he was a ... Read Full Story

David James Davis 1923-2009 by Alun Morinan Dave Davis, a lifelong campaigner for peace and socialism, has died at the age of 85 following a long illness.Dave was born in Gloucestershire. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy on motor torpedo boats. He was an electrician working around the cities of Bristol and Gloucester.He moved to south east London some 30 years ago where he worked as a caretaker for a housing association.Dave was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) for almost 50 years until its dissolution in 1991. He stood as a party candidate and ... Read Full Story

Forgive me for posting yet another Obit today,  but I am traveling over the next couple of days and have no direct access to the internet,  so instead of a blank screen I thought I would schedule what I found to be in interesting Obituary.  Valentin Varennikov was the senior Red Army General who led the military elements in the coup against  Mikhail   Gorbachev which nailed down the coffin of Soviet communism and at whose feet can be placed some of the blame for the subsequent break up of the USSR.  Whilst the writer of the Obituary may claim Varennikov was an uncompromising communist, his allegiance was to a ... Read Full Story

If you ask anyone in the UK, what is the greatest ever political innovation set in motion by central government, almost all would reply the NHS . Whilst not a socialist George Godber, along with Nye Bevan and liberal William Beveridge , with Clem Attlee at the helm are rightly regarded by history as the founding fathers of the NHS . I have a tenuous link with the beginnings of the NHS , as I was one of the first babies to be born within its walls. My sister had been born at home due to my parents being unable to find the medical ... Read Full Story

Like many young people in the 1960s, (I am sure something similar is true up until this day) I came to politics via Lennon not Lenin. What I mean is it was the influence of the musical and cultural awakening that took place in the 1960s that led me into political waters. First I became interested in what was then regarded as black music, blue beat, blues, R@B and jazz and through mixing in that environment I came across papers like IT and Oz and so on. As with most people who have not received a formal education one tends to educated oneself by ... Read Full Story