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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 181 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 181, December 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
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Nigel Flanagan is a member of the Sefton 2, who led a successful campaign against cutbacks by the local council |
I read Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe when I was 17 and felt like I had been listening to the Sex Pistols non-stop for six weeks. Arthur is selfish, cynical, cunning and angry. His motto is, ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down,’ and he doesn’t want anyone trying to tell him right from wrong. The book brilliantly coveys his arrogance in the face of his dreary and timetabled existence in the factory, at home and in the pub. He offers no hope and no politics and by the end of the book is set for marriage and the life of his peers. Arthur is not a nice man, or even a new man, but neither was James Dean.
The story of Red Clydeside during and after the First World War is one of the most inspirational examples of working class rebellion that we have, so I read Revolt on the Clyde by Willie Gallacher out of a sense of duty. Now I often reread it after a bad day. The battle of George Square, the rent strikes, the engineers’ powerful shop stewards committees and the courage of working class men and women in Glasgow – it’s all in there. The end of the book is tragic in many ways, not least when you see how Gallacher’s politics lead him down the blind alley of parliamentary socialism. This does not detract from the brilliant struggles described beforehand and reading about them still inspires us today.
Like many socialists, I have a battered copy of Jack London’s The Iron Heel. It’s a sweeping story made interesting mainly by ideas argued for in the book. The arguments are put so well that I have used them word for word in debates in pubs, even though the use of the 1912 San Francisco tram drivers’ strike to illustrate ‘surplus value’ theories wasn’t the best example to hand. Most socialists I know have read this book and most I suppose have a critical fondness for it.
As I was born and brought up in Leeds it was inevitable that Tony Harrison’s poem V would hold some interest for me. I think it is a staggering poem, inspired by Harrison visiting his parents’ grave in Leeds and finding it (and others) covered in graffiti. He tries to reason that there is some meaning in this and the poem covers the whole range of conflicts in life. In particular he covers the conflict between culture and the ‘yob’, the miners’ strike, war and even his marriage. Needless to say the poem was condemned by the Tories, and Norman Tebbit tried to prevent it from being broadcast on Channel 4.
Last year I read a book called Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil. Black diamonds refer to the coal mined in Fife and the ‘Blue Brazil’ is the nick name for Cowdenbeath football club (average attendance 300). The book is written with obvious affection by Ronald Ferguson who is a minister in the Church of Scotland. It is a funny and moving description of the relationship between the Fife coal communities and their football team. Ferguson’s politics are a bit dodgy, he is too fond of famous Cowdenbeath supporters and is less than critical of the board, yet the stories of the team’s successful promotion year that coincides with the 1992 pit closure announcement are wonderful. It is a sad book as it draws together the end of coalmining and the end of football as we know it in Fife – both killed off by the same ‘auld enemy’, profit and the capitalist culture.
My last book is Animal Farm. I know it’s on many socialists’ lists but why not. Every time I read it I’m full of hope for the animals and I play the game of trying to guess who is who in real life. But every time I read the last sentence, ‘The creatures outside looked from pig to man and from man to pig and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was man and which was pig’, I still get that horrible chill that comes over me, the revolution betrayed indeed. Come back Snowball, all is forgiven.
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