Ralph Miliband

I decided to look at his writing, and have started Parliamentary Socialism, but I was pointed at at an article he wrote in the run up to the 1964 election, called “If Labour wins”, republished in the New Left Review. This led me to write a blog article, which required me to look at some further resources to check my arguments. Here are my notes and links.

1. Ralph Miliband quotes from quotefancy.com
2. Tariq Ali on fierce socialist Ralph Miliband, there was music in his delivery, in the Guardian
3. Ralph Miliband: six key ideas from his books by Stuart Jefferies in the Guardian
4. Ralph Miliband, his biography at wikipedia

From the quotes page,

“Pious references to the Labour Party being a ‘broad church’ which has always incorporated many different strands of thought fail to take account of a crucial fact, namely that the ‘broad church’ of Labour only functioned effectively in the past because one side – the Right and Centre – determined the nature of the services that were to be held, and excluded or threatened with exclusion any clergy too deviant in its dissent.”

And on Wilson’s 1st administration

1. Harold Wilson’s victories — a lesson about winning
2. , a review of Nick Symons Thomas’s book on Harold Wilson.
3. and Wikipedia on 1964_United_Kingdom_general_election, Harold Wilson, the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, and the Ministry of Technology
4. Records of the Ministry of Technology at the National Archive

And on comedians as opposition, I say, “… talking of the satire boom of the early sixties and for those of us looking back from the 2020s, we can now see that Blair’s New Labour was also preceded by its own comedy revolution, an evolution of the Alternative Comedy movement, which was arguably spawned by Thatcherism; the Wikipedia article however doesn’t mention Bremner, Bird and Fortune, nor Ben Elton, the Young Ones and Spitting Images, all of them providing an undercurrent of opposition to the Tories. Humour is in many ways the deadliest weapon, and it is notably not present today.”

I looked at seventies comedy in an article, called “You gotta laugh (or not!)“, written just prior to the 2019 election in which I quote some quite serious sources to back up my argument that,

There was also a series of shows which had the effect of patronising, demonising and bowlderising the working class and its politics, such as The Likely  Lads & Liver Girls where we are meant to identify with aspiration and laugh at the hold-outs. There were another series of shows including “Till death us do part” & “Citizen Smith” which infantilised working class organisation, culture and politics and the possible instruments of change. Some of it is unwatchable today because of the racism.

It was mostly shit, and tool of the ruling class aimed at weakening the principles of solidarity amongst the working class, let’s remember it was a decade that ended with the winter of discontent and Thatcher”s 1979 victory

What’s worrying today is that in the run up to 1997, all comedy was anti-tory, with shows such as Spitting Images, Bremner, Bird and Fortune. It’s not so true today.

Dave Levy, on his blog, “You gotta laugh (or not!)

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The Image is taken from the Jefferies Guardian article and used for my usual reasons.