Communist - Alfred Sherman (left) - the architect of 'Thatcherism'.
It's intriguing to read how soi-disant Communists, have influenced the British Conservative Party with their ideas.
Munira Mirza, who went to Breeze Hiil School, Oldham, was dubbed 'Boris's Brains' and was a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). She wrote for their magazine Living Marxism and their website Spiked. Before resigning in February 2022, Mirza was the Director of the No10 policy unit and co-authored the 2019 Conservative Manifesto. After studying English literature at Oxford, she did an M.A. and PhD in sociology at the University of Kent under Frank Furedi, the Hungarian guru of the RCP. Married to the Tory fixer, Dougie Smith, who is still working for the government, they are seen as the power couple behind Kemi Badenoch and the war on woke. Dougie Smith, previously worked as a speech writer for David Cameron, and as an organiser for exclusive sex parties.
In 2020, Boris Johnson nominated former RCP member, Claire Fox, for a Peerage, in spite of her previous opposition to the House of Lords and her support for the IRA. Personally, I doubt that Boris even knew who she was, until somebody had a word in his ear. Claire Fox also wrote for Living Marxism and Spiked. She later joined Nigel Farage's Brexit Party and became a Brexit MEP. Despite Farage's claim to have received death threats from the IRA, and Baroness Fox of Buckley, being a former Commie, Farage welcomed her into his party with open arms.
Many former RCP members now write for the right-wing press. These include former Trotskyist, Brendan O'Niell, and Mick Hume. Hume, who has been described as a 'libertarian Marxist' is a keen Manchester United fan, and also writes for the Manchester United Fanzine.
Boris Johnson is not the only Conservative PM to have been advised by Communists. Alfred Sherman, a former Communist who fought in the Spanish Civil War, is credited with being the architect of what became known as 'Thatcherism'. In 1948, Sherman was expelled from the CPGB, for being a 'Titoist devationist'. A part-time leader writer for the Daily Telegraph, he also worked alongside Sir Keith Joseph, at the Centre for Policy Studies. Thatcher regarded Sherman as a 'genius', but thought him difficult to get on with. He thought Thatcher was a person of beliefs rather than ideas.
In his biography of Margaret Thatcher, Charles Moore, says that Thatcher was a kind of 'Stage-door Johnny' who rather than developing her own ideas, collected the ideas of others. He writes: "Alfred Sherman supplied much of the material at this time. As Alfred Sherman put it characteristically: 'Early Thatcherism was pure Keith, which meant pure Sherman. She lacked coherence'."
Some of Maggie's supporters were converts from socialism and Sherman cultivated them. Paul Johnson, a former editor of the New Statesman, and a strong Thatcherite, described Maggie, as "the most ignorant politician of her level that I'd come across until I met Tony Blair" 'but she was touchingly aware of her ignorance, being' "the eternal scholarship girl." Jonathan Aitken, remembered her attending a meeting of the Conservative Philosophy Group, when she talked about "defending Christian values with the Atom Bomb." No wonder, Jim Prior thought her potty.
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5 comments:
Hi D,
Great article,The luxury communists are everywhere.check out Penny Mordaunt/Tony Blair/Bill Gates/Stonewall and on and on and on ,not quite the Tory she pretends to be...
I wonder what Dave Hallsworth would have thought? He fell for the RCP hook, line and sinker!
It's a bit too late to ask him. I've spoken to Bob about it, who told me that he was only a supporter of the RCP and never a member. I gather the RCP was rather an exclusive party who recruited and cultivated bright young students. If they thought you had prospects, they would invite you to become a member. Am I mistaken in thinking you were a member of the RCP at one time? I doubt that any of these people that I've mentioned have really left the organisation which has morphed into other things. Mirza tries to make out it's just a job and says she isn't a Conservative. I suspect there's more to it than that.
You are mistaken in thinking that I was once a member of the RCP.
Elsie Hallsworth was a member, as well as Dave and she used to sell me Living Marxism. I went to a few meetings but I didn't join, neither did I give them any money.
Remember the RCP extremely well from the mid-1990's in South Wales & Bristol
The inner cabal centred round LM were neither ' revolutionary' or 'communist' and referred to the old CPGB & the (then) newish CPB as ' the rump of our movement '.
Active in the Campaign Against Militarism think their only claim to fame was abseiling into the House of Commons during a debate on the US incursion into Somalia ( to be fair they actually mixed with some of the genuine members of the proletariat in Tiger Bay & Bristol but only with a guide ; and for their notorious LM cover with the severed heads from Bosnia on the cover - always aware of the ' value' of shock & awe in advertising LM as a vehicle to launch the careers of their journalist who to a writer had a huge sense of self-entitlement and self-promotion
Peculiar brand of bourgeois kids slumming it before they inherited their family fortunes, second rate teachers & aspiring actors & almost exclusively white without a single actual manual labourer amongst them !
I clearly remember persistent rumour doing the rounds amongst the genuine left-wing circles in South Wales & London at the time that Security Services had infiltrated RCP/LM editorial board who had one or more plants on the payroll. I met Claire Fox , and took an instant and immediate dislike and suspicion to before I'd downed my first Cappuccino. No surprise at all that so many went onto write for the current incarnation Spiked after adopting rabid right-wing libertarian political positions- which lay dormant in more ways than one just below the surface so many of these wannabe revolutionaries.
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