Royston Bull (second from the left)
There's a great deal of voter dissatisfaction with the two-party system
of politics in Britain (Labour/Tory) and the beneficiaries of this are likely
to be Nigel Farage and Reform UK's brand of right-wing populism. Farage
recently said that all politicians are wankers but at least Reform UK are
honest about it.
As the left in Britain have become more obsessed with identity politics and less with class politics, it has become more socially irrelevant to the lives of many working-class people. Identify politics has taken social-class out of the equation and is less concerned with equality, redistribution, and the class struggle. That's why many corporate bodies buy into it and are happy to promote it. The English left is well known for being fractious and sectarian socialism is the norm in Britain. Some 57 varieties of socialist, communist and Trotskyist groups, vie to be the vanguard of a non-revolutionary proletariat.
I remember some years ago writing an article about a Trotskyist nutter called Royston Bull, who was a former member of the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP). Bull was rather like the malevolent journalist Quintus Slide of the 'People's Banner', who appears in Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels. He edited a magazine with the grand name of the Economic and Philosophic Review (E&PR), which was basically just a rant on paper. From the safety and comfort of his living room, Bull would often verbally threaten and harass his political opponents and detractors via his scurrilous publication. Bull rose to the dizzy heights of vice-president of Arthur Scargill's SLP before he was 'voided' by the SLP when they realised just how big a nutter he was.
My article was about how Royston Bull had expelled the Greater Manchester political activist John Pearson, from his branch of the SLP. The way John described his expulsion to me sounded like the Salem Witch-Hunt in Arthur Miller's play 'The Crucible'.
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