Four - The Socialist Party of Great Britain

I had never been to a political meeting before, never mind a lecture that had the title: ‘Why Socialists Should Read Dostoyevsky’.   My journey to the regional offices of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was simple.  Rather than going by public transport, I decided to go by motor scooter: a dodgy second hand Vespa that I had bought a few months earlier.  This took me along one of London’s busiest roads: the London south circular, towards Clapham, an area that had been thoroughly gentrified.  Well to do Clapham seemed to be an incongruous and surprising location for a socialist party.  Plus, its offices were next to a very bourgeois wine bar.

I was nervous; I had no idea what to expect. I’m not a very political person.  I am, however, firmly on the left of the political spectrum, so the thought of attending this meeting wasn’t outrageously outside of my comfort zone.  When I was at school, I was taught by an English teacher who worked extremely hard to recruit us kids to the cause.  I remember that he chose plays that had a distinct socialist message, and we were given special lessons about the importance of belonging to a trade union.  He even went as far as organising a trip for a group of kids to visit what was then Soviet Russia.  All this took place in a particularly well-to-do and resolutely capitalist part of London called Twickenham.

After gingerly stepping into the party offices, I was generously welcomed by Alan, who seemed to be the group’s leader.  ‘What do you know about us?’ he asked.  I told him that I had read about the group on the website and that I’ve seen an electronic version of the magazine; I had spent ten minutes looking at the party website before I hopped onto my scooter.  I felt a little uncomfortable saying that I was going to all these different events, so I shared another a truth with Alan:  ‘well, put it like this, I’ve recently joined a union and I’ve become more aware of… Issues, I guess’.

Alan seemed to be happy enough and he offered me a cup of tea.  I asked him whether there was a charge for the tea and he said, ‘there’s going to be a whip round in the break, you can put something in the pot if you want’.

The speaker was a chap called Dave who enthusiastically baffled everyone.  He wore a baseball cap backwards and had a pointy revolutionary beard.  He was clearly a scholar of Russian history, particularly the period that lead up to the Russian revolution. His talk was liberally peppered with ‘-isms’, many of which he claimed to have invented. 

I vaguely understood the first twenty minutes of his talk, and then he totally lost me.  I then clawed my way back to understanding during the final twenty minutes.  From what I could gather, a part of his talk was about his literary interpretation of Crime and Punishment to justify revolutionary action.

His best phrase was ‘meta-rationalism’.

‘What does that mean?  Irrational?’ Alan challenged during the question and answer session.

‘No, it means everything else that both is and isn’t rational; it goes above it, and beyond it, touching our sub-conscious’. 

I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Another audience member was equally perplexed. She stood up.

‘I’ve been sitting here for two hours, listening to what you’ve been saying, and I haven’t understood a word what you’ve said!’ The room fell deathly silent.  

‘I can’t even pronounce Dostoyevsky!’ concluded our angry speaker.

Dave had seriously misjudged his audience.

After a few more questions (which obviously involved the quoting of Marx), I started to get restless, along with other members of the audience.  It was edging towards the moment when I needed to gouge my eyes out with spoons just to get some entertainment: I needed to do something desperate; I decided to have a quick chat with Alan who had escaped to another part of the building.  He too had lost the will to live.

‘Alan, I’m going to shoot off, mate.’ I said, noticing that the discussions were collapsing and comrades were bolting for the door.

‘This hasn’t been the best meeting, I know… But do come back!’ he said, apologetically. He handed me copies of the party magazine and what appeared to be a manifesto.