Monday 14 August 2017

Idle Sons of The Bourgeoisie

As in:

IMG, IMG,
Idle sons of the bourgeoisie.

The International Marxist Group was unique in being entirely middle-class, and it ended up making no bones about the fact that it had chosen to dissolve itself into the Labour Party with a view to a takeover.

Of course Tony Blair was in it, if never exactly in the intellectual vanguard of it. I do not know how I had never worked that one out before, especially since everyone has always known about Geoff Gallop.

Not that Blair has ever read one word of Trotsky's own writings. At most, he has read a biography. Blair, if he has ever read anything, only ever claims to have read biographies. He has no interest in ideas, but only in personalities.

It makes perfect sense that he should have been moderated by his then-Bennite wife. The IMG hated Tony Benn so bitterly that it used its influence in one or two Constituency Labour Parties to secure support for Denis Healey.

Benn was not the unifying figure across almost the entire Left that Jeremy Corbyn now is. For such a figure to emerge, the Left first needed to have gone through the Blair years.

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