In his article on Socialist Oraniser, Paul Clarke find: he thought of worked-ou ideas dominating politics, even when the ideas offend the average left conventional wisdom, so alarming that he can interpret it only as 'eccentric 'bizarre, 'sectarian' and loony' And if the alarming ideas are not visibly loony at all, he has to garble them so that they do seem weird.
Item: SO said it was 'good news' that Gerry Adams was creasingly narrow and aggressive Catholic communalism.
Instead of dealing with this argument Clarke invents two quotes which do not appear i he article at all, that the result was a result of a rejection of sectarianism', and that the DLP is 'the party of the Second International In fact the SO article called the SDLP a bourgeois party. I hope that Clarke understands that we could welcome Adams' poting the sui positively supKen ivingstone. But, says Clark meone on the left has bee prepared to get up and fight back against the new realists' so we should 'stand behind Livingstone's campaign, while quite rightly making criticisms of his policies.
are Outlook's criticisms? Where for that mat. ter is Livingstone's "fight' against new realism? His main pitch has been to attack John Smith's redistributive tax policies from the right.
Livingstone's candidacy is not that of left against right, but of a shyster trying to promote Labour left.
Item: SO students intend to take NUS to court over its abolition of Winter Conference.
Winter conference is crucial * spreading ideas and callin se NUS leaders to accoun After a series of dirty tricks, the NUS leaders are now declaring Winter Conference 'abolished against a declaration by the pre vious conference that it has not been validly abolished.
But says Clarke we have to let the NUS leaders have their way in the name of 'independenceof the NUS'. Independence from what? From their own conference?
Item: SO denounces 'the whole of the far lett as transonally bigoted against Israeli Jews for backing the Palestinian struggle - Another Clarkequote! We ourselves back the alestinian struggle, but denounce those who want IsYes! I want to become a Socialist Outlook I Outlook to sell O Name: Address: Tel: 2UU rael wiped off the map - and they are not the whole of the Item: SO gives 'almost uncritical support Yeltsin'. Another Clarke-quote, although without quote marks in his article. We have called Yeltsin Mussolini, nationalist demagogue, an 'enforcer of market madness'. If anyone should give me almost uncritical support hope they choose kinder words than that.
Item: SO is increasingly Untrue (compare our trade union coverage with curlook i but sO does attract young people willing to challenge all received ideas. And the less young of us try to stay true to our ideas, instead of collapsing into weary alarm at all ideas beyond the bland, carefully-hedged rehashes of left orthodoxy.
Martin Thomas Socialist Organiser
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