The Unorthodox Website Blog

Comrades, I can definitely see the need for a new Marxist party, or some sort of new Socialist party which could unite leftwingers in the Labor Party and members of various other left and Marxist parties.

But as far as I can see nobody has gotten together and done a serious critical analysis of what went wrong with the 20th Century Socialist experiments in the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe, and how a new ruling bourgoisie was able to emerge. There is certainly no common conclusion.

Some factions blame the failure of Socialism in the Soviet bloc on Stalin, others on Gorbachov, or Yeltsin, or Trotsky. Nobody seems to have criticized Lenin or Marx themselves.

Comrades, we will get nowhere until we conduct an in-depth analysis, not fearing to revise the theories of Marx, Engels and Lenin themselves in the light of 20th Century experience.

I have conducted just such an analysis myself, as published in many articles on my website (The Unorthodox Website at www.btinternet.com/~tony.papard/).

Last Thursday, June 14th, I met up with my friend Chris and we visited the new Dali exhibition at the Tate Modern. Be warned, you need several hours to view this properly, as it not only has many of his paintings, drawings, etc. but also full length films, which we didn’t have time to see. We did, however, see the recently completed color animation Destino, which Dali started to make with Walt Disney in the 1940s, and which contains typical Dali Surrealist images.

The Joe Meek evening was postponed from earlier in the year due to a power cut (the so-called Curse of Joe Meek!) It included some interesting clips, including a great color one of Screamin’ Lord Sutch performing ‘Jack The Ripper’. Not exactly pc nowadays, if it ever was, but great quality clip.

I had my second Retirement Party (at work) on Friday. I went in specially as my last working day was over a week earlier. There was a good turnout for me, loads of food (vegetarian outside the Conference Room, and a meat barbecue in the patio), and the Executive Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International, Kate Gilmore, made a speech and presented me with some lovely gifts from AI and my colleagues. These included a DVD/VHS recorder/player, DVDs of really old TV shows from the 1950s and later, and a souvenir book signed by my colleagues with pictures of myself at work and at work parties on the front. Best of all was a picture of me with The Million Dollar Quartet, which I shall of course call The Million Dollar Quintet – Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Tony Papard!

I also got DVDs of me and my colleagues at AI.