all while the presence was main. However, neither do we wish to see tained. Neither was it expected that a movement so potentially strong as the march should pass right through ours follow CND into oblivion for Whitehall without one halting. want of decisive action. But this is what happened and the Therefore, next time let us not assembled comrades continued their stand around patting ourselves on way to Hyde Park and the final the backs and accepting Callaghan's rally. To inTormed. by the pat on the hand for our "British speakers how big the demo Wass good sense. If we must go to the we already knew. That the United 'killing ground' of Grosvenor Square States was committing genocide in to make ourselves felt then let as Vietnam we already knew. That 20. The Vietnamese people have capitalism stinks - we knew that too. been living and dying on one huge We were informed that this the killing-ground for years. demo was just the beginning but Either that or let everyone stay at where were the proposals for the home and campaign on his local coming campaign? doorstep.
And all this while but a few hundred yards away comrades were Hopefully yours, continuing the demonstration in a practical way. P. J. CULLIS It is not that a mass punch-up with the police is necessarily wanted. 2 Delamare Crescent, Croydon, That in itself achieves nothing. Surrey. Comrades: have disgusted most working-class 1 have noticed a very regrettable leftists: tendency in the last few issues of Where, one may wonder, would Black Dwarf to regard the dilettante the profits of this record have gone? dissatisfaction of purveyors of the Would the 'dissatisfaction' pop sub-culture and of those who Rolling Stones and their ilk dismake up the international limes appear we had genuinely brigade as being an essentially anti- socialist society tomorrow? The capitalist and left-wing dissatisfac- answers, to me at least, are obvious: tion. This tendency reached while the hippies and adherents of ridiculous culmination in an open the pop movement are obviously not letter to John Lennon by one John class enemies and are in fact part of Hoyland (who graciously speaks for the human wreckage of the capitalist "we on the left") in which he as system, their lack of any ideology. much as said that taking LSD apart from a reverence of "self" ('acid" sic.) was a left-wing protest. makes their support an encumbrance Also, the Rolling Stones apparently and an embarrassment. are blooded revolutionaries because A large section of the American they have been arrested by the police left have now, it seems, gone 'hippy", for drug-taking. Putting aside discarding ideology and theoretical ethical CanE medical considerations polemics for the all-purpose 'motherabout drug-taking, it must be said fucker' (presumably political that it is no more left-wing than cat- analysis), and generally discrediting ing a bar of chocolate. Furthermore. the already weak but genuinely leftthe "hippy", "drop-out trend among movements in America. young people cannot but contribute would be a great tragedy if any secto the continued existence of capi- tion of the British left were to talism since it dirécts into ineffective dabble with the hippies; to do anyand passive opposition a great deal thing, in fact, which would detract of political dissatisfaction and youth- from its seriousness as a political ful reformism which could be har- movement. I write this incidentally nessed in the service of socialism. after arguing for about an hour with Pop-culture is the new opium of the a trade-unionist, trying to persuade him that the relatively new leftward As for making revolutionary trend in British student politics martyrs of the Rolling Stones, who not a wholly transient and hippy now it seems have decided to ride trend. I hope he will never be able the commercial tiger of protest, any to prove me wrong. distributor would have a cast iron argument, on aesthetic reasons alone, Yours faithfully. for refusing to accept their record, which was honey and anolescent 6 Randolph Gardens, Maida Vale, rubbish. And would, incidentally, NW6. POP POLITICS - I Comrade, was of any importance in the fig for Socialism.
I have been a Socialist all my life The private standards of in since the age of fourteen. I know a viduals are most certainly their o little at first hand about revolution affairs but do not debase a nol and I lost an eye fighting Fascism. cause by enlisting the "help' Socialism to me means a society amoral bums, looking for a che where people are no longer crippled Dane wagon. The great revoluti Varies of history, men like Conol and cenraved emotionally and morally by the pressures of capi- Lenin and Trotsky, and the hum! talism, and where for the first time people too, such as the Span human relationships will be honest, anarchists were shining examples open and moral in the real sense of integrity and honesty in their p that word sonal lives which were indeed men In your Vietnam issue you devote another another aspect of th space to some doggerel by Mick no ltical benete That Jagger, an unfortunate nothing Socialism means in practice. whom the world could do well with- May I say finally that the layo out, and more disgusting still, you the typography and much of couple his name on your front page, context of the Vietnam issue was La very high standard indeed. alongside Marx and Engels; something which will surely make any sincere Socialist want to vomit. Sincerely.
Almost as bad as this, you waste valuable space on a letter of con- PAT MEVEIGH dolence to John Lennon as if this Gosford Cottage, Aberlady, poor confused drug experimenter East Lothian, Scotland.