Recently I received an alert from the Red Mole
website (subtitled ‘A modest contribution to the history of the Fourth
International in Britain’, which frankly is far too modest) headed ‘Fancy a pint, comrade?’ The post reproduces a
crudely-printed ticket made for what it calls a ‘Karl Marx Booze Up’. It continues: ‘October 1968 – A competitive
pubcrawl to celebrate Karl’s 150th birthday – organised by South West London
Vietnam Ad-Hoc Committee and believed to be the brain-child of one Al
Richardson.’ The epic pub crawl began at
Centre Point and took in a couple of dozen pubs before finishing in
Hampstead. The purpose was two-fold: to
celebrate the 150th anniversary of Marx’s birth, and to raise funds for the
South West London Vietnam Committee.
The idea, according to the ticket (no. 82), was to sink
an alcoholic drink in every pub on the route, all of which existed in Marx’s
time and were on the route Marx and his German émigré friends took on their own
pub crawls. The person to complete the
course and finish a pint the fastest in the final pub would receive a ‘unique
prize’. The ticket proclaims: ‘Victory
to the N.L.F.’, i.e. the National Liberation Front, or Vietcong. To enter cost ‘half a dollar( 2/6)’; five bob was often referred to as a dollar,
reflecting times with a more favourable exchange rate.
An update to the post says the mystery prize was the
brass door knocker from the house Lenin lived in in 1905, which Richardson
rescued from a skip while the house was being demolished. The winner was Peter O’Toole of the Irish
Workers’ Group (so presumably not the
Peter O’Toole). I wonder where the door
knocker is now. Sadly I would have been
too young to join them, but it must have been quite a sight. I suspect there was a lot of singing as they
made their increasingly wobbly way northwards.
Many people talk about that teacher who had a
profound effect on their education going beyond school and helping to shape
their lives. I think I can identify
two: Someone called Ron Barrett, who
taught me English at Battersea Grammar School, and the ‘one Al Richardson’,
instigator of that long-ago excuse to get pissed, who was my history teacher at
Forest Hill School, where he was known as Alec rather than Al. His Wikipedia page describes him as a
‘British Trotskyist historian and activist’, which he was, but he was as well a
professional Yorkshireman with an often blunt manner and an infectious
enthusiasm. He could also be very funny.
I had left Battersea Grammar (actually in Streatham)
at 15, tried something that didn’t work out, lost a term’s schooling, and
started at Forest Hill in January 1973 with two terms of the fifth form
left. I had been down to do a history O
level at my previous school but the syllabus was different and I wasn’t able to
carry on with the course. So for two
terms I sat in class with Alec’s prescribed reading, a straight diet of Isaac
Deutscher.
Clearly Deutscher had a huge significance for Alec
as it was reading the monumental three-volume biography of Trotsky – indeed a
magnificent achievement – which caused Alec to leave the CPGB and join the
Trotskyist Socialist Labour League, resign his lectureship at the University of
Exeter and become a teacher at Forest Hill.
There he left the SLL and joined the International Marxist Group, but by
the time I knew him he had resigned (not been expelled, as some reports have
it) from the IMG because he objected to its increasing post-1968 obsession with
student activism. Ironically in the
early 1980s it turned to Labour Party entryism, and Alec had always argued that
the Labour Party was the key expression of working class politics and should be
the focus of revolutionary activity. He
later joined and left the Revolutionary Communist League, then concentrated on
research and writing.
He did not strike me as much of a party man, which
may go some way to explaining why, doctrinal issues apart, he never stuck with
any of the groups he joined. There is
though no doubting his commitment; in May 1968 he hitch-hiked to Paris to
participate in the student protests, where he must have cut a distinctive figure. He became a historian of the movement,
interviewing Trotskyist veterans, and a prolific author and polemicist. His major achievement was the three books he
produced with Sam Bornstein: Two Steps Back:
Communists and the Wider Labour Movement, 1939-1945 (1982), Against the Stream: A History of the Trotskyist Movement
in Britain 1924-1938 (1986) and The War and the
International: A History of the British Trotskyist Movement 1937-1949 (1986). In 1988 he founded the magazine Revolutionary History.
I have very fond memories of him, such as joking in
class that it was appropriate for A J P Taylor’s Origins of the Second World War, published by Penguin, to have an
orange spine as it was essentially a work of fiction. He had studied ancient Greek and told the
story of visiting Greece and using it, to the bemusement of the locals. He stressed the modern Greeks were nothing
like the ancient ones, so I don’t think he was too impressed by those he came
across. He had had a first in theology
from Hull, but kept that quiet, and was of course sniffy about religion; I
first heard the phrase ‘four-wheeled Christians’ from him. He loved ancient Egypt, and told us it was
his favourite period in history. He was a
tad sexist, and did not seem impressed by women, I suspect because he
considered them lacking in sufficient class consciousness. Appreciations of him after his death drew
attention to his objection to sectional interests on the left, including
feminism, anything he thought would dilute the workers’ struggle.
Sixth formers taking history would be invited round
to the house where he rented a room from another teacher, and while we were
supposed to be preparing for A levels he would hold forth on a wide range of
subjects. He gave the impression that
teaching was a stop gap before he turned his attention to something more
interesting, even though he did it for decades.
He was in fact a dedicated and inspirational teacher. His Guardian obituary refers to him ‘earning
the respect of colleagues and the devotion of pupils’, which is spot on as far
as the latter were concerned.
He died in his sleep at the tragically young age of
61, but he was overweight when I knew him and never looked as if he took care
of himself. The coffin was draped in the
flag of the 4th International, and his memorial meeting as reported in the Weekly Worker appropriately concluded
with the singing of the Internationale. The last time I saw Alec was in 1976 or early
1977, at a political meeting in London, where I was with people from the
University of Kent. We bumped into each
other in the foyer and exchanged a few remarks, then I left to join my
friends. I’m sure many others will have
warm memories of him as teacher, historian and political activist. His influence on me was profound, and I
celebrate his memory as he celebrated the memory of Karl Marx that day in October 1968,
though in my case not by drinking in two dozen pubs!
Next year marks the 200th anniversary of Marx’s
birth, and the 50th anniversary of the famous pub crawl. It would be nice if someone were to recreate the
outing to commemorate both, but particularly Alec’s significant contributions
to the cause he served in his own idiosyncratic way.
