Chris Harman dies :O!

[h0m0revolutionary]

Sad times. SWP Central Committee member Chris Harman died last night in Cairo, where he was set to give a talk.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=19502

He was always one of the better CC comrades and an intelligent man. Big shame :(.

[Pogue]

Condolences to his family and friends.

[Il Medico]

That's sad. :(

[BobKKKindle$]

RIP, the struggle continues.

There will be a full obituary in next week's issue of Socialist Worker and full funeral arrangements.

This is indeed a great tragedy.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

A really belated tribute (I had a lot of other stuff to do, OK?), but here's my favourite Harman story (from David Widgery's excellent history of the Left in Britain, although probably not by Widgery himself):
"(At the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign meeting commemorating Ho Chi Minh's death.) Most of the meeting was taken up with various people saying that the death of Ho Chi Minh was a great loss to the revolutionary movement throughout the world. Which is probably true but jot a bit repetitive. Chris Harman got up for IS and made a speech showing no sign that he might be addressing other than an IS meeting. He addressed the meeting with a certain lack of style but no more than one would expect and proceeded in fairly forthright terms. He dealt first with Ho Chi Minh's contribution to the world revolutionary movement. And everybody sat there soaking up the usual collection of left-wing platitudes to which they had been well accustomed in the Conway Hall. Left-wing audiences are aware of the times that they gather together to clobber hell out of each other and they are aware of the times they gather together to indulge in mutual self-congratulation about the strength of the Left. The latter occasion is rare, but when it comes people thank god for it and think how great it is to be part of the united left against Fascism or the Spanish Civil War or something.

'After a while Harman proceeded to get on to the question of Ho Chi Minh's contribution to killing off the Trotskyist movement in North and South Vietnam. He expanded on various themes and pointed out that from the International Socialists' point of view, though they supported fully the Vietnamese people's struggle against American imperialism and had done a great deal practically in Britain on this theme, it was crucial to realize that Ho Chi Minh and the regime he had headed were not the answer to North Vietnam or Vietnam as a whole and what was eventually necessary was a workers' republic which would have to get rid of the present set-up. This went almost unnoticed by the audience. I regarded all this as fairly sound stuff which I'd heard before anyway hundreds of times. Anyway, Harman finished his speech and a lady aged about 55 to 60 got up and marched to the front and said that it was absolutely outrageous that people should just sit there and vegetate when somebody had just made a totally slanderous attack on the leader of the Vietnamese Revolution who had just died. Whereupon there was thunderous applause from the 60 percent of the audience who weren't in IS. Harman looked slightly surprised and slightly grieved and slightly pleased by the reaction to his address. Tariq Ali looked very unhappy indeed because he could see his meeting falling apart in front of him. At the back of the hall a Maoist shouted "Washington spy!" at Chris Harman, which seemed to please him further. The audience now became somewhat heated. The Communist Party started to denounce the IMG, the IMG in its turn started to denounce the IS. The IS stood there looking grieved in some cases, sheepish in others and quite pleased with themselves for causing so much fuss and bother among the other groups. One Communist came up to the IS contingent and said "You're always like this. You were like this during the thirties. You'll try and wreck anything." By this time the platform was somewhat depleted since half of it had stormed off. The IMG speaker then proceeded to make a declamatory speech that no one could understand.

'Harman had wandered off the platform for some reason and Tariq Ali was left making occasional remarks about the IS letting the side down. The IS shouted at Tariq, "So you support the Communist Party, when did they ever join the VSC?", "Opportunist" etc. People at the back shouted at each other. The general atmosphere that came over for anyone who took a slightly detached view of the proceedings was one of a collection of nutters screaming at each other, and achieving very little. The IMG seemed quite pleased, however, to have photographs of the IS failing to stand up or sit down, whichever the case may be, during the Vietnamese national anthem. This created considerable problems because they seemed to be playing the Red Flag at the same time and I was not sure whether you should stand for either or both or leave, since my reaction since childhood has always been that wheneve a national anthem gets played I walk out of the room as fast as possible. All IS being rude meant to me was that instead of dying a quiet private death three weeks later, VSC died in Conway Hall. But because the IS actually said that after all Ho Chi Minh wasn't such a good thing the VSC got off its bed and ran around for a couple of minutes before collapsing in two minutes in a dead coma."

I think that anyone with that level of skill at trolling Maoists and Stalinists certainly deserves a place in this board's heart.

[Искра]

He was active on revleft?

[h0m0revolutionary]

He was active on revleft?

Nope, but active SWP Central Committee member. lol.

Infact he's just pubished a book, Zombie Capitalism, it's awful politically, but not a bad read.

[Искра]

Aha so CC wasn't commie club... sorry I mixed it... :)

[Patchd]

Aha so CC wasn't commie club... sorry I mixed it... :)
Get in line comrade, as a moderator, Commissar class, I demand you.

[Lyev]

I heard about his death, but, having not been on the left for a terribly long, I hadn't really heard of him before I heard about his death. What contributions (noteworthy books etc.) has he made?

[Jimmie Higgins]

I heard about his death, but, having not been on the left for a terribly long, I hadn't really heard of him before I heard about his death. What contributions (noteworthy books etc.) has he made?

If you are new to the left, I would recommend "A People's History of the World" - it's longish in appearance, but made to be really accessible and goes through a Marxist perspective of things like ancient slave societies, feudalism, the rise of capitalism as well as the USSR from a state-capitalist perspective.

[The Essence Of Flame Is The Essence Of Change]

I had only recently heard of him too before I learned this.RIP