'And so I must withdraw from this election'

Inspired by George Monbiot's piece on the Revolutionary Communist Party/Living Marxism/Institute of Ideas/Spiked/Whatever name they're going under this week, Alister Black has some memories of seeing the old RCP in action at NUS Conference.

I can remember encountering the RCP at my first NUS Conference back in 1992, where they were standing in just about every election, all with the same speech which I remember someone characterising as 'why we must protect the Serbs from Western aggression' (this was in 1992, remember) and all ended with something on the lines of 'the only way to change this to change all of society, NUS is part of society and thus cannot change it and therefore I withdraw from this election'. It was quite impressive the first time, less impressive the third and quite irritating the tenth, but by that point someone had discovered that a shop somewhere in Blackpool sold these little kids' toys that were effectively long sticks with little snappy jawed things on the end. By the time of the last few RCP candidates, the hall was filled with people raising these any miming along to their speeches with them.

Alister also has a great quote, for the 'I wish I'd thought of that' file:

You can read the doublethink online at the Spiked blog. I'm not publishing the url, you have to choose to find it.