Socialist Society - is there life outside workshops?

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 5-7 of 7; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 3 of the scan

to form the 'Socialist Society'.

purpose of promoting education.

The founders the 1930s the Left Book club.

In itself, such a project can only be positive. But l can hardly be suggested ihat left wing publishing is suffering in Britain from a great dearth of input With Pluto, NLB and a host of others, publishing hundreds of books a year, it seems unlikely thai the Society COILaDULt anything particularly novel on this level. LAST weekend over 1300 people met together The Society, founded by a galaxy of independent socialists, proposes to draw together socialists for the socialist theory and society who are generally to be found within the ambit of New Left Review, were obviously inspired by the ex ample of socialist education and publishing in - for example the Plebs League and with often a marginal relatonship to ine organised labour movement Most of them were actively nostle to invoive ment in the Labour Party, the booing and hissing of tric Hetter when he sug Besita that the Labour Partv was the fight.

On this occasion Eric Heffer was right. The only which the frustrated energies and enthusiasm of most of those participating, even in doing educational work, can be realised is by linking up with the Labour left In the wards and conEric Heffer: booed when he urgeo Socialist Society to join Labour Party Socialist Challenge stituencies there i: understanding of the tee for political theer: education, but linked h:: a practical struggle, an a: tempt at involvement with Hallidi Dolitic The potentia = ted by the socialis: ::

in danger swamped by the large portion of its firsi re who doubt that there outside workshops. who last attended a ference when they "ti LECuS for Fragments' Outside of the !

Party the Socialist S could become an obs telligentsia to the laboi mutual appreciation socie lust a cique even if a big one.

As the crisis deepens. the Tories redouble their attacks, more and more socialist intellectuals will want to beyond 'theoretical practice' The Labour Party is how to get out of the intellectual ghet to. 28 January 1982