Defend the Routemaster!
In spite of those here who naturally sneered at my employment with Boris Johnson as his community affairs adviser, I bring good news from City Hall. Whilst Boris’ cancellation of the Morning Star subscription was regrettable (even if it’s a rag devoted to propping up deformed workers’ states), his staff were thankful to me for spotting piles of copies of Gerry Healy’s biography A Revolutionary Life in one of their cupboards (Giles thought he was the lead singer of Hayzi Fantayzee and left them alone).
It seems I am forced to continue my occasional column at Harry’s Place (aka “bomber command”, according to The Guardian, guffaw!) as my slot at spiked-online.com has not yet materialised for some reason (an oversight, surely?), though they continue to allow that bourgeois eco-fascist Ethan to write his column there. As such, I will allow for my writings to be produced on whatever platform I can bring my case to the enemy, not least since the former publication with which I was associated, Sectarian Worker, has since been hacked and is now being used to display pictures of a truly sexist kind which even the neoconservative tribes who populate this blog would surely wish to avoid looking at in closer detail. Even the far left is not immune to the degrading imagery and sexism with which the capitalists seek to portray women workers, something even Lindsey German and I could agree on (which is not much these days, I assure you).
I have however long advocated contact with publications with which I am ideologically at odds, only to win over the better elements of the cadre and attract them to a truly revolutionary publication, one which flies in the face of the risk-obsessed capitalist society. In doing so I have actually discovered more allies in an unusual place, that of the think tank Policy Exchange (not sure of its leanings but it doesn’t seem very New Labour thankfully) and their helpful pamphlet Replacing the Routemaster.
Comrades, the removal of the Routemaster bus from the streets of London was an affront to Marxists the world over, even the reformists of Islington (who’ve lost their number 73) to the deformed petro-socialism of Caracas (who will never know the thrill of falling off the back of a Routemaster as it pulls up Tottenham Court Road). The hellish marriage of convenience between the Healyite Ken Livingstone and the pathetic orthodox Trotskyism of Socialist Action could only lead to the demise of the iconic socialist public service vehicle. There’s your “ghastly dehumanised morons” there, Ken! It must be brought back, whatever the cost.
Of course, there are those who point to the lack of commercial viability of a new model Routemaster, who expect me to drop my demands at the sight of a bar chart. They want me to dilute myself as if I was a bottle of Kiora. They expect me to get on a bendy-bus or be content with the heritage route ones. This not enough. Every single Routemaster sold must be recovered, without compensation, and brought back into service immediately!
Smash imperialism! Overthrow risk aversion! Defend the Routemaster!
Comments
| 4 June 2008, 5:08 pm |
What a lot of new-fangled nonsense. There is no chance of a marxist revolution until the streets of London resound once again to the sound of the hansom cabbie touting for business as they did in Marx’s day and the streets are covered in roughly as much horse manure as emanates daily from the website of Dickie Lenin.
At the very least bring back the RT (which had a vibrating and “puffing” action when attempting to stand still at traffic lights which rather reminded me of myself after my daily swim.)
The routemaster was a Tory plot -co-designed by AEC before that company became part of the great British Leyland.
| 4 June 2008, 5:23 pm |
The comrade is right. We rely on the Route Masters since we frequently find we have no platform.
| 4 June 2008, 5:29 pm |
Where was Dave Dudley last Saturday night I’d like to know? Didn’t he realise that London’s beer-swilling hordes were ripe for conversion, not least by showing their own contempt for risk-aversion and profound support for the writings of Brendan O’Neill.
| 4 June 2008, 5:42 pm |
Each routemaster with it’s crew of driver and conductor were a little revolutionary cell and proto-vanguard on their own. Anybody who has seen the 1970s political drama called “on the buses” where Reg Varney and his “clippie” continually outwit a bosses lackey with a Hitler moustache will know exactly what I’m getting at.
| 4 June 2008, 5:53 pm |
Sneer ye not. Bob Darke, author of ‘The Communist Technique in Britain’ (Penguin, 1952, published as ‘The Cockney Communist’ in the US) was a conductor working from Dalston LT garage.
Cover blurb:
“We have heard from the bourgeois intellectuals of the god that failed, but never before has a working-class comrade, a faithful Party member for eighteen years, a Cadre Leader whose weekly wage was constantly at the disposal of the Party, spoken out against the organization he so faithfully served. Here is a book that shows what a working man’s life is like in the Party and explains how it is possible for a few thousand Communists to speak and act on behalf of millions who hate Communism.”
| 4 June 2008, 5:58 pm |
I know. Many’s the time that as a child looking for a ticket roll at the end of the 2b route I was given a lecture on the “Materialist Conception of History” instead.
But you can’t play noughts and crosses on verbals.
| 4 June 2008, 8:01 pm |
Oh, how I sigh for the collective solidarity of the 73 Routemasters, back from when I lived in the peoples’ republic of Stoke Newington (close to the spot where the Clissold Park Soviet’s defiant cry of “Fuck Boris!” was blazoned); they never appeared in vanguards of less than three at a time. NB There appeared in last week’s copy of the Jewish Chronicle a picture of a young couple who chose to be carried to their wedding reception on a hired Routemaster dressed in 73 regalia. I have long suspected that there is a covert spart takeover of the JC. DavidT’s appearance in it is a diversion. Could it have been a coded message?
| 4 June 2008, 10:01 pm |
A word (nay, a roar) for Michael O’Riordan, Dublin bus-conductor extraordinary, International Brigader, founder-member and secretary of the Irish Workers’ Party, campaigner for Dublin’s homeless and slum-dweller, indefatigable for the cause. There are not many decent socialists who have the Head of State and the the Prime Minister at their interment.
Who gives a damn about the Routemaster? Bring back the RD!
| 5 June 2008, 12:32 am |
Graham -
I consider you a dangerous radical. Hansom cabbies indeed!
Let us return to the elegant era of the sedan when stout-legged artisans would bear the aristocrat from mansion to coffee house and then on to the Stews of London.
Oh happy days!
| 5 June 2008, 12:43 am |
this thread is pathetic
| 5 June 2008, 5:27 am |
Sheer ignorance, Comrade Dudley. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the 1980s Brechtian agit-prop masterpiece Number 73 is well aware that it was not set in yuppie media-land North London Islington, but instead in the peasants’ bastion Maidstone (Kent), where Routemasters were rarely used, in favour of the more proletarian, loud and smoky (insert old bus name here) (though vaguely nearby Dover did once host Citizen Richard’s ‘Summer Holiday’). Sandi Toksvig, the faker of many a Wikipedia entry, is lovingly remembered for her role as a worker in uniform (purple dungarees, in this case).
Write a comment