Undercover at the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Britain
The revolution will not be energised
#44. Communist Meet-Up
What’s up with communists? They seem so meek and mild with their anoraks and RESIST lapel pins, and yet, they’ve killed hundreds of millions of people over the years. Mao and Stalin each killed way more than Hitler, and they didn’t even have the cool uniforms and stuff. Why do they get such a free pass?
It was time to investigate. It was time to attend a meeting of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Britain – which, to be fair, was free to enter. (You’re probably expecting some kind of joke about communists here; well make one up yourself. You’re not entitled to my labour, bourgeoisie pig.)
I made my way to the Bertrand Russel room at a venue in London’s Red Lion Square. A Billy Bragg playlist got me in the mood as I sat on public transport in my unbranded jeans and jumper, trying to fit in.
In reality, as I entered and sheepishly found the last seat at the back of the room, I found myself surprised by the people there. I’d been expecting angry youths and at least one smouldering comrade in a beret pushing for a banana uprising; what I got was about a dozen unremarkable people in the coveted M&S and Barbour marketing demographic of ABC1 55+.
The speaker was a Cambridge man in his sixties with a tailored suit, Apple Watch, and public-school tie. Inquisitive blue eyes darted around from beneath a sweep of white hair. With a stack of prepared notes, he was droning on and on about nuclear power. It was the theme of the evening.
By which I mean, the theme was droning on and on. They babbled all night about not very much at all. They really loved to recite facts and data and statistics. The speaker prattled about the spherical tokamak (‘I don’t need to tell you what that is’), about the history of horsepower, about megawatts, gigawatts and yottawatts, and the number of football stadia that could be powered by each, churning out useless fact after useless fact like a tour bus operator.
Even the name of the group – the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Britain – was wordy and dialectical.
The discussion was about nuclear energy, but they probably could have powered the country just by harnessing all of their useless hot air. They talked a lot but put forward no actual solutions. What could they do, anyway – start their own reactor? The entire debate was pointless. It was like the BBC’s Have Your Say comment section but in real life. It was just a chance for a bunch of impotent people (both kinds) to get together, criticise the status quo and flap their beaks about what they’d do if they held positions of power. Which they didn’t.
Also - they called themselves communists but they gave no consideration to community. There was no connection to real people, only a dehumanised and desolate discussion of abstract ideas; all mind and no heart. During the so-called question and answer session, there was no interactive conversation, just multiple individual monologues in a row. One man, large with a patchy beard and greasy hair, ranted for at least ten minutes straight, his eyes rooting upwards to access thoughts, not once making eye contact with any other member of the group.
This was a boardroom of what Hannah Arendt lamented the ‘scientifically minded brain trusters’. I thought of the bulbous-headed geeks of SAGE (at least one actual Communist); I could now envision their meetings droning on about ‘the R number’ and ‘the rule of six’, oblivious to the real human impact of their abstract ideas.
No wonder, I thought, that communists don’t believe in God. After ninety minutes of this, I was beginning to wonder myself.
There were some things I agreed with. Their magazine had the most measured take on Gaza: ‘It is not anti-Semitic to oppose the obliteration of Gaza, it is not anti-Palestinian to oppose Hamas’ terrorist actions’. You know the political situation is bad when the Marxist-Leninists seem reasonable.
A very elderly man in a white golf visor snored gently in the corner, his lower lip hanging loose and trembling with every outbreath. My own mind started to wander. I was relieved when the meeting drew to a close, a hunchback hobbling round with a collection box. I didn’t have any change – only a £20 note, which I relinquished with a wince. I escaped and went for an American hamburger and a milkshake just to spite them.
In the end, this was probably the most boring thing I’d done all year. A donor kebab was more scintillating. And, so, this write-up is lower quality than even a socialist student’s economics essay.
If you don’t like it, speak to my union.