“Eyewitnesses of the origins of the British Revolution” – October 1968

With the 50th anniversary of the start of the 1967-68 academic year looming, and the world again (still?) worried by American government war-mongering, it seems a good enough time to look back at the heady days of student and (let’s not forget) other militancy which to some gave real hope, as in this letter written in the immediate aftermath of a large anti-Vietnam-war demonstration in London.

It gives a rather different account from that currently available in mainstream sources, as well as from that provided by the media at the time – no surprises there. Whatever reservations we, and no doubt its writer, may have - especially with half a century of hindsight - about its tone, analysis and (obviously) predictions, it stands as a spontaneous testimony to "what it was like" back then. Or what it could be like on a good day. And might even be like again?

(Slightly edited from heat-of-the-moment typescript.)

Monday [28/10/68] 

        It was wonderful to be in London this weekend; it was without doubt the high-water mark reached by the revolutionary movement in Britain for at least 30 years. Ignore all the press & TV reports of course, they are just venting their spleen at Popular Power in Fleet Street, which was possibly the highlight of the march.

1. L.S.E. Commune

We spent most of Saturday, Sat. night and some of Sunday in LSE. Over 1500 were there on Saturday night, sleeping in the halls and corridors - there was no vandalism [or] stealing and what mess there was was cleared up. Food, drink and medical stations were all organized quite efficiently, as was defense [sic] against possible police attack. Many people - not all of them hostile - came along to see what it was all about. [Chris] Pallis estimated that 500 LSE students - 25% - were involved in the occupation. They were probably right to abandon it after the demo, since they could have been hammered by the police quite easily then. The level of militancy at this LSE affair was much higher than at the sit-in last year. French comrades showed how to do silk-screen posters and designed some - notably "We are all foreign scum" and "Workers' Control. Money for this was made by collections. Leaflets were also produced for workers on the establishment presses and given out Sat. & Sun.

The meetings which were organized were generally good, but suffered a bit from vociferous disrupters. One on Sat. afternoon was attended by over 500, to hear Pallis, [Tom] Nairn and a CP-ite on France. Pallis more or less repeated his article from the last Solidarity, and the CP-ite was given a very hostile reception when he tried to defend the role of the CP in May. Seminars were also held on SDS [Students for a Democratic Society], Latin America etc. and films on France & Vietnam shown. The road up to the building was hung with red flags and banners – “Long Live the Socialist Revolution”. We slept in the corridors – all the Aberdeen comrades were on the 4^th floor – and woke to find that the “News of the World” had discovered another LSE where completely different events were happening. At 1.00 we marched out of the building to the assembly-point of the march.

2. The Insurrection.

          Disregard official estimates of the march – there were over 50,000 and possibly as much as 70,000 there. We assembled at the Embankment, filling the road 10 deep for over two miles and waited to move off. Now and again we’d move a yard and stop. Excitement was rising, and when about a 2,000 strong IS [International Socialism] contingent crossed Westminster Bridge to join the March, wild cheering broke out – the first real sense of our own power was felt. We moved off fairly slowly, linking arms. Groups made little surges forward on our left and right, chanting. People began talking to each other, even reserved me, who never does these things.

          By the time we reached the turning into Fleet Street a great good-humour, enthusiasm and sense of power had built up. Everyone just ignored the police – they were irrelevant. As we turned into Fleet Street a gap of about 50 yards opened in front of us – a few folk pulled saying ‘come on’, others hesitated, but with a bit of shoving and laughing about 1500 folk launched a great arms-linked run forward – no, more a dance. (Slogan in LSE: We don’t want a demo tomorrow, we want a party in the streets). The streets were ours – no traffic, few police, just us who today had taken over all the strategic and important streets of London in an immense show of strength. Slowly we moved down Fleet Street. Outside the Daily Express offices it was incredible. About 2,000 folk stopped. The police looked worried. The marchers formed a semi-circle round the offices and an intense hissing broke out. Then someone shouted “Sieg Heil” – soon two thousand were shouting, arms raised. Faces disappeared from the window of the office, the police grouped - we passed on. This was repeated at various gutter-press offices - including a shout of "The Broons [popular strip cartoon] is a plot to mystify the workers" at the Sunday Post. This was undoubtedly the most humiliating day ever for the press barons, as witnessed by their reactions in the Monday editions. Next time there must be no Monday editions.

       Out of Fleet Street practically the whole march erupted into a wild run down the Strand, flags waving, arms linked. A new chant was shouted at the bystanders "The streets are yours, join in" – a few did. At Australia House buses of police and a squad of mounted police stood by as an Australian flag was burnt. After Trafalgar Square, where about 5,000 anarchists and Maoists broke off to go to Grosvenor Square, Whitehall was occupied by lines of people, linked at least 20 deep. As we rushed forward again, wild euphoria gripped everybody - I've never seen so many people HAPPY at one time before. Parliament was empty and barricaded - we ignored it and surged forward. In Victoria Street, where the Midland Bank was guarded by coppers 3 deep, occurred for me the second high point of the demo. A sudden intense silence descended on the march and we walked along feeling it - I could hardly breathe for the tightness in my throat. Then behind us, deep down a great roar erupted and surged forward, involving us and the folk in front "Victory to the NLF". Someone began clapping - soon the shouting and clapping was so great I thought the buildings about us would collapse. Again we rushed forward through our streets - the march was our creation, self-activity reigned. No one was bossing us [or] thwarting us or dared to. In Park Lane we shouted derisively at the bourgeoisie in the Hilton and the Playboy Club: "Jump" to those brave enough to come to windows, "Dirty old men" to the bespectacled fear behind the heavily guarded Playboy Club. As we approached Hyde Park Corner another 2000 broke off down a side street to go to the Embassy on a different side. At the rally speeches were made, a very good one by an IS bloke about going home and carrying on the struggle there, getting involved in tenants' and workers' struggles and putting across Vietnam propaganda to them to counter press lies. We dispersed, streaming down Regent Street as night fell. Grosvenor Square you probably read about - apart from a little-publicised incident where about 300 Fascists threw bottles and pulled knives. How the press can say the police were restrained when only 5 were injured and 20 demonstrators went to hospital and 30 to LSE field station is beyond me.

3.  POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

   1. A massive show of support for the Vietnamese against the Americans. 3½  times as many were mobilised on Victory to the NLF as on the Geneva/U Thant [UN Secretary General] old-style demos. The links between the struggle here and in Vietnam were emphasised. 

  2. Unmasking of the apparatus. The press, media, government, police, banks and big business were all seen to be the enemies by their common reaction of fear to the demo, their lies and slanders prior to it and their precautions to safeguard their property during it. The apparatus was not only unmasked - it was ridiculed. Our power on the streets ridiculed their strength, and our revolutionary self-discipline ridiculed their fears.

  3. Beginning of a movement of social change in Britain. Everybody on that demo now knows he or she has 50,000 comrades, with whom the city has been occupied, the ruling class exposed and a blow struck against Imperialism. Few people did not find the demo exhilarating, and a great encouragement. This cannot be the end, only the beginning. Every one there was ready for violence; if the police had engaged in the slightest provocation at any point, there would undoubtedly have been an uprising of some dimensions. As it was the march achieved everything it set out to do as outlined above and any insurrection was really irrelevant at this stage.

   4.  Fragments of revolutionary totality.

        Met Chris Pallis, had a long discussion with him about joining 'Solidarity', about Marxism, demystification (him) & human irrationality (me). He bought me a half pint. I've decided to join the group nationally and so has [another Aberdonian]...

P S. Keep this - we'll publish a book, “Eyewitnesses of the origins of the British Revolution...”

Note: "Victory to the NLF " was not the sort of slogan that found favour with Solidarity. 
See Solidarity Pamphlet 43 and numerous articles in the magazine.

Photographs from a museum

in Vietnam, July 2017 (MFW)

Remembering Chris Pallis

a.k.a. Maurice Brinton, Martin Grainger, N. Kastings (and possibly more)

10 years on – An Integrated Brainy Life

Christopher Agamemnon (he kept that pretty quiet) Pallis died on 10^th March 2005. Obituaries that appeared in the British Medical Journal, Guardian and Tribune (among others) testified to the extraordinary contributions he had made both in his profession of neurology and in the sphere of left-libertarian politics. Some extracts are given below along with added recollections and documentation.

·         BMJ  2005;330:908 (16 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7496.908 http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/330/7496/908

·         David Goodway and Paul Lewis, An irreverent critic of the Bolshevik revolution. The Guardian Thursday March 24, 2005 (Corrects some minor biographical inaccuracies in the BMJ account). http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1444577,00.html#article_continue

·         Paul Anderson, Tribune column, March 25 2005: “A socialist for all seasons.”  http://libsoc.blogspot.co.uk/2005/03/socialist-for-all-seasons-paul.html

·         George Shaw and Richard Abernethy, ‘Chris Pallis aka Maurice Brinton: 1923 – 2005’, The HobGoblin 
           [n.b. Linked version contains numerous copy errors (and some highly debatable comments).]

Among those who attended Chris’s funeral – family, medics, politicals – on 20^th March 2005 were at least two founder members of RaHN, Alan Woodward and George Shaw

The headline on The Guardian obituary – “An irreverent critic of the Bolshevik revolution” was putting it mildly. The authors’ emphasis is on Chris’s writing for Solidarity, a selection of which David Goodway edited under the title For Workers' Power (2004), including the three most substantial and influential ‘Maurice Brinton’ texts: Paris May 1968; The Bolsheviks And Workers' Control, 1917-1921: The State And Counter-Revolution (a book in itself) ; and The Irrational In Politics (1970).

<< The eminent neurologist Christopher Pallis, who has died aged 81, was also the principal writer, translator and thinker for the libertarian socialist Solidarity group, which was most influential during the 1960s and early 1970s. As a neurologist, his concept of and criteria for brainstem death have been internationally adopted; and his entry on death for Encyclopaedia Britannica is a masterpiece of historical and medical summary […] 

As a reviewer and polemicist, Pallis wrote very well. His style was punchy, accessible and wickedly funny. Especially noteworthy are his vivid reports from upsurges of popular self-activity: the Belgian General Strike of 1960-61, Paris in May 1968, and Portugal in 1975 and 1976 […]

His original work went beyond Castoriadis in certain areas. The pamphlet The Irrational In Politics (1970) explores the role of sexual repression and authoritarian conditioning in generating conformity. While derivative of Wilhelm Reich, as he acknowledged, he convincingly identified 1960s sexual permissiveness as a breakthrough in the "undermining of tradition" and terminating a vicious cycle.

Pallis's political chef d'oeuvre is The Bolsheviks And Workers' Control, 1917-1921: The State And Counter-Revolution (1970). It traces the obliteration of the Russian factory committees of 1917-18 so that by 1921 factories and trade unions had been subordinated to the new Bolshevik state and the party […] >>

Paul Anderson in Tribune likewise concentrates principally on the political Pallis, and on Solidarity, from a more personal, ‘insider’ (for a time) viewpoint.

<< I know lots of people who are good at more than one thing, but very few who could match Chris Pallis, who died last week at the age of 81. From the early 1960s until the early 1980s he managed to combine being both one of the world’s leading authorities in neurology and one of the most innovative and stimulating voices in British left politics […] 

I was reading his work again when I heard he had died: a collection of his essays and pamphlets, edited and introduced by David Goodway, has just been published, and I was working on a review. I had been struck by how exciting I still found his writing. Brinton’s style is aphoristic, his approach to received wisdom scornful, his erudition apparent but never intrusive. Very few political writers are thrilling: Brinton was, and still is. It is very sad that he has gone, but Goodway’s book is the best possible guarantee that he will not be forgotten. >>

For Workers’ Power, a collection of writings by Maurice Brinton edited by David Goodway, is published by AK Press at £12

Another ex-Solidarist, Dave Lamb, who developed an interest and expertise in the philosophical implications of the brain-death debate, has pointed out in an appreciation of Chris that “it might be worth considering how his contribution to both areas overlapped and complemented each other.”

Always forceful in Solidarity discussions. Above all he was a demystifier. This was also a fundamental scientific and political objective. On the one hand were the centralist Leninists and Trotskyites, and on the other were the subjective and frequent woolly ideas of various anarchists, peaceniks, and supporters of cults. Both sides were subject to his criticism. Likewise in medicine. Marshalling scientific and historical material in support of a neurological definition of death he demystified the cardio-centrists and their traditional definition on the one hand and the frequently woolly and subjective ideas of the bioethicists, philosophers and personal identity theorists on the other hand.

Then there was his wit, which he considered essential in the presentation of arguments [...]

Fair enough, and it will strike a chord particularly with  those who were in on the brain-stem death debate and heard that famous, memorable lecture – and saw the slides, not all grim  (a wiry tangle captioned “Woolly thinking” – “Don’t copy that down”; a device for sending a signal from inside a coffin, “so that if people felt they had been buried alive ..”) The primacy of consciousness and the favouring of human decision-making based on rational assessment ("in full knowledge of the relevant facts") over a mechanistic ‘fix’, as well as the humanitarian imperative to prevent suffering, are obvious points of contact and carry-over.

Sometimes the medical-political overlap was visible and the connection spelt out, an early example being Abortion: Law and reality”, Martin Grainger’s review in Agitator no.5 (pp.14-16)  of Law for the Rich, by Alice Jenkins (Gollancz, 1960). He praised the book for doing “more than to present a well argued case against the prevailing laws. It deals systematically with all the objections, medical and eugenic, ;scientific’ and irrational, that the opponents of legalised abortion put forward from time to time.” It was an unusual choice of subject for a left-wing paper at this time, and its level of well-informed seriousness probably unique. Chris was to continue to uphold women’s right to choose, and was ready to deploy his expertise in opposition to attempts to turn the clock back after the 1967 Act. As with other issues, his support was not abstract and theoretical; he would appear on demos, handing out leaflets and selling papers, regardless of anonymity or pseudonyms. He extended his criticism of the status quo to the medical profession itself, and was concerned about developments in the NHS, as shown in a detailed critique of bureaucratic changes in 1978, reproduced earlier on this blog.

 

The BMJ called Chris the “Neurologist who defined brainstem death”, recalling the kerfuffle over a  Panorama programme in October 1980 which “alleged that patients certified as brain dead sometimes recovered, and hence that the supply of transplantable organs was skewed by doctors wanting to remove organs from trauma patients who might have recovered.”

<< Chris Pallis stepped into the centre of this controversy. As a neurologist with a strong interest in general medicine, and working in a hospital that was a transplant centre, he was accustomed to diagnosing brain death. He was, moreover, an outstanding writer and teacher. He took on the unenviable job of persuading the profession and the public that brainstem death was true death, and, indeed, that it could be diagnosed at the bedside without the need for high-tech imaging. He was the author of the BMJ's ABC of Brainstem Death (1983, second edition 1995), which remains a masterpiece of clear exposition. >>

 

This episode led to Chris becoming recognised internationally as an expert on the subject, invited to travel and spread the word, and to write on ‘Death’ for the Encyclopædia Britannica, an assignment he undertook with typical thoroughness and enthusiasm, hunting up relevant sources and allusions in the library and keen to share his discoveries. At the same time he was deeply convinced of the seriousness of the project; it mattered to him that the criteria should be understood and accepted in different cultural contexts, not only to facilitate transplants and save lives, but to prevent the distress caused to relatives and waste of resources involved in ‘ventilating a corpse’. (This concern was no doubt a factor in his continuing insistence on preserving the Brinton pseudonym for his political writings, in case anything else he wrote might be dismissed out of hand as coming from a Red or loony-leftie.)

The developments in the idea and diagnosis of brain-stem death came as a response to a conceptual challenge. Intensive-care technology had saved many lives, but it had also created many brain-dead patients. To grasp the implications of this situation, society in general--and the medical profession in particular--was forced to rethink accepted notions about death itself. The emphasis had to shift from the most common mechanism of death (i.e., irreversible cessation of the circulation) to the results that ensued when that mechanism came into operation: irreversible loss of the capacity for consciousness, combined with irreversible apnea [inability to breathe]. These results, which can also be produced by primary intracranial catastrophes, provide philosophically sound, ethically acceptable, and clinically applicable secular equivalents to the concepts of "departure of the soul" and "loss of the breath of life,' " which were so important to some earlier cultures.

Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. [highligting added]

It was a heady time to observe the Pallis phenomenon, especially for anyone able to see both facets of his super-activity. In the midst of the writing, lecturing, TV interviews and incisive debate (“What was the primary pathology?”), he was also keenly interested in what was happening in Poland, where the Solidarnosc movement was kicking off in a big way, and was involved in organising the meeting that led to the formation of the Polish Solidarity Campaign. (Ian Kennedy’s 1980 Reith Lectures on ‘Unmasking Medicine’ fed into the intellectual buzz too, appealing to his conviction that issues of medical ethics could and should be explained and understood outside the profession.) Once, at the height of his media celebrity, after delivering his tour-de-force lecture on brainstem death to a large and appreciative audience, Chris made his way through the eminent  colleagues and others milling round to comment and congratulate him, to ask a member of Solidarity (who happened to be employed in a lowly clerical capacity in a unit on the Hammersmith Hospital/Postgraduate Medical School campus) something about a meeting or leaflet. Whatever the demands on his attention, he could find time, for example, to collaborate on a leaflet and to discuss whatever was going on.

His political commitment was an open secret in his work environment, even if its details were hazy to many there. The word among some overseas students was that his promotion to Professor was blocked because he  was a “communist”. It was not always easy to get across the ideas either that someone of his views may not have wanted a Professorship, or precisely what those views were. Conversely, he was always known by his own name in and around Solidarity, the pseudonyms being for writing only, and comrades were aware of his profession, most probably with comparable vagueness. It was an open secret to the security services too; the risks he ran were real. As early as 1945, when he was still a student (and unregenerate Trot), his cover had been blown:

National Archives file HO45/25486: a report on the RCP and the Trotskyist movement: "In 1946 attempts to build at Oxford University and the name of Christopher Pallis, a medical student at Balliol appears who, it is said, spoke at the Neath by-election under the name of N. Kastings."

and - in Extract from New Scotland Yard (Special Branch) fortnightly summary No. 122 for the period ended 30-11-45 - "The Revolutionary Communist Party is endeavouring to secure a footing amongst students at Oxford University, and it has printed a four-page pamphlet entitled "The Manifesto of the October League" for distribution among the students.  One of the leaders is Christopher PALLIS, a medical student at Oxford, who, under the alias of N. KASTINGS, spoke at a number of Jock HASTON's election meetings in South Wales during March."

The anti-worker, blacklist-promoting Economic League reported on a meeting held at his house in 1961:

National Archives file LAB 43/368 Economic League: statement on subversive activity in the motor industry 1961 (was SECRET). File contains an Economic League Report of 27-6-61, received by the Ministry of Labour, mostly concerned with the CP and World Federation of Trade Unions. Also mentions the National Committee of Shop Stewards as a `Communist subsidiary organisation', lists a number of firms supposedly being targeted by subversives, refers to strikes of 1957-58. At the end, page 6, the report adds: `Together with the Communist-organised activities, note has also to be taken of a new subversive movement recently set up in the engineering industry. Last March a school for practical and theoretical training of industrial agitators was held at a private house ... The "instructor" was an A.E.U. shop steward from North London, who laid it down that extremist activities in the workshops must be independent of union control and that at all costs union officials must be kept out of the factories...'

In the furore after the Spies for Peace revelations his name came up again.

[The actual perpetrators were never discovered]

A full biography would doubtless have much more to reveal about this fascinating and significant life; if the insiders’ history of Solidarity comes to fruition it may contribute to this. In the meantime we have an interview, some account of his early political trajectory, and of course his own writings, many in print and/or online, plus much still to be unearthed from the faded crumbling pages of our old magazines.

L.W.

Socialisme ou Barbarie and the origins of Solidarity.

Origins of an influential
libertarian socialist organisation - 'Genesis' Part 2

The politics of the Socialisme ou Barbarie (S ou B) group were a considerable influence on Solidarity and had origins, like Solidarity, in the Trotskyist movement. The prime movers, Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort, were members of the Parti Communiste Internationale (PCI), the French section of the Fourth International. Working together from 1946 these two argued that the Stalinists in the USSR and out of it were not a part of the workers’ movement but bureaucrats who were as much enemies of the working class as the capitalists. (The US Johnson-Forest Tendency, subsequently the group round the publication Facing Reality, were thinking along similar lines at this time. Relations were close between the two groups or at least their key members for many years.) At the end of 1948 ten or twenty dissidents left the PCI and in March 1949 the first issue of Socialisme ou Barbarie was published. The choice posed in the title – Socialism or Barbarism – stemmed from the emergence of two atomic-armed superstates, both aiming for world domination. The result of the conflict between them would be atomic war and a return to barbarism for
humanity unless the power elites both east and west were overthrown by socialist revolution.

“GENESIS” – earliest days and prehistory of SOLIDARITY

Origins of an influential libertarian socialist organisation - Part 1

Based on extracts from a working draft by John Quail, plagiarised with permission by LW.

In the beginning: a gripping tale of splits and factions, in which our heroes finally escape from the scary authoritarian left, after many adventures

The first issue of the magazine that was to become Solidarity was published in October 1960. Called Agitator for its first few issues, it was produced by ‘Socialism Reaffirmed’– the group’s name being also the title of what was effectively a manifesto, libertarian and autonomist in content, issued the same month. In brief, the earliest members of the Socialism Reaffirmed group were expelled from or left the Socialist Labour League (SLL, precursor of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, its heirs and assigns) at various times in 1960 and formed a new organisation with a new perspective which then attracted further recruits.

Trotskyist background
The SLL emerged in 1947 from a split in the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a short-lived unification of the UK Trotskyists, following a dispute about the correctness or otherwise of joining the Labour Party as a clandestine faction, the alternative being to continue as an open independent party. It was now forbidden to