Members of the Socialist Party have influenced a number of people and one member in particular , the late Harry Young, provided food for thought to many. This article from the Scottish Review by Paul Tritschler, a psychology lecturer, describes a meeting with Harry in Glasgow.
“...The voice on a box advocated with sincerity non-violent conversion through majority vote to a socialist paradise, and something in all that got my attention, as perhaps it would any peacenik teenager of the time. Time passed with the talker punctuated by palms and fists about ists – Leninists, vanguardists, reformists and pessimists.
The gist I got, and before leaving I accepted an invite by way of a flyer to the McLellan Galleries in Sauchiehall Street – a gig spot for local bands and dreary causes – to hear a keynote speaker called Harry Young talk about the prospect of paradise on planet earth. He was the longest serving member in one of the oldest parties....
...Harry spoke spiritedly and engagingly about life as lived within a rigged system punctuated by starvation, wars, and routinised death, and spoke unrelentingly about why we should be socialists, giving compelling cause for hope, optimism, and action. He captivated the small audience by way of an account of the progression of his life across continents and epochs, and the people he met at socialist world congresses, including Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and Stalin – though Bukharin was by far the one he would have preferred to meet down the pub for a pint.
It was perhaps nonsense coming from my side of the conversation, but Harry had a way about him that led me to forget my self-doubts, and I put my questions. I knew then, just as he must have known as a young man sitting at a conference table in those heady revolutionary days, this was a moment.
Would the rich allow any threat to their interests? (I was thinking of a teacher I had at school just two years earlier when I asked this question; he promised fair treatment if I owned up to a misdemeanour, then thrashed me thoroughly.) True, socialist campaigners such as Rosa Luxemburg were murdered, Harry replied, and we might therefore consider force as the answer; but capitalism is armed to the teeth and insurrection would be flattened. Besides, the use of force must be maintained, or the threat of it, just as it is under the system of capitalism, and how could a truly representative socialist state be built on those sorts of foundations? Only a vote by a massive majority will demonstrate the desire for the overthrow of capitalism, and in so doing will negate the need for violence.
Quoting Gramsci, Harry insisted we should not allow the enemy to define the space within which we solve problems. I wrote down those words and have them still. Today as a teacher of psychology, and equally as a student of psychology, the words have even greater resonance; the enemy, after all, is in part our fixed mindset, and we cannot change that if we accept illusory boundaries.
We navigated our way through the crowds to the Lido café. Saturday night discos were feverishly popular at that time. They were magnets for party people with dress codes that included wide collars, clingy trousers, shiny materials, dangly things, and dangerous footwear – akin to walking in mini oil-rig platforms. They passed purposefully in pairs through city streets, gleeful and exultant, to boogie wonderland. As we walked we talked about Harry's hopes, and maybe we looked miserable amidst the Glasgow glitterati, but I remember being filled with dreams about the future and the certainty of lasting change. All power to the imagination, as they said in 68....”
“...The voice on a box advocated with sincerity non-violent conversion through majority vote to a socialist paradise, and something in all that got my attention, as perhaps it would any peacenik teenager of the time. Time passed with the talker punctuated by palms and fists about ists – Leninists, vanguardists, reformists and pessimists.
The gist I got, and before leaving I accepted an invite by way of a flyer to the McLellan Galleries in Sauchiehall Street – a gig spot for local bands and dreary causes – to hear a keynote speaker called Harry Young talk about the prospect of paradise on planet earth. He was the longest serving member in one of the oldest parties....
...Harry spoke spiritedly and engagingly about life as lived within a rigged system punctuated by starvation, wars, and routinised death, and spoke unrelentingly about why we should be socialists, giving compelling cause for hope, optimism, and action. He captivated the small audience by way of an account of the progression of his life across continents and epochs, and the people he met at socialist world congresses, including Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and Stalin – though Bukharin was by far the one he would have preferred to meet down the pub for a pint.
It was perhaps nonsense coming from my side of the conversation, but Harry had a way about him that led me to forget my self-doubts, and I put my questions. I knew then, just as he must have known as a young man sitting at a conference table in those heady revolutionary days, this was a moment.
Would the rich allow any threat to their interests? (I was thinking of a teacher I had at school just two years earlier when I asked this question; he promised fair treatment if I owned up to a misdemeanour, then thrashed me thoroughly.) True, socialist campaigners such as Rosa Luxemburg were murdered, Harry replied, and we might therefore consider force as the answer; but capitalism is armed to the teeth and insurrection would be flattened. Besides, the use of force must be maintained, or the threat of it, just as it is under the system of capitalism, and how could a truly representative socialist state be built on those sorts of foundations? Only a vote by a massive majority will demonstrate the desire for the overthrow of capitalism, and in so doing will negate the need for violence.
Quoting Gramsci, Harry insisted we should not allow the enemy to define the space within which we solve problems. I wrote down those words and have them still. Today as a teacher of psychology, and equally as a student of psychology, the words have even greater resonance; the enemy, after all, is in part our fixed mindset, and we cannot change that if we accept illusory boundaries.
We navigated our way through the crowds to the Lido café. Saturday night discos were feverishly popular at that time. They were magnets for party people with dress codes that included wide collars, clingy trousers, shiny materials, dangly things, and dangerous footwear – akin to walking in mini oil-rig platforms. They passed purposefully in pairs through city streets, gleeful and exultant, to boogie wonderland. As we walked we talked about Harry's hopes, and maybe we looked miserable amidst the Glasgow glitterati, but I remember being filled with dreams about the future and the certainty of lasting change. All power to the imagination, as they said in 68....”
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