h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wintringham was a mavericj who prodced a bestselling book on gerilla warfare. His training school at Osterley Park was so poplar that the govt. got scared and took it over, forming the basis of the LDV.

There was also a more secretive leftist organisation about which info is more scant, with some relationship with the Wintringham organisation. Many of these were seasoned Brigadistas who believed that Britain might follow a Fascist path (with some justification! Remember that Hess planned to link up with a sympathetic faction). They can be regarded as a sort of inner circle (but not quite).

There was a rather good R4 documentary that covered some of this ground. It mentioned a slogan amongst Leftist LDV members was 'Get your training, get your gun...and keep it under your bed for the revolution!' THey also, iirc, mentioned the Foot connection.

Unfortnately information is almost as scant as it is on the various right wing paramilitary groups that were active in the 1970s .

This is probably the R4 prog -http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20050905.shtml

You might find this interesting, if you haven't seen it already - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jwinteringham.htm

And then, from the Camden journal we have - "He saw the Guard as a bulwark against a Nazi invasion – or, more sinisterly, a fascist coup led by the British ruling classes who Wintringham did not trust. He believed they were capable of striking a deal with Hitler as they were more scared of Soviet Russia than the Third Reich." http://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/011305/r011305_01.htm

Fascinating stuff, all this Hidden History, no? Like the Blitz stuff you mentioned.

The other area I really would like to investigate is all the right wing stuff from the 70's - plots against Wilson and the like. There's a little bit abot it in 'Granny Made Me An Anarchist' by Stuart Christie (from Cambuslang - wrongly put on trial alongside the Angry Brigade). The received wisdom is that Wilson was paranoid. However...one day he woke up to be told that Heathrow had been srrounded by tanks. This time it was only an exercise (that he hadn't been told about), but next time...

And then there was the little matter of an independent military intelligence cell in Northern Ireland.

Trouble is...damn little of this is on the web.

Ah well, you see, the right wing stuff is ok

The trouble with retrospective histories is they tend to, uhm, embellish. Ask Beria. (I wrote a play about good old Lavrenty Pavlovich when I was about 20. It was crap ). I think Foot's war history was talked up for political ends. Not saying he wasn't there but ...

Living history is far more interesting, which is why I support all those projects involving students going round with tape recorders talking to old folk. It's unlikely that all the facts will be right, but you get a real flavour for how people lived.

I've met a survivor of Hiroshima who conveyed the horror profoundly with hand gestures and pidgeon English - "Pieces of people fluttering to the ground like snow". My uncle was a squaddie in NI. He helped clear up after a bomb attack which killed his mate who he'd been to school with. They went around with buckets picking up the pieces. "I put his face in a bucket ... his face. And the women stood cackling and jeering at us".

History's ok, so long as we remember people are involved.

Came across this quote from Edmund Dell about Foot - "(He was) a natural follower found wandering uncertainly in high places".

I'm reading "A Strange Eventful History - Democratic Socialism in Britain" by Dell at the moment. You might find it interesting. It's broadly about the compromises the Labour party necessarily had to make to gain power throughout the 20th Century and how every "Third Way" took it further and further away from socialist principles. It really puts New Labour into context.

Interestingly, in his 'Age of Conflict' Eric Hobsbawm talks about Scandiwegian Social Democracy as a third way between American/Anglo-Saxon Free Market Capitalism and Soviet State Centralism. Not a compromise - which New Labour sells itself as - but a Third Way.

(Not to be confused with 'Third Position' )

Isn't the Scandiwegian "Third Position" a demand that men be forced to sit down to pee? Didn't the British Ambassador to Sweden order the urinals in the Embassy removed?

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I have to say I've never been so I'm not at all qualified to comment. It's different strokes for different folks. Equally we could admire the vastly more equal society that is Japan, but it's not a way of life that would sit easily with Brits I suspect. Different political systems suit different cultures so a lot of this "grass is greener" stuff doesn't really resonate with me.


And urinals are a line that cannot be crossed. I'd rather stand in a pool of piss than try to learn (at my age) the technique of "hovering" that women have mastered. Stand in it or sit in it - what would you prefer?

Wow! I have no idea why that just got modded. I saw absolutely *nothing* there to warrant censorship. FFS! This is about the first civilised conversation Ed & I have managed in years and some complains about it??????

Some of us can manage to pee standing up.

Have you ever seen a women's public toilet? Some of them can't pee sitting down without missing

Turning it on it's head (forgive the mental image), what's "wrong" with urinals? They're efficient and allow many more men to urinate in a confined space than cubicles. Just look at the queues outside a women's lavatory in any busy public building. They're an elegant and environmentally-friendly solution to a basic human need. Frankly, we should be presurising women into peeing standing up.

More urinal stuff (yup - found my level)

http://www.collegehumor.com/pictures/gallery:urinal#1620199

I used to have a boss I hated when I was working down south on secondment. I used to frequent an uber-cool restaurant with a urinal which had a waterfall back, and you peed into a grating in front of it. I merntioned it to him. 'Oh yeah,' he said, that's the one with the toilets where you piss against a waterfall.' I took delight in the idea that he'd been standing where I'd pissed.

(Just like the people who used to piss 9n the Dee, upstream of where the Queen Mum used to fish. Gawd bless 'er.)