KitNotes

It was the night where UNISON general secretary hopeful and self-styled reformist Jon Rogers came out of the Trotskyist closet, where myself and John Angeliss were adopted as Dave Osler’s sons, where Jim Denham banged his fits on the table, and we all got sorely pissed.

Yes, of course it was that. But it was also the inaugural Socialist Bloggers’ Meetup.

In attendance – apart from the host with the most, yours truly - were Team Shiraz, one half of Team Stroppy, Andrew (who posts erratically on Jon Rogers’ blog), TWP, Mike of Mike’s Little Red Page fame, Marsha-Jane, Janine, as well as the aforementioned reprobates above.

I got to the Doric Arch at about 2.30 in the afternoon. The Keep Our NHS Public conference was on just across the road at the Friends’ Meeting House, and I went along (after doing a Solidarity paper sale in Brixton) during the break to sell papers and give out leaflets there. My quota of Saturday Trotskyism fulfilled, I could go onto the Doric Arch with a clean revolutionary conscience. (However, one of my comrades, Becky, was having her birthday party that night but somehow had neglected to tell me, until after the paper sale. Naturally, as Stroppy reported, I went back to Osler’s flat afterwards, so I feel a bit shit about that. Sorry, Becky. Sorry.)

Can you remember what I was saying before I opened those brackets? Oh, yeah… I’d finished my intervention into the KONP conference, leaving it to the capable AWL Unison comrades, and headed over, in desperate need of a drink after being harangued by an evangelical christian (no-one could ever accuse the AWL of evangelicalism after 10 minutes with that person… ugh), but the meetup wasn’t till 4pm. So, after a dinner of Burger King, I went into the Arch, sat in a fairly conspicuous position, bought a pint of cider (which I managed to make last for two hours…) and read my book.

It all went downhill from that point, I think.

Four o’clock came, and no-one else had turned up. As an event organiser, at this point, you nervously look over at the clock and think “no-one else is here… no-one’s coming… argh!” and so I was delighted with the new experience of being pleased to see Jim Denham stroll in. He seemed fairly sober (he was walking in a straight line unaided in any case) at this point, got himself a drink, and we had a chat about Socialist Youth Network related gubbins. We were soon joined by John A, who managed to figure out that we were the SBM when he heard one of us talk about socialism, but didn’t think we were socialists when he walked in because Jim was wearing his (usual, I must say) blazer, shirt and tie, and I was wearing a Security Officer shirt with a Stars & Stripes patch on the right shoulder. By the time we were joined by Volty and Mike, Jim had just finished his first pint of ESB, and still seemed rather sober. It was the first pint he’d had with me, though Volty suspects he may have had a few on the train.

At this point, poor John A must have felt lost and confused when the rest of us started talking about AWL stuff. So when we were joined by Stroppy, John A’s eyes lit up with delight. However, quite clearly, the person who was most delighted to see Stroppy was Our Jim, who moved as fast as I (or I think anyone else) has seen him, to the bar, to get Stroppy one of her favoured JD & Cokes. Still, things by this point were still relatively calm.

TWP of Unknown Conscience came along, with about half of Oxford Street in carrier bags, and it was nice to catch up with her. I hadn’t seen her since I was in Workers Power, as well as her partner, George. Jim got into a, well, let’s be charitable and call it a ‘heated discussion’ with TWP about Iraq, Pabloism, and the US SWP. After a while, some of us pondered whether it might be a good idea to rescue TWP. Not because we don’t think TWP couldn’t handle Jim – she was quite clearly holding her own against Our Draperite friend from the Midlands – but because none of us thought we would want to be discussing politics with Jim when he was rather a bit too enthusiastic in his debating method. However, she seemed enthralled by it, and has taken up the offered posting rights on Shiraz Socialist.

Then Marsha-Jane, Andrew B and a slightly worse for wear Jon Rogers also turned up.

Of course, the further decent into chaos which the night became, and the timing of Marsha-Jane Andrew and Jon’s arrival, is purely co-incidental, and I wouldn’t want to sully their good names. However, they didn’t help matters when they either turned up pissed (Jon) or in pre-pissed status (Marsha-Jane). We tried to decide who was the biggest male tart (it was, if I remember correctly, a tie between Andrew and Dave Osler), who was the best dressed bloke there (we all lost, though Volty did do a good impression of Simon Cowell) and then we (well, I say ‘we’, I don’t know the words, despite being a Trotskyist since the age of 16) all sang the Internationale, for which we nearly got kicked out of the pub by a bar man. Unrelatedly, he sort of looked like Odo from Deep Space Nine.

At around 10.30, some of us (me, John A, Jon R, Andrew, Marsha-Jane, Stroppy and Dave Osler) went for a Nepali round the corner, and when Jon R, Andrew and Marsha-Jane retired for the evening, the remaining people, proving that we were the hardest, went back to Dave’s flat in Hackney for JD & Coke. The morning after, we went for breakfast, and then we were shooed home by Stroppy.

When will the next one be? Well, rumours are abound that Will (the Jim Denham fan club) is going to host the ‘next’ one in Newcastle, but no-one is going to trek up there just for a piss-up. Most of the people who were there were from Hackney or very close to it. Quite probably the next one will be in a couple of months time in London, though not at the Doric Arch, and I might book a room at a pub for the occasion. I guess you’ll just have to ‘watch this space’.