Ne'er get thee stitched til Booris be ditched: UK General Election 2019

You're only being sarcastic about it because it may effect your ridiculous wage. Interview me you absolute coward Peston, and I'll tell you, as a socialist how things would work under Corbyn

— Paul Heaton (@PaulHeatonSolo) November 18, 2019

lol this one is testing my loyalties

I'd still think he sucked shit if he was a nazi paedo-melt!

he would suck shit if he was a nazi-paedo melt

mark e smith used to always to say he was a socialist, but came out with some reprehensible shit about asylum seekers.

Paul otm

pestpn's a clown, heaton is funny and smart but his music's bad and he shd feel bad

yes!

Peston so deserved to be dragged, it might as well be by Paul

I don't think Mark E. Smith ever said he was a socialist?

oh he definitely did, but I might be going back into vintage 80's/90's interviews here

More like 1979, he was voting Tory in the 80s. Or so he said.

He took an interest in politics and, after a spell as a Labour supporter, veered further left and joined the Socialist Workers party. This never stopped him from expressing illiberal or conservative views.

can we arrange to have The Ghost Of MES appear in DCI Civility pls anvil

maybe it's my fucked up memory but i am sure i remember him declaring himself a socialist a few times, but he was probably pissed or speeding most of the time.

MES in the SWP?!??!! mark s help me out here!

and was interviewed by fan Krishnan Guru-Murthy for the Channel 4 News, revealing that he quit the Labour Party in 1983 to join the Socialist Workers Party because he was in favour of the Falklands War

Well, that makes perfect sense! Sounds like he'd been at the Brasso.

his obit in socialist review says he "supported" them in the 80s (which likely means he didn't *join* them per se* but did express support for rock against racism)

*i mean no way wd he have been a paperseller more than like once (he'd have been good at it but he would NOT have stuck to the line)

Can't imagine MES having ever, literally, said "I'm a socialist" tho tbf

if it isn;t just a mistranscription the falklands line is a joke that went over KGM's head

this was his politics: "if it's me and the international revolutionary working class on bongos, it's the fall"

*socialism

“Interview me you absolute coward” is poetry

if it isn;t just a mistranscription the falklands line is a joke that went over KGM's head

― mark s, Monday, November 18, 2019 11:23 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

From 4.01 on (it's not pretty tbf): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgaRehO-oiY

(he does shake his head after 'Falklands War')

“Interview me you absolute coward” is poetry

― gyac, Monday, November 18, 2019 11:32 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

YES!

I have these memories of MES saying : I'm a socialist me from some 80's nme interview and later floating around my head. But my memory is obv very defective and unreliable at the moment! Even if his politics are good, can't stand that cunt out of beautiful south, never could!

MES has some...interesting views in this

https://thequietus.com/articles/09277-mark-e-smith-nick-cave-shane-macgowan-nme-interview

Apropos of nothing, having looked up that video, one of Noodle Vague's posts of yore haunts my mind. Something to the effect of loving The Fall but hating what MES came to stand for.

annoying there's an edit just as MES shakes his head (meaning not pro-war i think), and then the follow-up is blurry

this was the swp line as far as i can tell (duncan hallas wd not have been an outlier): https://www.marxists.org/archive/hallas/works/1982/05/socwar.htm

it's honestly not very clear! i think it boils down to "denounce both sides in this the war, absolutely NO solidarity with the fascist argentine"

(but i mainly derived this interpretation from a much later piece by the AWL's sean matgamna saying that the SWP and the AWL (at that time socialist organiser) in this instance took the same line (correct acc.matgamna)

recent ex-swuppies c.hitchens and j.burchill wer both very enthusiastically pro the war (on the grounds that galtieri was a fascist)

(i still don't believe he joined tho)

wasn't MES from a comfortable plumbing contractor clan? I think he probably (like many in the music biz) kind of overstated how poor his background was and often talked much shite, a bit like a UKIP railing against metropolitan elites or NME hacks in this case.

(meaning not pro-war i think)

Close-read: This is what I perceived the head-shaking to mean as well. Guru-Murthy feeds MES the words 'Falklands War' as if it's an inside joke, a known 'comedic' answer that MES vocally confirms, in on the joke, but he shakes his head in a 'u know it's not tru tho' way.

building trade i think -- he says in renegade that it's why he knew the world trade centre was structurally unsound lol, from stuff his dad taught him

As well as never saying he was a socialist he also never said he was poor or from a poor background, as far as I'm aware.

His shtick in interviews used to be often about 50% antagonise the interviewer with class warfare trolling. I know I didnt remember that part wrongly cos it was often the only reason I liked him.

I remember MES once saying in an interview that he had recently voted Tory in a local council election, because he thought she was a strong local candidate who got stuff done. So that might be where the Tory-voting stuff came from.

I’m sorry but

SM: You're anti-socialist, too. Ain't you?

MES: Yeah. I'm an extreme anti-socialist. You don't live on a housing estate in a city where there's been socialism for 30 years and they keep saying it's gonna get better all the time and it never does. Thirty fucking years of it getting worse and worse. You obviously haven't experienced that, living in London.

SM: What's the alternative?

MES: I don't have to worry about that. I'm an adult. I'm working class, me. I come from a generation that fuckin' created this nation pal. You lot, you just sit around and talk about socialism, you're the bloody problem. Eighty per cent of this country are white trash, working class. How come they don't vote Labour? 'Cos the Labour Party area fuckin' disgrace, that's why. I'm against socialism on principle. Engels – he was a factory owner in Manchester exploiting 13 year-old girls. Learn your history, pal, learn your history. I suppose you blame all Ireland's problems on the British. All the problems of the world are down to Britain. That's what you think, why don't you say it? You can't bloody tell me anything about oppression cos, I'll tell you something pal, if you'd been part of Germany, you'd have been liquidated. If you were part of Russia, you wouldn't even exist.


Don't tell me about oppression, my parents and grandparents were exploited to the hilt. Sent to wars, they had gangrene in their teeth. My grandfather was at Dunkirk and all you can see is Margaret Thatcher on my face when, actually, she's on Nick's face. Isn't she Nick? Come on, Nick, help me out. Basically, I like to discuss things right down the line and I don't agree with anybody...

i liked when he said that it wasn't true he couldn't sing in tune, he had a beautiful singing voice he just chose not to use it

Yes, he's talking to two public schoolboys so he's ratcheting it up.

cool fairness doctrine

Most of the British press is acting as the campaigning arm of the Conservative Party. Just look at the state of this. https://t.co/aWaL3lKXkc pic.twitter.com/SuUVy1f6wn

— Owen REGISTER TO VOTE Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) November 18, 2019

So what's new?

kuennsberg is a CP activist

Tory candidate suspended in Aberdeen North, Labour chair quits in Leicester East https://t.co/Djq7lOHBOy

— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) November 19, 2019

i liked when he said that it wasn't true he couldn't sing in tune, he had a beautiful singing voice he just chose not to use it

― mark s, Monday, November 18, 2019 11:21 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

"Edinburgh Man", beautiful is pushing it a little but yeah

xp
he looks like a bit of a John Thomas

LOL @ this character, a prime example of the sort of local Labour politician who's alienated so many Labour voters over the years.

So he objects to the new Labour candidate, the previous one was Keith Vaz?

Precisely.

meanwhile LK reports tory candidate suspended for homophobia and antisemitism but only links the labour story 🤔

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A viral story claims that Jo Swinson was caught firing stones at squirrels. It's obviously not true, but has been widely shared online. The Lib Dem leader told LBC that social media networks have questions to answer over the spread of "very fake news".https://t.co/IEorJ1SRur

— LBC (@LBC) November 19, 2019