I renew my acquaintance with the SPGB.

I first became aware of the Socialist Party of Great Britain during the 1960's. The harbourside bar in Palma, Majorca that I frequented was run by a middle aged English couple who were members. I seem to remember that they gave me some yellowing literature. Nice people but quite what they were doing in Franco's Spain was never clear, but again you might well have asked the same of this supposed anarchist.
I recently came across the SPGB website and took advantage of their generous offer of a three issue free subscription to Socialist Standard. It arrived in the post this morning along with a copy of Questions Of The Day - a socialist analysis. The first thing that I noticed about Questions Of The Day was the pre-decimal cover price and the fact that the staples had almost rusted through. Who knows how big the print run was. But it's all splendid stuff. Well most of it is. I was never that convinced that the world could be turned upside down by patiently explaining the benefits of socialism to the masses and converting them more or less one at a time but I don't want to nit-pick and Socialist Standard is certainly full of interesting articles. Perhaps we should judge political groups in a Hippocratic way - "first do no harm" and truth be told, I feel all the better for renewing my acquaintance with the SPGB.