John Lennon and the International Marxist Group
Posted on Thursday 21 December, 2006
Filed Under Trotskyism
American academic Jon Wiener has spent years campaigning for the release of FBI files on rock singer John Lennon – pictured – and has finally secured the release of the final ten documents.
The US government has insisted for decades that disclosure would constitute a threat to national security and could prompt ‘diplomatic, economic and military retaliation against the United States’.
Let’s just say that nothing in the material leads me to believe that Blair is about to declare war on the USA. All we get is the shock horror news that the former Beatle was heavily but unsuccessfully courted by the International Marxist Group:
In February 1971 John LENNON, who was already well known as a musician, gave an interview to Tariq ALI and Robin BLACKBURN who were members of the International Marxist Group paper “Red Mole”. In this he implied he was sympathetic to IMG which is a small Trotskyist group which owes allegiance to the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. LENNON emphasised his proletarian background and his sympathy with the oppressed and underprivileged people of Britain and the world.
Immediately after it was published in the “Red Mole”, ALI and BLACKBURN set about selling the interview to papers in Western Europe, about £700 was realised from the sale of the rights of reproduction and these were retained by the International Marxist Group, presumably with LENNON’s agreement.
It is believed that LENNON promised to advance sums of money to IMG in order to finance the establishment of a left wing bookshop and reading room in London. Despite a long courtship by BLACKBURN and ALI, as far as we know, no sum has been paid by LENNON for this purpose to them.
Coming in 2036: MI5 documents reveal Girls Aloud’s clandestine backing for the International Bolshevik Tendency.
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22 Responses to “John Lennon and the International Marxist Group”
That interview in full: http://www.counterpunch.org/lennon12082005.html
It’s also in the revised edition of Tariq Ali’s Street fighting years.
I was a member of the IMG in the 70’s and because I lived in London was friendly with many of the fulltimers. One of my friends was ‘Joanne’ who was for a time the National Treasurer of the IMG. She told me that Lennon had agreed to give #100,000 to the IMG (principally over the Vietnamese War) but, unfortunately the Maharishi got there first.
That’s #100,000 in 1970’s money, probably the equivalent of several million in today’s terms.
Incidentally, the reading book my little daughter (who’s 8 years old) has brought home for Xmas is a life of John Lennon, published by Franklin Watts. Needless to say it is a greatly simplified version and does not mention the Vietnamese War.
I think Lennon also gave some dosh to the Black Dwarf magazine in the late 1960’s (run by Ali and Robin Blackburn)
Sue
What’s the book called? I’ll get it for my six-year-old, who does a beltin’ version of Twist and Shout as her party piece.
Meja scum: During the period in which I worked on Black Dwarf Lennon didn’t give it any money – and I actually did try to get some moolah out of him. Indeed, we were mainly a bit pissed of with him for Revolution No 9 (which in retrospect seems rather good now). And Robin Blackburn wasn’t involved in the Dwarf until, if at all I think, shortly before the IMG went off and launched the Red Mole, which is the second silliest name for a paper ever devised.
The book is called ‘John Lennon’ and it is in the Franklin Watts ‘Famous People, Famous Lives’ series. The author is Harriet Castor and the ISBN is 0 7496 4350 1.
All this talk about old rock stars leads me to racall the 27th October 68 VSC demo, where i vividly remember seeing Comrade Jagger (with some hangers-on) being photographed on an adjoining pavement, presumably to get some PR cred for being a proper street fighting man. I watched for some time, but i got the impression that after the photo-shoot he just upped and vanished. Still the mug shots were in the next day’s papers…..
Regarding Lennon and the IMG, there was an exchange between him and Blackburn before a general election -maybe 1970 -when Blackburn was taking a rather gung ho, plague on both your houses attitude (I think this was when Red Mole printed a cartoon of its Mole tearing up Labour’s stuff or something like that).
Lennon argued that it would make a difference, if the Tories got in they would be more repressive, it might only be marginally, but “we operate in that margin”. (Sorry but maybe someone else will remember this exchange better than I do).
The WRP to be sided with Lennon on this occasion and I believe they discreetly approached him for some funds and may have succeeded.
Some other people in the music business were sympathetic to the Left at one time or another,
e.g. Paul Jones,and I remember Elke Brooks in her Vinegar Joe days performing for a Young Socialists’ gig in Wembley (BTW her Uncle Dave Bookbinder was left-wing leader of Derbyshire county council). Even the Who spontaneously assisted an American student’s vigil (over Kent State) after performing at Lancaster.
But the Stones have probably had more support than they deserved from the radical and young(now the nostalgic and late middle-aged). A friend of mine did some building work at one of the Stones’ members’ country mansions, and grew fed up listening to this “street fightin man” wingeing about Vietnamese refugees at a nearby camp spoiling the area and lowering the property values.
The story circulating in the IMG at the time was that Lennon had rung the office and asked to speak to Blackburn, and the full timer who took the call asked who it was. “John Lennon,” said John Lennon. “Yeah, and I’m the fucking Pope,” replied the anonymous full timer, slamming down the phone.
End of prospective cash cow.
I believe William Rees-Mogg, after meeting Mick Jagger, described him as a “right-wing libertarian”.
Sean Thompson:
Revolution No 9? Did you object to the avant garde musical editing as a petit bourgeois deviation, or was it really Revoltion 1 (or 2, as I believe the single was called)? Which, as you say, has rather survived the course in terms of pricking the ultra left bubble?
For those who don’t understand my pedantry – “Revoluion 9″ consists of 8 minutes of someone saying “Number 9″ over various soundscapes – while the lower numbered versions contain the immortal line “but if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao/You ain’t going to make it with anyone, anyhow”
Pete Townshend was certainly helping to fund the Labour Party in the mid/late 80s. Of course, he used to be in the YCL too. Which no doubt makes you all boo and hiss, which I suggests rtaher better taste in ultra leftism than the IMG and their “let it bleed” attack on Wilson
Last of the Bore’ites,
Never knew that Townsend was a member of the YCL in his youth, but if that was the case it would only have been a few years after the events of ‘56. That would have made him a bit of an arsehole.
Good tunes, though.
I like Revolution 9. As for the other Revolutions, they contain the vital difference that Revolution rejects revolutionary violence (“you can count me out”) and Revolution 1 is ambivalent about it (“you can count me out (in)”). Although Revolution 1 was released after Revolution, it was recorded before it, so Lennon actually hardened his non-violent stance (hat tip to Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the Head, a book far more useful and relevant to the modern world than all the writings of all the Euston Manifesto crowd put together).
Lennon argued that it would make a difference, if the Tories got in they would be more repressive, it might only be marginally, but “we operate in that margin”. (Sorry but maybe someone else will remember this exchange better than I do).
I remember Richard Neville coming out with an almost identical line – “there may be only an inch between Labour and the Tories, but in that inch we can live”. (Which was pretty ironic, given that the Oz trial was brought under a Labour government.) I suspect the story may have migrated to the more famous Lennon, as these things do.
As the trial was in 1971 I don’t see how that can be blamed on Harold Wilson. Incidentally, it was the law that was wrong not the refusal of politicians to interfere with it. Arbitrary interventions by politicians in the legal process is something that ought to be avoided!
The trial took place in 1971, but the prosecution was brought under Labour. You could look it up.
That was terser than it needed to be – it was late and I was tired. Luff’s Obscene Publications Squad had had their eye on the scene for a while, & they went for Neville (and Richard Branson!) in June 1970. The point about arbitrary interventions in the legal process being a Bad Thing (which I agree with) isn’t really relevant – my point is that Neville’s own experiences at the hands of Luff & co give the lie to his apparent belief that Labour Britain was inherently more scene-friendly than Tory Britain.
So who were the FBI playthings, then?
Corrections and clarifications
Friday December 22, 2006
The Guardian
Yesterday’s news report headlined Revealed at last – how FBI tried to nail Lennon, page 7, stated in error that the newly released files on the FBI’s surveillance of John Lennon in the 1970s contained information that the agency had “recruited two ‘prominent British leftists’ – alas unnamed – to befriend him”. In fact Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn are named but are not described in any part of the documents as being agents or informers for the FBI. The agency simply reported their relationship to Lennon and the proposed financing of a London bookshop. Tariq Ali posted his recollections of this relationship on our Comment is free website yesterday. We wish to apologise for the misunderstanding.