Oh man - this is on my bookshelf ready to read - but I always skip it because I worry there may be detailed discussion of the minutes of Comintern meetings or something... now you've recommended it I'll read it next - thanks.

It is good, I bought it at the time and wish I had to read it again.

I also remember that the character, Pepe Carvalho, later appeared in a TV series whose succession of partially dressed Spanish lovelies I remember warming the early hours as I watched the programme on my small B&W portable high up in the Bermondsey sky on Anglia TV (strangely this was the ITV station I got get easiest from the 15th floor - complete with farming programmes for us Southwark sheepfarmers)

But where is Dave's loyalty? Are you not forgetting one of the most prominent authors in that Pluto series of detective fictions by various Lefts type people.

For, with his work done after politically murdering the remains of a major strand of the communist tradition - where are his Trotskyist instruments for Nicuragua now; outlawing abortion, for one - who then turned his skills to murder in fiction - or was it just a book about murder fiction - by Ernest Mandel.

And would people felt passionate about their politics enough to kill their rivals - I've read a US Maoist Central Committee ended in a gunfight in the 60s or 70s - but instead, if stories are true, the name of Rees will just be apparent as a name on yellowing remaindered books in the sale section at Bookmarks; the 'lessons', the 'balance sheet' terms unknown to even the cadre.

SPP, I have always found your posts strangely evocative, almost poetic.

I think I've nailed it. Your opinions could well crop up in a Ken MacLeod story.

I do not intend to be rude.

Lobby, I take that as a compliment. In fact, I must get round to posting that in my credits (along with not so good ones about my stuff - "sexist ultra-left brand of boy wankery!" - Louise Whittle.)

You will doubtless be pleased to hear I have just collected many of the comments that I have made in the last 15 months (near 40,000 words) that I will publish online somehow. I’ve also been trying to do more mainstream writing too, for payment.

I have always wanted to read some of Ken's stuff (I should do - he does link to me) as his comments here are often good but mainly because how much fiction gets to have real Lefts etc playing a part?

(That's why I remember enthusiastically buying the Montalban book - and others in that Pluto series, including a good one set in California and featuring the Left Charlie Chaplin, amongst others). Are there any Ken MacLeod books you recommend?

And (C?) to stop another rumour ("Your opinions could well crop up in a Ken MacLeod story") I AM NOT KEN MACLEOD (and I've never worn a cape).

I’ve never been that bothered about the political content in fiction, music, films (to a degree), poetry etc. I accept most of it will be either apolitical, confused, reactionary or brainless - ‘shubby do ay, shubby do ah’ etc. I’ve only really found it annoying when it has claimed to be Left and instead is such dross - having just come back from seeing someone in Barking today that tuneless chancer Billy Bragg comes to mind as an example of such,

I would be very interested in hearing from anyone with recommendations for hardcore red literature, music etc. My knowledge of such is poor; in fiction it's just Serge and some Bengali stuff that I can think of although I can think of a few politically sound films - Loach etc. Any ideas, anyone?

If I remember rightly, Pluto Press did a nifty line in left-wing crime fiction back in the 80s (the name Gordon DeMarco also springs to mind), and I do remember picking up a copy of Murder on the Central Committee and his earlier novel, The Angst-Ridden Executive, in Freedom Bookshop in the nineties.

More recently, Serpents Tail has been pretty good in publishing left-wing crime fiction - Murder In Memoriam by Didier Daeninckx
is especially recommended - and I see from their website that they have been republishing Montalban.

Punchie,

Film - I'd recommend the films of John Sayles, Peter Watkins and also maybe check out Stuart Christie's website for more radical films - fact and fiction - than you can shake a stick at.

PS- If anyone has a copy (or ever seen) Maurice Hatton's 'Praise Marx And Pass The Ammunition', starring a young John Thaw as a Leninist who divides his time between paper selling and bed hopping in late sixties London, then you're a jammy bastard and I hate you.

Novels and short stories? Sorry to be a lazy bastard but cut and pasted below is a comment I wrote a few years ago on a forum where someone else asked for left-wing reads. Apologies in advance for typos, verbosity and piss poor jokes.

1) 'The Dance of the Apprentices' by Edward Gaitens - This book was
originally published in 1948 and was recently reprinted by Canongate
Classics in
Scotland. Gaitens had been a member of the old Independent Labour Party in
Glasgow and was a class- conscious objector to the First World War and t
the novel is a thinly-veiled autobiography. I believe that this novel comes
a close second to Tressell's as the best working-class novel written in
Britain this century. The brilliance of the book is that it captures the
massive optimism of those class-conscious workers prior to 1914.There is a
wonderful depiction of a mass-meeting addressed by Tom Mann in Glasgow
which reflects the upturn in class struggle which occurred in Britain in
the years 1910-1914. Why it is such an excellent book is because of its
honesty in acknowledging that the optimism of those early chapters was
misplaced, and the rest of the novel pulls no punches in relating the
fallout from the early idealism of the three main characters. It may sound
a rather pessimistic book but it has as good an understanding of the
defects of the 'official' labour movement in Britain this century than any
other book I have ever read ,-fact or fiction.
2)'Fontamara' by Ignazio Silone - A very readable account of a peasant
village in Southern Italy during the Mussolini years.Silone wrote the novel
in 1930 and was a communist when writing this book.Though it was obviously
written as a propaganda piece for the official communist movement of the
time, it is actually a cracking read.Silone was a wonderful writer, even if
his politics sucked.
3)'Comrade Jacob' by David Caute - This is a fictionalised account of
Gerrard Winstanley's attempt to set up a communist society in 17th century
England, and the eventual crushing of the Diggers by General Lord Fairfax.
Caute is an extremely interesting writer. He recently wrote a novel called
'Dr Orwell and Mr Blair' ,which 'suggests' how George Orwell came to write
'Animal Farm', and his most recent novel,'Fatima's Scarf', is set in the
fictional north England town of Bruddersford, and relates the fallout for a
writer when he publishes a novel which is seen to insult the Prophet,
Mohammed. -Sound familiar?
4)'Hocus Pocus' by Kurt Vonnegut - There are so many of his novels you
could mention but this one's narrator is called Eugene Debs Hartke-nuff
said.
5)'The Case of Comrade Tulayev' by Victor Serge - I would never recommend
Serge's politics - what exactly is a Libertarian Bolshevik,anyway?- but
this is an excellent starting point to understanding the political
machinations and paranoia of the 1930's Comintern.
6)'Breaking Free' by J Daniels -The TINTIN cartoon novel that
crypto-fascist Herge neglected to write. Tintin and Uncle live on an
inner-city council estate
in South London. In between getting pissed and beating up fascists, who try
to sell them papers outside football grounds, they throw bricks at the
police,loot there local High Street and inadvertently stumble upon/kick off
an anarchist-communist revolution. This cartoon novel was published by
Attack International in 1987 and you can still find the odd copy if you
look in the right place. Anarchist-Communists conception of how the
revolution will come about is cartoonish anyway,so the format is about
right but they neglect to address the most important question; Where were
the Thompson Twins and Snowy when all this was kicking off? We need to know.
7)'The Last Capitalist' by Stephen Cullen - Published by Freedom Press,
this a novella about the future. Very readable.
8)'Red Harvest' by Dashiell Hammett - Just read it.
9)'A Red Death' by Walter Mosley - All the Easy Rawlins novels are
excellent.
10)'Spartacus' by Lewis Grassic Gibbon - This was originally written in the
1930's ,and was recently republished by Redwords, the fictional arm of the
Socialist Workers Party publishing empire(sic)(don't forget that the SWP's
greatest fictions are reserved for there membership). Gibbon is most well
known for his trilogy 'A Scot's Quair', but this is equally recommended.
11)'Redemption' by Tariq Ali - The Bollinger Bolshevik settles some old
scores. This is a fictional account of the International Trotskyist
Movement , which Tariq was a part of for thirty years, and is probably
libellous. It was published in the early nineties and starts off with the
execution of the Ceaucescus.There are thinly veiled descriptions of all the
usual suspects(Cliff, Grant, Healy, the Redgraves,Mandel,Callinicos,Taafe),
with the exception of one; Tariq Ali himself. It caused a bit of an outrage
in Trot circles at the time and he was probably removed from a few Xmas
card lists as a result.It is not as funny as Ali thinks it is, but I would
sooner he took the piss out of his own political history, as opposed to
what he had been doing for the previous thirty years, which was taking the
piss out of the working class.
P.S There was an excellent review of Redemption,written by Steve Coleman,
published in the Socialist Standard when the novel originally came out. It
is worth (re)reading.
12)'More Years From The Locust' by Jim Higgins - This is not actually a
work of fiction (that may be open to debate), but it is in a similar vein
to Tariq's book. Higgins was a leading member of the International
Socialist Tendency (SWP),from the late fifties to the mid -seventies, when
he was a leading member of a factional split from Cliff and his cohorts.
Higgins is now in his autumnal days and he has a memory for grudges which
would put an old-time Sicilian peasant to shame.He also happens to be a
wonderfully entertaining writer, using acid instead of ink, and if you are
interested in a alternative history of the "vanguard of the working class",
and enjoy the brilliant cartoons of Phil Evans, you should dig this one
out. Please advise that you take its content with a pinch of salt; an
alternative title for the book could have been 'I Should Have Been King'.

Apologies for the verbosity, but this is my first (and probably last)
contribution to the Forum. I would also recommend the novels of Bernard
MacLaverty, Alan Spence, William Mcillvanney, Mario Vargas Llosa( I know
his politics are dodgy, magic writer none the less), Ben Traven, E.L
Doctorow,Jaroslav Hasek,Maxim Gorky, Taslima Nasrin and the texts of
playwrights such as Trevor Griffiths, Arnold Wesker and Jim Allen.

"And (C?) to stop another rumour ("Your opinions could well crop up in a Ken MacLeod story") I AM NOT KEN MACLEOD (and I've never worn a cape)."

Punchie

I had heard you used to be a very dapper dandyish type with a swirling black cape, cane and top hat. Its not true??:-(

SPP
For detective fiction which is IMO better than Montalban both as gripping reads and as a critique of the society in which they were set, try the Martin Beck series of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.

The couple were marxists, and Wahlöö was for a long time a crime reporter. They decided in the mid-1960s to write a series of eight novels with crimes taking place in different social classes to expose the rottenness behind the Swedish welfare state paradise, and the seamy reality behind the myths of sexual openness.

The entire series has just bben republished in what is claimed to be a better translation - well worth giving a try.

IMO the Mandel book, Delightful Murder, is one of the worst things he ever wrote. An extremely mechanical marxist account of the phases of evolution of the crime genre as deriving directly from the different epochs of capitalism, but mainly an excuse for a comprehensive listing of his favourite crime stories and authors.

Darren,

You might know "Ben Traven" better than I do, but wasn't the name just "B.Traven"? I suspect you are confusing him with Ben Travers. Now you can maker a witty riposte around the idea of farce. But, anyway, I'd definitely recommend Traven's work.

Another leftist novel I always enjoyed was Frederick Mullally's Clancy,which was televised by the BBC in the 1970s as Looking For Clancy (with Robert Powell I think. I think it was semi-autobiographical and about life in the ILP and working for Tribune.

Some of the other Pluto crime novels were rather good too. Broken Codes, The Anvil Agreement and Days Like These are probably my favourites.

I read that years ago Dave and do remember it was pretty good.

I am now of course worried at have been re-elected to the National Committee of the Labour Representation Committee...

Jon

I'd watch Broder ...

If he went to a public school I bet he had weapons training. Who'd win in a duel between him and SPP?

On Pluto Crime: there's a bit more detail here:
http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/pluto-crime-pluto-press-and-the-thriller-genre/

And: your bookseller informs:

it's seemingly not out of print. Last reissued by Serpent's Tail, who also publish Jelinek in the UK, in 1996, and still available, also directly from the publisher's website
http://www.serpentstail.com/book?id=10039
for £7.99 incl. p&p.

"If he went to a public school I bet he had weapons training. Who'd win in a duel between him and SPP?"

Hmmm, not sure . Depends if Punchie was allowed to bring his highly polished AK47.

As you will see though from this pic, both have a perchant for capes :

http://stroppyblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/guest-post-where-next-for-lrc.html

Of course he would be allowed. I suspect the green gloves (not to mention the shorts) would prevent a serious implantation of both the SPPRP and the "Commune" in the working class. And also too little material to be practical when handing out leaflets outside factories at 4am (they'd all catch the flu).

I also see (another?) comment on the Rees-German affair in this forthcoming title:
http://www.serpentstail.com/book?id=10880

Well I actually think this is what Punchie looks like (will mean nothing to non Seinfeld fans), he is the mysterious man in the cape:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/Seinfeld_s6e4.jpg

I see David B with the more boy wonder attire .

Andy Croft (Smokestack Books) and Ross Bradshaw (writing here in the third person) from Five Leaves are planning a weekend event on radical literature, under the name of Red Letters. We are looking at next October. Could do with a suggested speaker on radical crime fiction? Suggestions welcome or you can contact either of us via our websites.

Damn,

my last comment got pushed into spam folder hell but cheers to DZB for the link to the Cedar Lounge post. Never seen that post before.

Ross,

why not push the boat out and try and snap up Denise Mina? Granted she's not writing about middle-ranking cadres beaten to death with rolled up copies of last month's Internal Bulletin, but she's writing some of the best crime fiction out there . . . and her novels are radical to boot.

There is some similarity between Larry David and SPP, I suppose. And out of the two, I'd prefer a lovable old git over a supposedly-sneering boy wonder in green hotpants any time, though the question would have to consider "for what exactly". Which I haven't here.

"I'd prefer a lovable old git over a supposedly-sneering boy wonder in green hotpants any time, though the question would have to consider "for what exactly". Which I haven't here."

Hmm , yes if thats the answer what exactly is the question ??

I don't want to think about that one too much, to be honest. Thankfully I'm neither a weapons nor a comedy uniform fetishist.

There are some good leads above.

There is a lot of Indian and Benglai fiction with communist or Naxalite (sort of Maoist) heros published in the 70s especially that are good and I could list but they are so sadly obscure now it may not be useful. I have heard that there are lots of books published in the early USSR and in other 'socialist' countries e.g. 40s Czechoslovakia that meet the bill - but wonder whether they are mainly a myth.

---

I also did weapons training as well, but sadly only on .22 rifles, in the range behind the Fives court. I presume we were taught such in case we were needed to keep order over the Town oiks.

I suppose, since I have been outed, it's only fair that I supply to a link to a photo of myself (taken after a shooting weekend a few years ago near Grasse).

I do also warn both DZ and Stroppy I can access a small armoury, if necessary, to fend off any unwanted advances by either.

http://www.thedandy.org/a518e4a7-48c6-4b03-b031-8a851f5843ca.jpg/a518e4a7-48c6-4b03-b031-8a851f5843ca-full;init:.jpg

Don't worry Punchie, I won't make any advances on you.

btw I have it on good authority the pic below is you.

http://goldentreewands.com/Pictures/Cloaks/Opera/OperaMan.JPG

argh, double posted.

My excuse is I can't sleep as the bloody pub opposite had karoake ,crap singing and crap songs ...

Damn, one of my comments is still caught in the spam folder - or Dave's still caught in the pub - but just to mention to Geoff that he was right about Traven.

It was a mistake that I made in the comment when I originally posted back in 1999, and I couldn't properly be arsed in 2008 to proof read the cut and paste to iron out any typos or errors on my part.

Murder IN the Central Committee is in print - my wife bought it me for my birthday last month.

And yes it's brilliant. Though my favourites of his are The Buenos Aires Quintet and The Man of My Life.

Shame he died in 2003 and there's only a couple more backed up for translation.

"Murder IN the Central Committee"

Just as I was about to say... for whoever was worried about Comintern minutes it is the simplest of his novels, a classic locked room mystery. I liked The Angst-Ridden Executive and eventually got to like The Buenos Aires Quintet, though I still don't think tango compares well with rock.

It is, indeed, a very good detective novel. The nearsest comparison I can think of is Simenon and Maigret, though there are elements of Chandler and Marlowe as well. Monteblan also wrote "An Olympic Death", which may be considred quite apposite by Londoners, and is nearly as good a tale as "murder on the Central Committee". I believe it's still available from "Serpent's Tail", 4 Blackstock Mews, London N4.

haven't read it so can't recommended sorry, but one of Val McDiarmid's first books was a murder novel within a trade union "Union Jack", with a 'tec uncovering dodgy goings on in the union NEC.