Politics
During his military service, Allen was imprisoned for assault, where a fellow inmate introduced him to the ideals of Socialism. He was a passionate socialist for the rest of his life, although he detested Stalinism and refused to be associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1958 Allen joined the Socialist Labour League (SLL, the forerunner of the Workers' Revolutionary Party) led by Gerry Healy and John G. M. Lawrence, a small group then pursuing entryist tactics within the Labour Party. The SLL objected to the close association between the CPGB and the National Union of Mineworkers, and Allen was a prominent campaigner for the League, attending rallies at coalmines throughout the UK. In 1962, the Labour Party declared the SLL to be a "proscribed organization", leading to Allen's expulsion from the party. He subsequently resigned his membership of the League, and was not associated with any recognized political party thereafter.
Read more about this topic: Jim Allen (playwright)
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts. Their measures are half measures and makeshifts merely. They put off the day of settlement, and meanwhile the debt accumulates.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The politics of the family are the politics of a nation. Just as the authoritarian family is the authoritarian state in microcosm, the democratic family is the best training ground for life in a democracy.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“From the beginning, the placement of [Clarence] Thomas on the high court was seen as a political end justifying almost any means. The full story of his confirmation raises questions not only about who lied and why, but, more important, about what happens when politics becomes total war and the truth—and those who tell it—are merely unfortunate sacrifices on the way to winning.”
—Jane Mayer, U.S. journalist, and Jill Abramson b. 1954, U.S. journalist. Strange Justice, p. 8, Houghton Mifflin (1994)