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:
“While you’re playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“His talk was like a spring, which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses:
It slipped from politics to puns,
It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
Beginning with the laws which keep
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And ending with some precept deep
For dressing eels, or shoeing horses.”
—Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802–1839)