Doug: "But the RCP has something of an afterlife through Spiked! and The Institute of Ideas, no? Aren't most of the personnel alumni of the RCP? And there still seems to be something of a party line. "
Most of the people working on Spiked are too young to have been in the RCP, and they all talk to me as if I was Methusalah. Most of the arguments put up there are ones that I would not have recognised when I was selling The Next Step or Living Marxism. I guess there is still a tendency to say everything as if the last thought in your head was the one true line: it is hard to get out of the habit of sounding off.
Don't get me wrong, I still think there is a basis for some kind of small group work of an analytical nature, But its findings would always be of a provisional character in these less contested times. In my experience I argue with my ex-comrades whenever anyone tries it out. When I wrote Green Capitalism, it was criticised on Spiked - diplomatically, but definitely criticised.
Dennis: "I'm guessing that the English RCP didn't go in for Mao poetry slams like the stateside model."
I can remember some vaguely embarrassing street theatre: we often had the women comrades chained to ironing boards, or dressed up as soldiers to do army stop points on the high street. There were a couple of bands - Easterhouse, Stereolab - that liked what we had to say, though Letitia Sadler had more sense than to put the dense nostrums of the party to music. I once addressed Wood Green high street with Shelley's lines 'Rise like lions after slumber' - which was strangely moving for a moment, and then everyone shrugged and walked on.
Anyway, that's enough reminiscences from me.