"Factional Magical-Leninism - The Festive Quiz 2013"

 

Facebook reminded me to day that 8 years ago I had posted on a Festive Christmas Quiz on the website "Facing Reality" which described itself as a "Satirical view from the left".  The site has stopped publishing since 2015 which is a shame since it exposed the "ultra left" extremists for what they are and the damage they continue to cause even today. Including the ultra left "junta" who have recently been trying to take over UNISON. 

Enjoy the Quiz below and answers here

!After six months of news, blog rants, screen-play scripts, musicals, leaked  emails, leaked Socialist Worker articles, leaked letters, leaked Party Notes, fairy stories,  angry polemics, thought provoking articles and journeys into trade union history, its time to end 2013 with our Traditional Festive Quiz.

Prizes, in the form of gift-links, will be awarded to those who answer correctly in the comments section or the facebook “discussion”. Answers will be revealed on this blog in the New Year. (Some people may not be happy with the answers. I don’t know everything for sure & apparently the internet sometimes contains errors) [EDIT : ANSWERS ARE HERE]

1.  Which group had a faction fight at conference over whether all married members should be compelled to divorce, as marriage institutionalises women’s’ oppression?
2.  Which group has a member who wrote a book subtitled “Quantulumcunque Concerning Materialist Esthetix” ? And what the hell does that mean?
3.  Which group once said that it would ideally call for the banning of alcohol “but the workers wouldn’t understand it”?
4.  Which group once handed out leaflets to Vietnam War Protesters explaining “Why We Are Not Marching”? 
5. A third of the 15 strong leadership of which Leninist Party were formerly students at Sussex University?
6. Whose stall did Simon Watney and Edward King of the lesbian & gay rights group Outrage kick over at Gay Pride in 1990? And why?
7.  What was the key point about the end of World War Two according to followers of one faction of the Fourth International?
   
8. Which Fourth International Leader became a minister in the Algerian government after the revolution in 1961, and who’s funeral in his native Greece was a state event?
9.  How many monopolies did Militant want to nationalise in 1965, 1970,1980 and 1990?
10.  Which Leninist organisation explained the need for separate women’s organisation within Leninist Parties in order to combat sexism within the revolutionary movement in 1978?
11. Which Socialist Party threatened to take the Socialist Party (formerly Militant) to court, and why?
12.  Which organisation fought hard in the 1980s to stop women, black, LGBT members of the Labour Party organising autonomously against sexism, racism & homophobia, claiming such organisation divided the workers Movement?
13.  Which organisation once wrote “We must call upon beings from other planets when they come to intervene, to collaborate with the inhabitants of the Earth to overcome misery. We must launch a call on them to use their resources to help us.” believing that socialism could arrive from another planet, and that a nuclear war might be an advantage for revolutionary Marxists?   (”
    Humanity will pass quickly through a nuclear war into a new human society – Socialism.”)
14.  Which organisation discovered that their leader had become senile and their main theoretician schizophrenic, before they were both removed?
15. Which group lost a libel action brought by ITN and lost around £1 million, bankrupted their magazine?
16.  Fidel Castro was “First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba” for nearly 40 years. In July 2014 a British Trotskyist leader will, health permitting, break that record as the worlds longest standing Leninist Party General Secretary. What is his name and organisation?
17. Which group stood against Labour in elections and got results ranging from 111 (0.24%) and 644 (2.1%)?
18. What was the Marxist Daily Building Fund and what happened to all the money it raised?
19. What is “The Hallas Foundation”?
20. Why did the International Marxist Group initially not join the “Anti Internment League”, despite the AIL’s organisation of Britain’s biggest ever Irish Solidarity march in 1972? [EDIT: its been pointed out by a former member that the IMG were involved in the AIL. I will check about claims of initially abstaining]] And what slogan about the war in the six counties were their members supposed to chant on marches in Britain?
21. Which group banned its members from talking to each other across branches and international groups via the internet in the 1990s?
22. Name 57 left wing groups in Britain. (The group does not have to be alive any more. If a name has been used twice, it counts twice)

True or False?

1. In 2013, a member of the Central Committee of the SWP  hacked into other CC members computers and began  leaking stories to the Facing Reality blog.
2. In the late 1970s, it was possible to go on a left wing march against the cuts or racism and be offered two papers, “Gay Left” and “Straight Left”
3. In a report by a police informant, Militant was described as “The most unbelievably boring and turgid newspaper I have ever read, never mind sold”
4. A police raid on the Workers Revolutionary Party Derbyshire training centre found only used bullets, so no action was taken.
5. The IS/SWP once had an opposition faction that called itself “The Right Opposition”
6. In 1980s Liverpool, GMB stewards using taxis to deliver redundancy notices to the entire council workforce, were picketed by NALGO stewards and taken to court by the local NUT
7. The SWP has over 7,000 members
8. The leader of the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) produces such brilliant poetry that it is published on the groups website and sometimes even in print
9.  Everybody’s favourite Left-Trainspotter paper/website, the “Weekly Worker” used to be called the “Daily Worker”
10.  In the 1980s it was possible to go on a march and be offered to buy two copies of “Newsline” produced by rival factions of the WRP.
11. In the 1980s, tit-for-tat killings became the norm between the 3 main revolutionary socialist groups, which saw nearly 100 dead.
12.  In the 1980s it was possible to go on a march and be offered two copies of “Brighton Labour Briefing” produced by rival factions of the Brighton’s Labour Left.
13.  There are three daily papers run by left wing parties in Britain.
14. A Trotskyist paper called “Workers Hamster” greeted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan with the headline “Hail The Red Army in Afghanistan”
15.  At Labour Party Young Socialists summer camp in the 1980s, supporters of the Militant Tendency organised an attack on the tents of the openly LGBT campers.
16.  The CPB (M-L) ( founder John Buckle), with less than 100 members, currently organise rallies where they tell their membership how they “punch above our weight”
17. The SWP in 1960s USA expelled lesbian and gay members because they were a security risk.
18.  Occupy Marxism Festival was bigger than the real Marxism Festival in 2013
19. Joan Lester, a former Labour Minister who became Baroness Lester of Eccles Cakes in 1997, was once a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
20. The Japanese section of the Fourth International expelled all its male members due to the high level of physical abuse of women members by male “comrades”
21. John Lennon wanted to join the International Socialists (SWP), but didn’t like the thought of the subs he was ask for, so he joined the Fourth International International Marxist Group” instead.
22. Surrey was the origin of two British left groups, the New Communist Party (AKA North Korea Juche International, UK section) and Spanner (a 1980s breakaway from the SPGB (AKA Small Party of Good Boys)

Which is the odd one out? And why?

1) Workers Power, 2) Socialist Resistance, 3) Anti-Capitalist Initiative, 4) Counterfire, 5) International Socialist Network, 6) Revolutionary Democratic Group, 7) Alliance for Workers Liberty, 8) Permanent Revolution, 9) Revolutionary Communist Party, 10) International Socialist Group, 11) Revolutionary Communist Group, 12) Red Action

1) British National Party, 2) The SWP, 3) UKIP, 4) Liberal-Democrats

1) Ted Grant, 2) Tony Cliff, 3) Gerry Healy, 4) Sean Matgamna

1) Globalise Resistance  2)Right to Work Campaign  3) Youth Fight for Jobs 4) Education Activists Network 5) Fast Food Rights

1) Costas  2) Starbucks  3) Firebox  4) Café Nero  5) Coffee Republic

1)The SWP telling people to pay their poll tax, 2) Militant  refusing to call for the withdrawal of Thatchers Falklands Task Force, 3) The SWP saying collect money for the miners & take it to the picket lines instead of working with the Miners Support Groups and collecting food, 4) The Militant calling 1980s Syria a Workers State (deformed),5)  Militant staying in The Mass party Of The Werking Class (AKA The Labour Party) quite as long as they did. 6) The procedures of the SWP Disputes Committee in 2012 7) The SWP standing Lindsey German for London Mayor under a “Left List” platform after getting “witch-hunted” out of “Respect”

[EDIT : ANSWERS ARE HERE]