Comments on: Socialist artwork goes up on billboards around the UK

By: Janey

Janey — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 16:42:52 +0000

It is a pity that the artwork did not stylistically acknowledge the work of William Morris. He was one of England’s most important socialists as well as being a brilliant artist, designer and propagandist. The billboards do remind me of the Soviet era which is something socialists need to distance themselves from.

By: wonkotsane

wonkotsane — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 12:38:06 +0000

“Equality for women workers” … the irony.

By: Austin

Austin — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 07:45:23 +0000

Socialism: starts with utopian vision of egalitarian future, ends with people eating their pets, or being shot trying to escape it.

By: Julia Gibb

Julia Gibb — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 19:17:54 +0000

So only the Labour Party are real socialists. The Scottish Greens, The SNP. PC are dismissed. The reality is that Labour abandoned socialism a long time ago. They stuff the HofLs. The take lucrative board positions. The go on obscene income speaking tours. The form private companies that demand 1000pounds a day from clients to obtain their “influence” in the House.

Why have they been rejected in Scotland? It is simple. They became Red Toried feeding at the same trough as the Blue Tories.

Open your eyes and look at WHAT they DO instead of what they say.

It looks like Wales is waking up to the Labour betrayal.

Do you really think a few posters will fool anyone?

We do need a socialist Party but it isn’t the one that abstains on key Tory motions in Parliament.

By: Richard Honey

Richard Honey — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 18:06:47 +0000

So Socialism is white and largely male, judging by these rather macho posters where socialst realism meets Tom of Finland. I quite like the artwork myself but then I have a weird taste for retro formalism. The heroic romanticism of the Nazi era had a similar superhuman sculptural quality and posters of the KPD (Maoists) I saw when I lived in Berlin in the 1970s did this kind of stuff with some panache in a nostalgic kind of way. Can see it being met with admiration by a few, mystified stares by many and quite a bit of derision. Doubt it would win me to socialism if I wasn’t on board for a more humane version already.

By: Eddie Welch

Eddie Welch — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 17:54:18 +0000

The artwork is too retro-Russian with its Stalinist associations. What was wrong with red roses and white doves?

By: Dave Roberts

Dave Roberts — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 17:11:38 +0000

Ralph. Do you also prefer the famines, mass murder, the wholesale wanton destruction of the lives of millions of people, famines. I could go on and on but I’m sure you get the picture. Socialism of the kind being described led all of the things above, it has been rejected by all of the people who had to live under it and has failed in all of the stated aims of the posters shown above.
There is a kind of trendy lefty and unreconstructed Marxist element in our society which harks back nostalgically to an era of supposed equality which was anything but. Socialism as depicted failed and is in the dustbin of history.

By: Ralph A Tebbutt

Ralph A Tebbutt — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 15:56:44 +0000

I hope to see some of the posters in my neighbourhood. With reference to the old Soviet Union, despite their limited range I much preferred the posters I saw in Moscow to the advertisements that litter our public spaces.

By: Dave Roberts

Dave Roberts — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 14:56:58 +0000

So it’s back to the Soviet Union then. That worked well didn’t it?

By: Tom Sacold

Tom Sacold — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 10:07:38 +0000

Excellent !!!