Catallaxy Files

Bob used to run the Third World Bookshop on the south side of Goulburn Street and we were on nodding terms when I delivered The Australian Humanist quarterly.   As Warwick noted he was a prolific writer and he placed tens of thousands of words on a now-defunct site called Leftwrites. A lot of that is on this site. A choice item is an 80 page letter to Keith and Liz Windshuttle, asking for an explanation of his move to conservatism. It is down the list under Neoconservatism and the left.

He moved to larger premises on the  other side of the street and there he had a row with the Percy Brothers which ended with Bob thrown bodily out of the shop. A photo in the SMH showed Bob apparently standing on his head in Goulburn Street as he cartwheeled over the pavement onto the road. Bob went to court and regained possession, presumably a victory for bougeoise justice and property rights.

The feud did not go away. A couple of years later during a preliminary meeting before the first Vietnam Moratorium march in Sydney, Bob burst into the meeting (in the Musicians Club in Chalmers Street) and demanded a motion of censure for the Percy brothers who had taken advantage of the meeting to steal Bob’s printing press.

The Percy brothers were prime movers in a rival faction to Gould, as described in a book on the movement reviewed by Gould. It is sad to visit sites like Leftwrites and see the immense amount of reading, writing and political activity that has been expended by communists and their fellow travellers over the last 150 years or so. And to what effect? To promote regimes that delivered pain, suffering and economic stagnation around the world. Decent and well-meaning lefties have been forced into continuing crises of conscience, to find a way to combine loyalty to their roots with the quest for sustainable policies that work to help the poor and the weak.

It would be nice to think that Bob was the last of a hard left line, so future generations of idealistic reformers can discover a better way, but it is apparent from the hard core of Green activists that the destructive flame still burns under a different label.  Not to mention the wharfies and the building unions.