Kmflett's Blog

The Guardian once reported ‘Keith Flett’ was the Editor of Living Marxism’ but even I don’t think the BBC is trying to destroy Boris Johnson

There was a time in December 1989 when the Guardian reported that I was the Editor of Living Marxism.

LM was the glossy magazine of the Revolutionary Communist Party and was pitching in competition to Marxism Today on the news stands.

It’s no secret that I am a marxist and socialist activist but LM and the RCP were certainly not my variety of left.

The Guardian report by Nigel Fountain was in error. It noted not only that I was the Editor of LM but that I had denied the paper access to my anonymous HQ. Hmmm.

Anyway the Guardian printed an apology and Nigel Fountain who I knew then and I’m pleased to see is still around explained to me that my name had somehow got into his mind as the LM Editor even though of course he knew the identity of the actual Editor and had met them.

My employer of the time (in fact still my employer) expressed some concern. The politics bit has never bothered them, they were just wondering if I had another job.

Now I note that Mick Hume who used to be the real Editor of LM has claimed in a Daily Mail column that the BBC is trying to destroy Boris Johnson. I must say I hadn’t noticed. I’m sometimes annoyed by the apparent partiality of this or that BBC journalist but that’s hardly the same as the relentless right-wing drivel one finds in the Daily Fail.

Hume himself is in a long tradition of those who have moved from the far or hard left to the hard right. Indeed one former LM writer advises Boris Johnson and another sits in the Lords at his behest. From French Maoists to US Trotskyists one can find examples of those who were once on the left appearing on the right. It’s a minority trend and there are examples of the reverse. Tony Benn for example is a well known figure who started out as a mainstream Labour politician but moved significantly to the left over the years.