­> What is it about London Mayors and Marxist Sects? Boris Johnson, Munira Mirza, the Revolutionary Communist Party and the delayed coming of history • Previous entry

What is it about London Mayors and Marxist Sects? Boris Johnson, Munira Mirza, the Revolutionary Communist Party and the delayed coming of history

Posted by Michael Mosbacher

Michael Mosbacher on London Mayors, Marxist sects and the delayed coming of history. Michael Mosbacher writes in a personal capacity.

As Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone drew many of his - publicly funded and extremely well paid - advisors from one particularly obscure Marxist sect, Socialist Action. One might have thought that - with the political demise of Ken Livingstone - the era of the advisors to the London Mayor coming from Marxist sects would be at an end. This does not, however, appear to be the case.

Yesterday's Sunday Times records that Munira Mirza has been appointed as Boris Johnson's "cultural advisor". The piece points out that Munira is the third person to be appointed by Boris Johnson who used to work for the think-tank Policy Exchange.

To my mind, much more interesting is the fact that Munira is very much part of the tight-knit little coterie which came out of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

This Marxist sect emerged around University of Kent at Canterbury sociologist Frank Furedi. The Revolutionary Communist Party - and its magazine Living Marxism - was noted for taking provocative positions which outraged others on the left. Famously the magazine ran to ground when ITN successfully sued Living Marxism for libel for claiming that it had fabricated its Srebrenica coverage.

While the Revolutionary Communist Party has ostensibly dissolved itself, its former personnel are still much in evidence and are still operating as a tight-knit group. They are still noted for taking provocative positions. There is Frank Furedi himself, Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas and Mick Hume of The Times and Spiked Online. Lesser figures include Bill Durodi� of Cranfield University, Ann Furedi, Frank Furedi's wife and the Chief Executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, and - allegedly - the contrarian film maker Martin Durkin.

Munira Mirza herself runs what in less charitable times would have been described as a front organisation - the Manifesto Club. Its strap-line is "history is still young". This might seem just an anodyne bit of snappy copy, but it fits rather well into what is the overall perspective of the Revolutionary Communist Party coterie. Their perspective is that Marx is right, only that previous Marxists have got the timing wrong. We are still in the productive stages of capitalism - the time for revolution will still come, it is just that history is not ready yet.

Michael Mosbacher is Director of the Social; Affairs Unit. He writes the above in a personal capacity - the views expressed are not those of the Social Affairs Unit, its Trustees or Advisors.