Laurie E. Weidberg (died 1986) was a

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

writer and speaker based in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

and

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Early life

Weidberg was raised in Manchester in petty-bourgeois

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family with strict religious ideas. In the 1930s, at the age of seventeen, he developed an interest in

leftist Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...

politics. He attended a meeting of

Stafford Cripps Sir Richard Stafford Cripps (24 April 1889 – 21 April 1952) was a British Labour Party politician, barrister, and diplomat. A wealthy lawyer by background, he first entered Parliament at a by-election in 1931, and was one of a handful of La ...

's Labour Party splinter group, but quickly became disillusioned with the speakers (including a young Barbara Castle) whom he judged to be motivated more by self-interest than genuine concern for the betterment of society.

Career

After about a year of perusing literature from various left-wing groups, he stumbled upon the Socialist Party of Great Britain's journal, '' The Socialist Standard'', and was instantly convinced. Soon after, he joined the SPGB, and served as a regular writer for the ''Standard'' and as an outdoor speaker at Speakers' Corner and

Lincoln's Inn The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. (The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.) Lincoln ...

. Weidberg had a reputation for being caustic, sharp-witted, and provocative, and he harboured a particular hatred for '' The Guardian''. Besides dismissing the newspaper's overall tone as "half-baked lefty crap", he led an eleven-year campaign to challenge its report that snow had fallen during a

Lord's Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and ...

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

match on 2 June 1975. The complaint made it all the way to the Press Council, which eventually ruled in favour of the newspaper. This was not the first time Weidberg had made the news in connection with a complaint about Lord's: at a match earlier in the 1970s, he removed his shirt to enjoy the sunshine, and refused a steward's order to put it back on. He complained to the Marylebone Cricket Club, which ruled that Weidberg was free to go topless so long as he remained motionless.

Death

Laurie Weidberg died in 1986 after a long illness.

References

Writers from Manchester Socialist Party of Great Britain members 1986 deaths Year of birth missing {{UK-writer-stub