UCL’s Marxists are facing an internal crisis after it was noticed that a fresher who attended their meetings was not only state-educated, but in receipt of a mainte- nance grant to boot. Expressing disbelief, members of the revolutionary workers’ vanguard/society confirmed the presence of the intruder, thought to have been ‘an actual prole’.
A leading figure in the group, identified only as Comrade Jonty, dismissed the fresh- er as a “stalking horse from a rival Maoist faction” whilst questioning why “feckless louts” thought it appropriate to disrupt the revolutionary process by “getting all Alan Bennett” on the society.
“It was an upsetting experience,” added another comrade, nursing a guest ale in an Islington pub. “We were trying to have a serious discussion about the syntactical idiosyncrasies in Trotsky’s writings on the Spanish Civil War, but this guy wouldn’t shut his sparsely-toothed mouth about the living wage and the privatisation of the NHS. Running this kind of society is dif- ficult enough as it is without time-wasters who don’t understand the need for work- ers’ consciousness-building”.
Other full-time class-warriors/soci- ety members were quick to defend the at- titudes taken during the episode. “We’ve had loads of Northerners here before,” be- gan one, “last year there was this great chap from Stoke, though I suspect he had the wrong room. I always watch Owen Jones when he’s on Question Time as well, so you could hardly call me prejudiced.” Senior comrades, meanwhile, were quick to reassure doubters. “Ours is UCL’s only truly inclusive society. However, new members should be aware of the fact that dissent and curiosity are petty-bourgeois and have no place here.”