I was drinking with some buddies – we all work in Social Studies –
Reminiscing about better times we’d seen
When there’d been amazing theories, trenchant essays, urgent queries
Every week in New Society magazine.
Dewy eyed, we listed writers who would week by week excite us –
Eric Hobsbawm, Laurie Taylor, Asa Briggs –
All their intellects were hefty and their leanings, like ours, Lefty
As they socked it to the Londoncentric prigs.
Articles on social housing and how dockers went carousing
Or Ray Gosling on the Rockers and the Mods;
We learned society was riven by those ologies and isms
That would soon become our livings and our gods.
New Society’s abatement, swallowed up by the New Statesman
Robbed us of a much loved strain of thinking.
Now we get maudlin or aggressive when we start waxing progressive
Which is why we only do so when we’re drinking.
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