Mark Steel - Politics

Politics

During the Thatcher years, when he was in his 20s, Steel's objections to society's injustices were vented by political protests, punk rock and poetry.

Seeing the Soviet Union as "shit", and state capitalist rather than truly socialist, Steel joined the Socialist Workers Party rather than the Communist Party. He supported strikes and demonstrations, and was present in Southall at the contested death, or killing, of Blair Peach. In the early '80s he also persuaded his mother to allow striking steelworkers to spend a night in the Steel residence. By the end of the 1980s, he had moved into a squat with his old friend Mick Hannan, before taking up residence in a flat.

In 2000 Steel took part in the London Assembly elections on behalf of the London Socialist Alliance (part of the Socialist Alliance) in the Croydon and Sutton constituency; he received 1,823 votes (1.5 per cent of the vote).

In 2007 he left the SWP and justified his decision in his book What's Going On? In the book he wrote that he left the party because whilst the membership base had become smaller and smaller, the members that remained became increasingly deluded regarding the size and relevance of the organisation. He also condemned the manner in which, at a time when there was broad public support for socialist ideals, increasingly bitter and futile in-fighting on the left made political success impossible. Alex Callinicos, International Secretary of the SWP, reviewed the book in the Socialist Review, arguing that it "evinces a kind of grandiose ignorance" and that "the only principle one can detect here is that the SWP is always in the wrong". Literary critic Nicholas Lezard praised the book in The Guardian, particularly for its discussion of the break-up of Steel's relationship, which "gives it a poignancy and depth which at its outset one might not have expected".