Telling It Straight

William Wilson has died, aged 97. He was one of the Labour MPs on the Editorial Board of Straight Left, newspaper and namesake the most unyieldingly pro-Soviet faction of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Edward Pearce's Guardian obituary yesterday referred to "an old-fashioned tendresse towards to the Soviet Union". That is certainly one way of describing it. Remember that this was the spirit behind the 1969 Divorce Reform Act, piloted through the Commons by Wilson. And remember that Straight Left became Harry's Place, which takes it name from the pseudonym of that faction's principal ideologue.