Laurie Weidberg

Laurie E. Weidberg (died 1986) was a socialist writer and speaker based in Manchester and London.

Weidberg was raised in Manchester in petty-bourgeois Jewish family with strict religious ideas. In the 1930s, at the age of seventeen, he developed an interest in leftist politics. He attended a meeting of Stafford Cripps'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. 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.^[1][2]

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 cricket match on 2 June 1975.^[3][4] The complaint made it all the way to the Press Council, which eventually ruled in favour of the newspaper.^[3] 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.^[5]

Laurie Weidberg died in 1986 after a long illness.^[2][3]

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