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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Up and Down Stream</span>

Up and Down Stream
by Harry Gosling

Harry Gosling was born in 1861. He left school at thirteen and was soon apprenticed as a lighterman on the River Thames. The great dock strike of 1889 engendered a rash of new unionism, and much activity within the old unions. By 1893, Gosling had been elected General Secretary of his Union, a full-time post. He was also extremely active in local government, becoming a member of the London County Council in 1904.

It was in July 1910 that Ben Tillett, the leader of the Dockers' Union, convened a meeting of waterside unions to discuss the formation of the National Transport Workers' Federation. Harry Gosling was elected President. Ernest Bevin was soon elected to the Executive, after which he and Gosling worked very closely together. Eventually, the Transport and General Workers' Union was formed out of the multiplicity of unions constituting the Federation, and Gosling was its founding President.

After several attempts to win election to Parliament, Gosling was finally victorious in a by-election in 1923, at Whitechapel. The following year the first Labour Government was formed and MacDonald appointed Gosling as Minister of Transport. He died while still a Member of Parliament, in 1930. All these adventures and insights, recounted in his own words in his autobiography, which has long been out of print, will resonate with new generations.

Price: £19.95

292 pages

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7786

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Inside the Left</span>

Inside the Left
By Fenner Brockway

"Fenner Brockway lived a long life and it was certainly packed with colourful action. Here we are reproducing the first volume of his autobiography, which was written on the eve of the Second World War. Never afraid to court controversy, this book celebrated the Socialist movement's opposition to the First World War, and the activities of an anti-war movement which continued after that conflict.

A pupil of Keir Hardie and Bernard Shaw, the young Brockway found his natural home in the Independent Labour Party, which developed his talents as an editor and public agitator. He became acquainted with many of the key personalities of international socialism, and with all the leading figures on the British Left, including H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and the political spokesmen of the growing Labour movement.

This book contains Brockway's detailed account of the efforts of the British Left to find some kind of political unity during the years of the Labour Party's split, when Ramsay MacDonald formed a National Government. The ILP left the Labour Party, and entered into a variety of negotiations with the Communists and others to attempt to crystallise a Socialist opposition."

Ken Coates
Foreword to the new edition

Reviews:
Morning Star, 22nd March 2010 - John Green

Book of the Month: Fenner Brockway's Inside the Left - by John Green in London Progressive Journal

Price: £18.00

352 pages | Indexed

ISBN: 978 085124 7748

Socialist Classic

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Bill Brand
by Trevor Griffiths

This latest volume in the Trevor Griffiths series contains all eleven episodes of the celebrated 1976 Thames TV series Bill Brand, which was the fictional account of a young left-wing Labour MP entering Parliament for the first time and attempting to influence the policies of his largely right-wing Labour government.

The series was conceived on election night in 1974, written and produced over the following two years and transmitted in 1976. This was a time of great political and industrial unrest in Britain; it produced the first minority government (under Harold Wilson) since 1931, and Bill Brand was watched with extreme interest by both the political classes and the wider population. At times it seemed almost uncannily prophetic; and many of the issues it dealt with remain of great contemporary relevance.

The series starred Jack Shepherd as Bill Brand, Arthur Lowe as the Prime Minister, Alan Badel, Peter Howell, Lynne Farleigh, Cherie Lunghi and many other distinguished actors.

Bill Brand has never been shown again, nor is it at present available commercially on dvd. This book is therefore a unique record of a unique television event.

' ... tells us more about Parliament, constituency politics and the Labour Party than the combined writings of most of the Westminster drama critics who masquerade as political commentators.'
New Statesman

'The most remarkable serial ever seen on the box.'
Sunday Times

Reviews
Trevor Griffiths, Bill Brand and Political Television Drama - Tony Williams in The November 3rd Club

A representative of the People - Romy Clark in
Red Pepper, Feb 2010

Working Class Hero - John Wyver

Tribune - Keith Richmond

Price: £18.00

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7632

300 pages | Paperback

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Global Auction of Public Assets:</span>

Global Auction of Public Assets:
Public sector alternatives to the infrastructure market and Public Private Partnerships
By Dexter Whitfield

Public infrastructure in the 21st century is confronted with new challenges - adapting to climate change, meeting the economic, energy, water, transportation and social infrastructure needs of megacities in Asia, megaregions in North America and European city regions.

Public infrastructure provides basic human needs - homes, water, energy for light, heat and cooking; the transport of people, raw materials and goods by road, rail, sea and air; hospitals, schools, sports and cultural facilities; communications networks; facilities for the criminal justice system; and civic and governmental buildings for democratic governance, social and political activity.

Public infrastructure supports economic growth, increases productivity, generates employment, creates opportunities for the production and supply chains in construction and services, and improves community well-being.

Wider adoption of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and growth of the global infrastructure market, financed by investment funds and pension funds, could fuel a new era of public asset sales. Already, the refinancing and the sale of equity in PPP projects has led to the buying and selling of public hospitals, schools, prisons and roads, furthering exploitation and profiteering.

PPPs are promoted by the World Bank, IMF, development banks and via bilateral agreements in developing countries and the industrialised north. This is the first critical analysis which explores PPP programmes in the UK, France, Ireland, Germany, the US, Canada, Russia, Australia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

Yet over US$500bn of PPP projects have failed, have little democratic control or transparency, are costly, lack innovation and are approved on narrow value for money or fraudulent public sector comparators. PPPs are ultimately publicly financed, either directly by government or indirectly through user charges, fares and tolls.

Profiteering from public private partnerships
Dexter Whitfield, Guardian, 10 December 2009

Reviews:
New book challenges privatization claims - in CUPE, March 31st 2010

Selling off the family silver - Duncan Bowie, Chartist, March/April 2010

Public cost and private benefit - Michael Barratt Brown in Red Pepper, Feb 2010

Socialist Review - Nick Grant, January 2010

Truthout - Friday 15 January 2010, Op-Ed

Price: £18.00

380 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7731

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>CIA: The Pike Report</span>

CIA: The Pike Report
Introduced by Philip Agee

" ... the work of the Pike Committee and the other bodies is an exceedingly positive chapter in American history. Who would have dreamed, two years ago, that such a great volume of information on secret American intervention in foreign countries would ever be made public? Who would have dreamed that the vast, illegal domestic operations of the CIA, FBI and NSA would be revealed in great detail? Every bit of this information, together with the general methodology that emerges, can be used by people and organizations to protect themselves now and when the next wave of the same occurs. No doubt wide areas of CIA operations were omitted almost entirely, such as those in the trade union field, but no one can say the world's knowledge of secret intervention hasn't improved thanks to the investigations.

Of equal importance is the continuing strength of the best popular traditions in the United States that the investigations demonstrate: the free flow of information, resistance to oppression by government bureaucracy, resistance to government secrecy and coverups. Through the effective functioning of these traditions Americans have been able to learn how necessary corruption and hypocrisy are to the way the current system operates. Abolition of covert action operations, which corrupt the country's expressed principles, cannot come until fundamental changes are made in other institutions. Meanwhile, the treasure of knowledge gained through the investigations must surely contribute to the understanding that government in a "liberal" society must of necessity function in favour of one class and to the detriment of another.

In July 1976 the chief investigator of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, who had been trying since March to discover how the copies of Parts I and II of the Pike Report were leaked to Daniel Schorr, reported that nearly 50 copies of the report were in different executive and congressional offices when the leak occurred. None of the 207 government officials questioned, including Secretary Kissinger and the members of the Pike Committee, would admit to being the culprit. Thanks to one of them, at least, the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation is able to present for the first time in book form Parts I, II and III of the Pike Report, a document of truly historic significance not only for Americans but also for peoples the world over who have suffered from clandestine American intervention."

Introduction by Philip Agee, Cambridge, August, 1976

Price: £18.00

284 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 085124 1739

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Shape of Things to Come</span>

The Shape of Things to Come
The EU Future Group
By Tony Bunyan of Statewatch

The Shape of Things to Come examines the European Union's plans for justice and home affairs, and warns that the Union is embarked on several highly controversial paths. These include: using the 'digital tsunami' to create a surveillance society for law enforcement purposes by gathering personal details on the everyday lives of everyone living in the European Union; allowing law enforcement and security agencies, in collaboration with multinational companies, to determine new technologies to be introduced - including recording details of all phone and mobile phone calls and internet usage; removing 'obstacles' (judicial authorisation) to the exchange of intelligence between all European Union agencies; and the outrageous idea that a Euro-Atlantic area of co-operation with the United States should be set up to decide on policies fundamentally affecting the rights and liberties of the people of Europe.

Also questioned is the undemocratic decision-making procedure under which 27 EU governments will agree the 'Stockholm Programme' that will set in stone the measures to be introduced. The book ends with a warning that, unless we have an open and meaningful debate now, we never will, because it will already be too late.

Price: £5.99

80 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 085124 7601

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Prehistory of European Society</span>

The Prehistory of European Society
By V. Gordon Childe

'Gordon Childe was the leading prehistorian of the first half of the 20th century. An Australian by origin, who had studied in both Sydney and Oxford and played an active role in left-wing politics in Australia before coming to Britain to stay permanently in the 1920s, he went on to hold senior positions at the University of Edinburgh then the University of London, as Director of the Institute of Archaeology. Throughout his academic career his declared goal was an understanding of the evolution of European society as "a peculiar and individual manifestation of the human spirit". He pursued this goal at two different levels, on the one hand producing detailed accounts of the emerging archaeological evidence for European prehistory on the basis of his own first hand examination of material in European museums, on the other writing higher level syntheses to convey his developing ideas to a more general audience. As a result of widely read works such as Man Makes Himself (1936) and What Happened in History (1942) Childe's ideas were very influential far beyond the narrow confines of archaeology, an influence never equalled by later generations of archaeological synthesisers.'

Stephen Shennan
UCL Institute of Archaeology
From his new Foreword

Price: £15.00

200 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7564

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Tom Mann's Memoirs</span>

Tom Mann's Memoirs
Introduce by Ken Coates

The first secretary of the Independent Labour Party, the President of the dockers' union, the first General Secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering Union: a mere roster of the positions he held in the Labour Movement, of which this is a tiny fraction, would establish Tom Mann as a Pioneer. But what he did was always more impressive than the positions from which he did it. He was an initiator, a catalyst, a goad to action. Whenever a real crisis came, his stature found its true proportions, and again and again Tom Mann became a pivot for the actions of downtrodden people. Throughout his lifetime as a militant socialist, whatever the stages of evolution of his thought, he invariably displayed a gift for finding himself at the centre of every major struggle of his time. For this reason it is important that these Memoirs, first published in 1923, should again become available.

Price: £15.00

278 pages | Paperback | Indexed

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7588

Socialist Classic Series

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Studies in Socialism</span>

Studies in Socialism
By Jean Jaurès
Introduced by J. E. Mortimer, Leon Trotsky
& R. Ramsay MacDonald

'Studies in Socialism was first published by the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1906. It consists of a number of essays, most of them centred on the method of transition from capitalism to socialism in the economically advance countries.

The special point of these essays is that they reaffirm very vigorously the essential features of the analysis of capitalism made by Marx and Engels. They also illustrate the influence on Jaurès of the traditions of the French Revolution. Nevertheless, the essays challenge the interpretation sometimes made by Marxists about the method of transition from capitalism to socialism. The essays affirm strongly the case for democratic endeavour by socialists seeking to change society.'

Jim Mortimer, Foreword to 2007 Edition

Price: £15.00

210 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7496

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Spokesman Books | Recent Titles