Spokesman Classics

Spokesman Books published a number of pamphlets and documents before issuing its first title with an ISBN, 'Vietnam: Three Documents of the National Liberation Front', in January 1971. Previously the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation had published pamphlets, books and journals simply in its own name.

Since launching, Spokesman has published hundreds of books and pamphlets and maintains a steady output five decades on.

We plan to make PDF files of some 'Spokesman Classics' available on this website as a record of our history, which closely mirrors the political history of the last fifty years, and as an encouragement to today's writers, thinkers and activists.

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Great Democrats</span>

Great Democrats
Edited by Alfred Barratt Brown

Long out of print, this 2012 edition of Great Democrats restores to new generations a seminal work in the struggle against the rise of fascism in Europe during the 1930s.

'There are great men who have also been Democrats, but the figures chosen for these pages are principally those of men and women who have been great as Democrats - great, that is to say, either in the extent to which they embodied in their lives and characters the democratic temper and attitude to mankind, or in the measure of their contribution to the democratic movement.'
Alfred Barratt Brown in his Preface, 1934

'For an historian the Contents page of Alfred Barratt Brown's book is exciting enough, particularly when combined with 1934, its date of publication. How is it possible not to plunge straight into Frances Evelyn Countess of Warwick on Joseph Arch? … And then there is Henry Nevinson on Edward Carpenter, Katherine Bruce Glasier on Keir Hardie, Oliver Baldwin on William Morris … The imaginative author-subject couplings will whet any appetite. G.D.H. Cole on William Cobbett; Ray Strachey (novelist and author of the classic The Cause: a short history of the Women's Movement in Great Britain, 1928) on Millicent Fawcett … Bertrand Russell on Thomas Paine … '
Stephen Yeo in his Foreword, 2013

' … the whole purpose of my father's book was to respond to the current rise to power of the dictatorships and, most particularly, of Hitler … and to recognise that Democracy, and being a Great Democrat, is not just about embracing a form of government, but a principle of government, espousing the triad of liberty, equality and fraternity.'
Michael Barratt Brown in his Introduction, 2013

Free Downloads
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Introduction by Michael Barratt Brown
Edward Carpenter by Henry W. Nevinson
William Cobbett by G. D. H. Cole
Eugene Debs by Norman Thomas
William Godwin by H. N. Brailsford
Jean Jaures by Henry de Man
Mary Macarthur by Mary Agnes Hamilton
Mary Wollstonecraft by Evelyn Sharp

Reviews:
Reviewed by Anthony Arblaster in Red Pepper - March 2014

Price: £24.95

724 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 0 85124 827 1

Published Sept 2013

Quantity:

Spokesman Books | Spokesman Classics