Other Books - Revolutionary History

Other Books

Written by Socialist Platform & Others

Harry Ratner Reluctant Revolutionary

RELRev

A vivid autobiographical account of a Trotskyist militant from 1936 to 1960, drawing on his experiences in the army during the Second World War, and in the engineering industry afterwards.
304 pages, illustrated, £6.95 including p&p

Harry Ratner A Socialist at War - With the Pioneer Corps

Corp

Harry Ratner was an anti-war socialist who did not believe in being a concientous objector. This book is an account of his attempt to carry out political propaganda and agitation in the army.

Published by Socialist Platform Ltd.

ISBN 0-9551127-96

Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson Two Steps Back

twosteps

An account of the Communist Party of Great Britain's relations with the Labour Party and its role in the trade unions from 1935 to 1945.
143 pages, £4.10 including p&p

Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson War and the International

wati
A thoroughgoing account of the Trotskyist movement in Britain from 1937 to1949.
252 pages

£3.75 including p&p

Harry Wicks A Memorial

Articles by and an interview with Wicks
54 pages, £1.40 including p&p

Harry Wicks Keeping My Head

NOW OUT OF PRINT

The autobiography of one of the founders of British Trotskyism, covering his experiences in the General Strike of 1926, his days at the Lenin School in 1927 - 30, his meeting with Trotsky in 1932, and much more.
240 pages, £6.95 including p&p

Click here for more material on Harry Wicks' autobiography

Chapters: Introduction; Growing up in Battersea; From Class to Socialist Consciousness; To the Masses - The General Strike; Russia 1927-30; The Shock of Return; With Trotsky in Copenhagen

All the above checked and finished off by Harry Wicks himself.

The rest was finished off from Harry's notes by Logie Barrow with editing by Socialist Platform.

Defeat and Survival 1933-1946 Endnote Selected Biographical Notes Names List Index

See the favourable review by Robert Conquest in The Times Literary Supplement 9th July 1993

FA Ridley The Assassins

The classic account of the Islamic sect, first published in 1938
272 pages, £2.80 including p&p

RS Baghavan An Introduction to the Philosophy of Marxism

An excellent introduction to Marxism and the natural sciences
136 pages, £2.50 including p&p

Zygmunt Zaremba The Warsaw Commune, Betrayed by Stalin, Massacred by Hitler

An account of the 1944 Warsaw uprising against the Nazis by a leading participant. Includes for the first time in English the political programme adopted by the Commune.
45 pages, £ 3.00

Al Richardson (ed) In Defence of the Russian Revolution :A Selection of Bolshevik Writings, 1917 - 23

INDEFUSSR

Includes a major speech by Lenin on the invasion of Poland (previously suppressed by the Stalinists), and other important and unavailable articles by Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Tukhachevsky and Radek

287 pages, £12.95

George Orwell: Enigmatic Socialist

Essays by Ian Birchall, Paul Flewers, John Molyneux, John Newsinger, Paul O'Flinn and Peter Sedgwick
Collected and Introduced by Paul Flewers. Socialist Platform Ltd, London, 2005

George Orwell is almost certainly the only socialist to have suffered the indignity of being championed by large numbers of his political enemies. Rather than staking a claim upon him, Dr Flewers and his fellow contributors to this collection, Ian Birchall, John Molyneux, John Newsinger, Paul O'Flinn and Peter Sedgwick, critically assess Orwell's works, especially Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, and conclude that alongside his positive aspects -- his clarity of observation, his quest for human decency and his condemnation of the abuse of power -- he also demonstrated serious theoretical and political weaknesses that have enabled his legacy to be systematically and wilfully wielded as a weapon against the very ideas for which he fought during much of his adult life.

Contents

Paul Flewers, Introduction: Orwell's Socialism
Peter Sedgwick, George Orwell: International Socialist?
Orwell and Totalitarianism
John Molyneux, Animal Farm Revisited
Ian Birchall, Orwell, Ideology and the Working Class
Paul O'Flinn, Rereading Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984
Paul Flewers, 'I Know How But I Don't Know Why': George Orwell's Conception of Totalitarianism
Orwell and the World
John Newsinger, 'Pox Britannica': Orwell and the Empire
John Newsinger, George Orwell and the Revolutionary Left

John Newsinger, Destroying the Myth: George Orwell and Soviet Communism
John Newsinger, Orwell and the Spanish Revolution
John Newsinger, George Orwell and Searchlight: A Radical Initiative on the Home Front

Sam Levy THE EPOCH OF TROTSKYISM

levy

Sam Levy was a veteran of the Trotskyist movement. His record of political activity dates back to before World War II, and he was a member of the WIL and later the RCP. During the collapse of the RCP he was one of the leaders of the "Open Party Faction". In 1956 he was a founder of "Socialist Current", and its leading theoretician until 1971. In recent years his work has been published in "Revolutionary History" and translated into French in the "Cahiers Leon Trotsky".

In "The Epoch of Trotskyism" he presents a Trotskyist analysis of the current world situation, drawing on the insights he has developed previously, and radically updating them to address the new conditions created by the collapse of the Stalinist regimes and the desparate measures being tried by the capitalist regimes. The conclusions he arrives at are profoundly optimistic for the future of Trotskyism, in marked contrast to the demoralisation and confusion into which many Trotskyists have fallen in the last few years. The failures of Stalinism, Social-Democracy and "free market" capitalism alike are not "the end of history", but the true beginning of The Epoch of Trotskyism.

109 pages, £5.00

Books by Baruch Hirson

As an historian, Baruch Hirson will be remembered for a series of beautifully written and passionately argued books about the political formation of South African labour. As a teacher, he has inspired a generation of writers who have tried to examine South African history from below, from the point of view of those who are normally considered its victims.

Baruch Hirson Revolutions in My Life

Professor Tom Lodge, in the Foreword to Revolutions in My Life

All prices plus postage and packing. The first two volumes are available mail order using a credit card, from orcupine Bookcellar, 5 Caledonian Rd, London, N1 9DX telephone 0171 837 4473

The autobiography of Baruch Hirson, published by Witwatersrand and University College London Press.

ISBN 1-86814-255-8. 365pp

In 1964 Baruch Hirson was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment for his part in the activities of the African Resistance Movement. In this lively autobiography Hirson traces his life from its early days in Johannesburg's immigrant Jewish community through the prison experience to exile in England.

Available through commercial channels only, NOT direct from the author, but can be ordered from any good bookshop, £ 12.95

Baruch Hirson The Delegate For Africa, Life and Times of David Ivon Jones, 1883-1994

Core Publications, 1995, £ 8.50

With Gwyn Williams

A study of the life of David Ivon Jones, the eminence grise behind the formation of the Communist Party of South Africa, based entirely on new material.

Baruch Hirson Strike Across the Empire, The Seaman's Strike of 1925 in Britain, South Africa and Australasia

Clio Publications, 1992, £ 5.50

With Lorriane Vivien

On 1 August 1925, British merchant seaman paralysed the world's most powerful merchant fleet in defiance of their bosses and their union. The strike followed a 10% wage cut offered to the shipowners by the seaman union's leader Havelock Wilson.

The strikers faced insuperable difficulties. Their union condemned them and recruited crews for the bosses. Only the Communist led National Minority Movement called for a strike committee in London. By mid August the strike was nearing collapse as fully crewed ships left port. Then, on 20 August, when they arrived in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the ships were immobilised as crews refused further duties. Only when the crews in South Africa finally surrendered did the strike committee in London concede defeat.

There are chapters on the events in London and each Dominion, on racism and corruption in the unions, and on the impact of the workers in each country.

The following are believed to be out of print at present :

Yours for the Union
Class and Community Struggles in South Africa,
published by Zed Books Ltd and Witwatersrand University Press, 1989

ISBN 0-86232-369-X
ISBN 0-86232-370-3 Pbk

A major history of the black working class in South Africa. Drawing on previously unpublished or inaccessibe materials, it covers the period 1930 - 47, when rapid industrialisation was creating a huge increase in the working class. Uncontrolled urbanisation generated the vast shanty towns around the big industrial centres. In addition to descriptions of unionisation struggles in the factories and mines, this book presents accounts of squatting campaigns and mobilisations of domestic workers and rural peasants, giving a new and broader understanding the the history of the class.

Baruch Hirson: Year of Fire, Year of Ash

published by Zed Press, London, 1979

A highly regarded account of the 1976 Soweto uprising which was widely read in South Africa during Hirson's exile in London.

[Thanks to Ted Crawford for providing the data for this section]

Manuel Grossi : The Asturian Uprising: Fifteen Days of Socialist Revolution

The Asturian Uprising of 1934 is one of the forgotten episodes In the history of the working class. Alarmed at what they considered to be a fascist threat, the working class in Asturias seized power, and staved off the central government's attempts to crush the revolution for 15 days.

Manuel Grossi, a member of the Workers and Peasants Bloc and a leading participant in the revolution, gives a vivid description of these events. He shows how the militant workers organised industry and food distribution, attempted to arm themselves, dealt with the middle class and with lumpen elements, and otherwise ran the areas under their control. It is not a glamorised account, and Grossi points to the problems that the working class encountered, as well as to its successes.

Isolated in the north-west corner of Spain, the uprising ultimately proved to be a failure, as government forces managed to crush the poorly-armed insurgents. Nonetheless, these 15 days of workers' power showed how the working class can take control and run society in a humane and efficient manner.

The qualities shown by revolutionaries and the wider working masses during the Asturian Uprising came to the fore in Spain two years later when General Franco's military rebellion provoked a revolutionary response, and have since been demonstrated by the working class in all corners of the world.

ISBN 0 9523648 2 4

Cost (Including P&P):UK £5.75; Europe £6.30; Outside Europe £7.30 airmail or £6.25 surface post.

Britain, World War 2 and the Sama Samajists:

A study of the documents contained in the secret files maintained by the Public Record Office, London. Edited by Wesley S. Muthia and Sydney Wanasinghe

A Young Socialist Publication

12 Parakumba Place
Colombo 6
Sri Lanka

January 1996

ISBN 955 - 95284-4-0

This is primarily a collection of original documents preserved by the British state relating to the formation of the LSSP from 1935 to 1942. The book also contains material about the formation of the United Socialist Party, which later became the Communist Party of Sri Lanka.

68 original documents are reproduced, including statements by the LSSP and articles by several of its leading members, contemporary press reports and secret British state documents. This is a uniquely important resource for understanding the LSSP, and complements the special issue of Revolutionary History dealing with Ceylon/Sri Lanka, and the documents published in What Next?

This pamphlet presents first hand accounts by five of the mutineers in the 1984 mutiny in the camps of Umkhonto we Sizwe in Angola and Tanzania. It complements the materials presented in Searchlight South Africa on the same topics. It details the brutal suppression of the rank and file mutineers, under the guidance of security sections within the ANC, trained in Moscow and the GDR, responsible directly to the South African Communist Party. The savage regime in the ANC's "rehabilitation centres" is described in full. The involvement of ANC/SACP "heroes" such as Hani, Slovo and Tambo is made clear.

Mutiny in the ANC, 1984

As told by five of the mutineers

Contents

Introduction Inside Quatro A Miscarriage of Democracy : The ANC Security Department in the 1984 Mutiny in Umkhonto we Sizwe
by Bandile Ketelo, Amos Maxongo, Zamxolo Tshona, Ronnie Massango and Luvo Mbengo The Shooting of Sipho Phungulwa SWAPO and the Six-Point Demands of the PCC The ANC : From Kambe to the Johannesburg Conference

text in here

Available for £ 1.50 from

Justice for Southern Africa/Solidarity with ex-Swapo Detainees
c/o Bill McElroy, Secretary, Solidarity with ex-Swapo Detainees
17 Tudor House
Tudor Grove
London
E9 7QS

Reg Groves The Balham Group: How British Trotskyism Began

balham

This brief chronicle tells of the only struggle within the British Communist Party against the party's final and absolute submission in 1929-1932 to Stalin....

Publisher: PLUTO Press

Corinna Lots and Paul Feldman: Gerry Healy a Revolutionary Life

healy

Publisher; LUPUS

ISBN: 0 9523 454 0 1

Price: £15

Seven Books by Ted Grant & Alan Woods

Ted Grant: History of British Trotskyism

history

Publisher: WellRed

ISBN: 1-9000-07-10-X

£9.99

Ted Grant: RUSSIA: from Revolution to Counter-revolution

russia

Publisher:WellRed

ISBN:1-9000-07-02-9

£11.95

Ted Grant: The Unbroken Thread: The development of Trotskyism over 40 years

unbroken

Publisher: Fortress available from WellRed

ISBN: 1-870958-06-3

£6.95

Ted Grant: Stalinism and The Class Nature of the Soviet Union

stalinism

Publisher:WellRed USA

ISBN: 580003733942

$19.99

Ted Grant: Writings Volume 1 1938-1942

ted

From Well Red

Published 2010

ISBN 978-1-900007-33-7

£12.99

This is the first volume of Ted Grant's Writings. It covers the period from 1938 to 1942, when he was involved in building up the forces of Trotskyism in Britain. During the early years of the Second World War, Ted became editor of the Socialist Appeal and political secretary of the Workers' International League. In this role Ted emerged as the principal theoretician of the British Trotskyist movement.

His participation in the revolutionary movement was to span a period from 1928, when he was introduced to Marxism, through to his death in 2006. For all those who knew him, he was a truly remarkable and inspiring figure.

The articles and documents contained in this first volume of his Writings coincided with the emergence of the WIL as one of the most successful Trotskyist groups in the world. This present volume covers a decisive time in history. It was the most testing time for British and world Trotskyism. As Hitler occupied Europe, the WIL was alone on the continent in applying the proletarian military policy that had been outlined by Trotsky. This it managed to do in the most successful fashion, allowing the WIL to establish an important proletarian base. We publish here only the articles that were either signed by Ted or that he drafted in his role as the WIL's political secretary. He would have certainly written the vast bulk of the editorials of Socialist Appeal, but these have not been included. These writings constitute an essential and rich part of the theoretical heritage of Marxism, which can serve to educate the new generation of workers and youth who are entering into political activity at this time of deep capitalist crisis.