Many thanks for forwarding Revolutionary History, Volume 4, no 3. It was such a long time since I received the issue on the Spanish Civil War that I thought you had ceased to function. The present format is much to my liking, much easier to handle and to put away on the bookshelf.

Two points I wish to make on the Editorial. Firstly, I am pleased to see that you agree with my phrase which I used in a letter to Workers Press that ‘Stalinism is as dead as a dodo’, but what I’d like to know is how do we deal with the main stumbling block to revolutionary consciousness in the British working class—Labour reformism? Secondly, you say ‘we by no means identify revolutionary history with Trotskyist history alone’. I agree there, but as I was a militant Communist Party member in my young active days, I want to understand Trotskyism, what it meant, and what it means today. Your publication is an excellent vehicle for that purpose.

Fraternally

John Mathieson