Gerrard Winstanley 400th Anniversary Meeting

A celebration of the work and ideas of
GERRARD WINSTANLEY

7pm, Thursday 19th November 2009,

Speakers: Thomas Corns, University of Bangor, co-author of a biography of John Milton, and Ann Hughes, University of Keele, author of “The Causes of the English Civil War” (1998)

Venue: Russell Room, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 (Tube: Holborn).

“Fortunately for posterity, there was among the Diggers a man of rare talent and originality, Gerrard Winstanley, who has left behind him in his voluminous writings a record of the faith and beliefs with which he inspired this movement … Suddenly, in this year [1648], his interest turned to politics and he wrote the most characteristic of his books, The New Law of Righteousness, which is in reality a Communist Manifesto written in the dialect of its day. Throughout the next year, 1649-50, he was the life and pen of the Diggers' adventure. When that failed, after writing Fire in the Bush, a defence of his ideas addressed to the churches, he published in 1652 the most mature of his books, The Law of Freedom in a Platform. It was dedicated, in an eloquent and plain-spoken address, to Cromwell, whom it summoned to lay the foundations of a communist commonwealth. The sketch of a classless society that follows is a deeply interesting blend of the radical demo­cracy professed by the main body of the Levellers with the communism of More's Utopia and a secularism that was Winstanley's own.”

Source: The Levellers and the English Revolution by H. N. Brailsford (Spokesman, £18)

Tom Corns and Ann Hughes, two of the editors of a comprehensive new collection of Winstanley’s writings, will speak about Winstanley’s ideas and their relevance today.

The event is entirely free. Refreshments will be provided.

For further information see:
http://www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/
http://www.conwayhall.org.uk/

Visit our Levellers page for more of our titles on the English Revolution

Comedians at the Lyric, London

"Set in a Manchester working-class evening centre in the mid-1970s, the date of its writing, Comedians eschews political theory, professional ideologues and historically sourced discourse on political revolution – all the perceived hallmarks of my earlier pieces – in favour of a more or less unmediated address on a range of particular contemporary issues including class, gender, race and society in modern Britain."

Trevor Griffiths writing in Theatre Plays (published in two volumes by Spokesman Books, price £15 each)

An acclaimed new production of Comedians , directed by Sean Holmes, continues at the Lyric Hammersmith until 14th November 2009. Some reviews can be read via our Trevor Griffiths page.

Theatre Plays One includes Comedians, The Wages of Thin, Occupations, Sam Sam, Apricots, Thermidor, The Party, The Cherrry Orchard

Theatre Plays Two includes Oi for England, Real Dreams, Piano, The Gulf between Us, Thatcher’s Children, Who Shall Be Happy?, Camel Station

Also available:
These Are The Times: A Life of Thomas Paine (price £15). This screenplay gave rise to the theatre play A New World, which recently finished its highly successful run at Shakespeare's Globe.

Sons and Lovers: Screenplay of the novel by D.H.Lawrence (Price £7.95)

Responsibility to Protest

After Lockerbie - The Spokesman 106
Edited by Ken Coates

"There has seldom been such unanimity in the British political class as has come about in the last half of August 2009 with the release of the Libyan prisoner, Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, on compassionate grounds. This was announced by the Scottish Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill, after medical reports forecast that the Libyan was at death’s door, having advanced prostate cancer which probably gave him a maximum life expectancy of three months.

Megrahi had been sentenced by three Scottish Judges to life imprisonment, following a highly contentious trial in which the Scottish Courts sat in an American airbase in The Netherlands to hear the case of the Lockerbie bomb. A Pan American passenger jet had been blown up on the 21st December 1988, while flying over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie en route for the United States. The evidence showed that a bomb had been secreted in passenger luggage. It had exploded in mid-air, killing all 259 passengers. A giant fireball fell across the town, killing eleven more people on its way. This was a huge disaster, the largest in British aviation history. Who could have conceived such an atrocity? The intelligence agencies of the world were not at a loss for an explanation. But they were flummoxed by the problem of how to present what they knew, or indeed, whether to present it."

Ken Coates
From his Editorial

‘If there is any chance of the truth coming out, it will be through the persistent efforts of civil society. The Russell Foundation is doing a great service to all those who do not accept the establishment's "manufacture of consent".’
Hans Köchler



Contents:
Lockerbie and the Law - Robert Black

Unfair Trial - Hans Köchler

Lockerbie – the Cover-up - Marcello Mega

The Crime of Lockerbie - Tam Dalyell

****

The Party of Criminal War - John Pilger

Responsibility to Protest - Noam Chomsky

Pirate’s Charter - Tony Blair

Benign Whitewash - Ken Coates

****

Kidnapped on Diego Garcia - Reprieve

A New World at The Globe - Ann Talbot, Trevor Griffiths

Reviews:

Bruce Kent, Michael Barratt Brown, Christopher Gifford,
Graham Hallett, Tony Simpson, Henry McCubbin

AVAILABLE NOW FROM SPOKESMAN BOOKS for £6 plus postage.

'Constructive Bloodbath' in Indonesia

Spokesman Books have published 'Constructive Bloodbath' in Indonesia: The United States, Britain and the Mass Killings of 1965-66, by Nathaniel Mehr, with a foreword by Carmel Budiardjo.

It is receiving postive reviews, as these two notices show:

Joyo Indonesia News - David Jardine

Jakarta Globe - Armando Siahaan

Tom Paine Remembered - 8 June Old Red Lion London

THESE ARE THE TIMES – TOM PAINE REMEMBERED

Readings and Discussion to mark the 200th anniversary of Tom Paine’s death

9 – 10.30pm, Monday 8th June 2009, Old Red Lion Theatre, Angel, London.

With Tony Benn, sculptor Michael Sandle, publisher Tony Simpson, musician Elizabeth Green and Neil Sheppeck of Love and Madness Theatre, alongside contributions from actor and playwright Jack Shepherd and writer Mike Marqusee.

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An intimate event, on the 200th anniversary itself of Tom Paine's death, to celebrate and discuss the enduring legacy of one of the most influential radical writers and thinkers in history, at Islington's Old Red Lion Theatre, where Paine actually wrote some of his profoundly important work The Rights of Man.

Featuring a rehearsed reading, directed by and featuring Neil Sheppeck of Love and Madness Theatre, of Jack Shepherd’s play In Lambeth, imagining a meeting between William Blake and Tom Paine.

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Tickets: £7, £5 (concs. Please provide or bring evidence when booking).

Box Office: 020 7837 7816; www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk

Note: there is a strictly limited capacity. Please book early and arrive promptly.

Old Red Lion Theatre, 418 St John Street, London, EC1V 4NJ.

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Spokesman Books will run a bookstall featuring:

These Are The Times: A Life of Thomas Paine - an original screenplay by Trevor Griffiths, which follows Tom Paine from persecution in England, to the American War of Independence, to Revolutionary France. It has recently been adapted for theatre and A New World makes its world premiere at Shakespeare's Globe later this year (29th August - 9th October).

Thomas Paine: In Search of the Common Good - edited by Joyce Chumbley & Leo Zonneveld, includes a photo tour in the footsteps of Tom Paine.

And, the new issue of The Spokesman, featuring Peter Linebaugh's article, Tom Paine ... Two, Three, Many Revolutions, which picks up where President Obama left off in the unattributed quotations from Thomas Paine that concluded his inaugural address in January.

James Kirkup

James Kirkup has died, aged 91.

In 2004 he sent us a copy of No More Hiroshimas. He had originally collected together this volume of hia A-bomb poems in 1983, but it took twenty years before we published it 'as a real book'. James recounts 'My A-Bomb Biography' in his preface.

Here are the opening lines of the title poem, No More Hiroshimas.

At the station exit, my bundle in hand,
Early the winter afternoon's wet snow

Falls thinly round me, out of a crudded sun.

I had forgotten to remember where I was.

Looking about, I see it might be anywhere -

A station, a town like any other in Japan,

Ramshackle, muddy, noisy, drab; a cheerfully

Shallow impermanence: peeling concrete, litter, 'Atomic

Lotion, for hair fall-out', a flimsy department store;

Racks and towers of neon, flashy over tiled and tilted waves

Of little roofs, shacks cascading lemons and persimmons,

Oranges and dark-red apples, shanties awash with rainbows

Of squid and octopus, shellfish, slabs of tuna, oysters, ice,

Ablaze with fans of solied nude-picture books

Thumbed abstractedly by schoolboys, with second-hand

looks.

There will shortly be a memorial event for James Kirkup in his home town of North Shields.

The Spokesman and Palestine

Following on from Spokesman 103, Unholy Land, our new issue, Revolutions, continues with the Palestine question.

John Dugard writes on Apartheid in Palestine.

Richard Falk (UN Special Rapporteur on the situationof human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967) reports on the 'Human Rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab Territories.'

Nurit Peled, co-founder of Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Parents for Peace, encourages people 'to arise and go to Gaza ... or to any other city of oppression in Palestine to see with their own eyes the horrifying ghettoes ... '

Ken Coates situates the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in the context of earlier Russell Tribunals.

George Galloway MP dissects the Charity Commission's obstruction of his remarkable efforts to provide help fpr Gaza.

The Spokesman is available to buy now through our website or any good bookshop.