Spokesman Books

' These Are The Times reads like the greatest of novels and is the most thrilling read I’ve had in years!' Kurt Vonnegut These Are The T ime s: A Life of Thomas Paine. Trevor Griffiths's screenplay to be broadcast on Radio 4 beginning this Saturday. Tom Paine arrives in America penniless just as the struggle for Independence is beginning. His ideas and his writings take him right to the heart of events and his words are read out to Washington's army. Jonathan Pryce plays Thomas Paine in the radio production to be broadcast in two ninety-minute parts on Radio 4's Saturday Play , beginning this Saturday and concluding Saturday 2nd August (2.30 - 4pm on each day).

A view from the United States by Mike Tolochko New Labour’s Attack on Public Services Dexter Whitfield ISBN 13 9 780851 247151 £11.99 “Marketisation and privatisation is more advanced in Britain than any other European country. The precise application of these policies will vary between countries for political, legal and cultural reasons. Nonetheless, there are key lessons from the experience in Britain which should be drawn upon.” Dexter Whitfield has given activists around the world a true primer on the ravenous, greedy attack on human services in general, but for health care in particular. His point-by-point description of the neo-liberal policies demanded by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization as they apply on-the-ground is nowhere else to be found. He is describing the situation in Britain, a country which has had the longest Labour Party run in the party’s history. The Tory governments of Margaret Thatcher/John Major did major damage t...

Democracy Growing or Dying? The Spokesman 100 This is the hundredth number of The Spokesman , so we are expected to have a birthday party. Nostalgia is in order at such events, and we have accordingly devoted quite a large part of this number to reproducing articles and features which involved us, with many of our readers, in a variety of campaigns to change things for the better. Sometimes these have succeeded, if only, say the sceptics, in provoking our old antagonists to find new ways to make them worse again. Sometimes they have failed, only to stiffen our resolve to try again, when times may be more propitious for their success. There are, of course, a number of key concerns which have continuously preoccupied us. There has been no possibility of forgetting, even temporarily, the desperate urgency of the struggle for peace and disarmament. It has been quite possible, but very regrettable, to forget the struggle for the widening and deepening of democracy, and this possibility has...