Spokesman Books

In his autobiography The Greatest: My Own Story , Muhammad Ali recounts how Bertrand Russell got in contact with him, and their ensuing correspondence: *** For days I was talking to people from a whole new world. People who were not even interested in sports, especially prizefighting. One in particular I will never forget: a remarkable man, seventy years older than me but with a fresh outlook which seemed fairer than that of any white man I had ever met in America. My brother Rahaman had handed me the phone, saying, ‘Operator says a Mr. Bertrand Russell is calling Mr. Muhammad Ali.’ I took it and heard the crisp accent of an Englishman: ‘Is this Muhammad Ali?’ When I said it was, he asked if I had been quoted correctly. I acknowledged that I had been, but wondered out loud, ‘Why does everyone want to know what I think about Viet Nam? I’m no politician, no leader. I’m just an athlete.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is a war more barbaric than others, and because a mystique is built up ...

Issue 130 of The Spokesman , 'One Belt, One Road', is now available. Among the books reviewed in this issue are two titles on pacifism and conscientious objection: The World is My Country , by Emily Johns and Gabriel Carlyle, and Refusing to Kill , by Oliver Haslam and PPU Publications Group.  Cranks and Kites Two peace-oriented publishers; two different approaches to presenting the lives of conscientious objectors and opponents of the First World War. The World is My Country calls itself a ‘celebration’, whereas Refusing to Kill is a more sombre appraisal, and pulls no punches. Read together, they prove there is room to remember both the anguish and the triumphs of this extremely diverse group. Refusing to Kill is primarily intended for use by teachers and students, as the layout and language indicate. It outlines the various forms of conscientious objection, such as non-combatant COs, who would drill and train but not serve; those who submitted to alternative l...

  'Viewing Fish at Flower Pool': A souvenir of Russell's visit to the Western Lake, Hangzhou Bertrand Russell is hugely influential in China, and has been for almost a century. He is recommended reading for high school and university students. The General Manager of The Commercial Press, which has published Russell in translation in China since his nine-month visit in 1920-21, quotes him in speeches. Russell’s statement towards the end of his life, ‘What I have lived for', seems to have made a powerful and lasting impact. Russell's story in China is closely interwoven with that of The Commercial Press, which is itself an institution of some durability in the ups and downs of China’s recent history.  The Commercial Press Head Office, built in the 1950s, is on Wangfujing Street in the centre of Beijing.     Apparently, one of the founders of Commercial Press suggested that Russell be invited to China, and CP put up a considerable sum t...

This window panel featuring Bertrand Russell was spotted by a contact visiting Vienna.  Russell has been designated a 'Peace Hero' by Peace Museum Vienna , alongside Immanuel Kant, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Albert Einstein, Aung San Suu Kyi, Malala Yousafzai and numerous others. The museum's project Windows for Peace , installed in and around Stephansplatz in the centre of the city, brings the good work of these heroes to public attention again. 'As a street museum, it is open twenty four hours a day and charges no admission fees!' proclaims PMV 's website. Vienna is home to a peace heroine of its own, Bertha von Suttner, who is also featured in the exhibit. Her 1889 pacifist novel Die Waffen nieder! ( Lay Down Your Arms! ) overcame opposition and rejection from publishers to eventually become a bestseller, which has been widely translated and adapted. An international pacifist journal, over which she presided as editor between 1892-1899, was name...

On Spokesman's A Pacifist at War , edited by Nicholas Griffin, Satish Kumar says: The book clearly charts the journey Russell is on - the journey opposing the war and searching for love. This search continued throughout his life. In 1961 he led the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which also led him to a brief imprisonment when he was almost 90. I was 25, a young man sitting in a cafe in Bangalore, India, reading about it. I thought, "Here is a man of 90 going to jail for peace in the world. What am I doing here drinking coffee?" His full review, which appeared in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine issue 290, is available here.

As the anniversary of the death of Albert Einstein approaches (April 18th), we present here a link to our recent article ‘Einstein and Russell’, which appears in The Spokesman issue 127: Trident Undone . It includes a short poem Einstein penned on Russell in 1940. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxLLsmUQZieJYldQNlJWVjczekU/view?usp=sharing [ copy and paste link into address bar ]

Our recent title A Pacifist at War caught the eye of James Walker at LeftLion magazine. You can read his review here: http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/book-reviews--february-2015/id/7228 A Pacifist at War: Letters and Writings 1914-1918 Edited by Nicholas Griffin ISBN: 978 0 85124 870 Price: £9.99 Available online from Spokesman Books at http://www.spokesmanbooks.com/acatalog/New_Products.html

In late 2014, the US Navy awarded an $84 million cost-plus-fixed-fee modification contract for 'tactical missile tube manufacturing'. In total, according to the US Navy, 17 missile tubes will be manufactured: '12 for the UK Successor lead ship, four for the OR [Ohio class ballistic missile submarine Replacement] First Article Quad Pack and one for the Strategic Weapons System - Ashore (SWSA) test facility.' What is this arcane language telling us? The $84 millions is to fund 'joint United States and United Kingdom Common Missile Compartment (CMC) missile tube manufacturing'. According to Rob Edwards ( Sunday Herald , 23.11.14), 70 per cent of this cost is being paid by the UK. Curiously, 12 of the first 17 tubes are for the 'UK successor lead ship'. This is curious for two reasons. Firstly, the UK government has deferred until 2016 the 'main-gate' decision on Trident replacement. Secondly, the UK government has repeatedly claimed in publi...

Conway Hall Ethical Society's imminent series of events, STOP THE FIRST WORLD WAR , will feature a lecture on Bertrand Russell, to be delivered by Chris Bratcher on 7 October at 7pm. We enclose the current programme here. Readers may be interested in our timely book on Russell, A Pacifist At War: Letters and Writings 1914-1918 . See http://www.spokesmanbooks.com/acatalog/Bertrand_Russell.html for further information on this title.   

The Russell Foundation has received a nice postcard from Margaretta D’Arcy, who is in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison for protesting about US military use of Shannon Airport. We sent her some books by Bertrand Russell when she complained about the poor library at Limerick Prison, where she was held previously. The Irish Times published our letter about this on 14 February. Margaretta can now be reached at the address below. *** Margaretta D’Arcy 79759 Dóchas Centre Mountjoy Jail, North Circular Road Dublin 8 Thank you so much for the books which arrived safely at this jail. The women are delighted as of course they know about Bertrand Russell but have not read of him so there is strong [interest] there. Yours in solidarity, Margaretta D’Arcy

Posted on January 8, 2014 by europeancollections As an academic with a strong Cambridge connection, it is perhaps unsurprising that Cambridge University Library has a fairly extensive collection of books by and about Bertrand Russell. Rather more surprising perhaps is the fact that we have a substantial number of works by Russell in translation. The Library holds many Russell translations published in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, which were usually acquired by donation and which were interspersed within the general intake. Then there was a hiatus until relatively recently, when the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation resumed donations. These new acquisitions stand together in a small special collection in CCC.64.1- and can all be consulted in the Rare Books Reading Room. The translations in this special collection currently number over 60 volumes. They are in a wide variety of languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Italian, as well as Chinese and Japanese. Accor...

The Conquest of Happiness is based on the writings of renowned intellect and pacifist Bertrand Russell , and is the first work by leading Bosnian artist Haris Pasovic to be performed in Ireland. The play will open in Derry-Londonderry on September 21 for two nights as part of the UK City of Culture 2013 celebrations, before embarking on a tour of Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, concluding in a spectacular finale performance in Belfast. The unique collaborative production is spearheaded by Belfast’s Prime Cut Productions and co-produced with Pasovic’s East West Centre in Sarajevo and The Mladinsko Theatre in Ljublana. As part of The Conquest of Happiness 200 performers from various choirs across Derry-Londonderry will form a magnificent chorus, representing through song the voice of the people as we follow various iconic world events. The choir will sing songs from the countries and cultures that are explored during the piece, from Germany to Israel and from Pale...

William Hague, the UK Foreign Secretary, couldn’t bring himself to utter Edward Snowden’s name, when he made an urgent statement to the House of Commons on 10 June 2013. This was in the wake of Snowden’s revelations about ‘Prism’, the US National Security Agency’s covert and extensive surveillance operation, which has been ongoing since 2007. Mr Hague wasn’t going to comment on ‘leaks’, as he repeatedly told the House. This rather put the Foreign Secretary 'behind the curve' in the debate that followed, excerpts from which are reproduced in this number of The Spokesman. Some of his comments to the House have been called into question by subsequent developments. We publish some of the seminal texts of this developing story. *** The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation was established in 1963. In this, our fiftieth anniversary year, we take stock a little. What was happening then? What pre-occupied Russell? What was the peace movement doing? Contents: Editorial ...

In April 1963, Grigoris Lambrakis laid a wreath at the feet of Lord Byron, whose statue is to be found near Hyde Park Corner in London. He had walked about 80 kilometres, all the way from the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, carrying his banner marked “ELLAS” (Greece), as part of CND’s annual Easter March. A few weeks later, on 27 May, Lambrakis was murdered in public, in Thessaloniki, in the north of Greece. These dramatic events were captured in Costa-Gavras’s acclaimed film “Z”, which takes its title from the first letter of the Greek word Zi , meaning “he lives”. “Z” appeared in graffiti all over Athens. Dr Lambrakis’s public stand for peace and against oppression continues to resonate in Greece and beyond. He inaugurated the first Marathon March for Peace, carrying the same ELLAS banner he had raised in England. In Greece, he marched alone initially, it seems, defying an official ban on the event. Later, thousands joined him, defying the ban. Bertrand...

Fifty years ago, on 22 October 1962, America announced that spy flights over Cuba had revealed the construction of bases for Soviet medium-range missiles, and that America would impose a naval blockade on Cuba to prevent the delivery of further missiles. Bertrand Russell sprang into action to try to avert a deadly nuclear confrontation. Follow the link to read Cuban Missile Crisis – 50 years on by Bertrand Russell in The Spokesman 117 . Unarmed Victory by Bertrand Russell can be bought from the Spokesman Books website.

Bertrand Russell died on 2 February 1970, in his 98th year. Two days earlier he had composed a message to the International Conference of Parliamentarians, who were about to meet in Cairo whilst Israeli air raids reached deep into Egyptian territory. Russell’s message was read to the assembled parliamentarians on the day after his sudden death. He had remarked that: ‘The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was “given” by a foreign Power to another people for the creation of a new State. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers have increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from...

6 August 2012 In October, it will be fifty years since the Cuban Missile Crisis, known as the ‘October Crisis’ in Cuba, and the ‘Caribbean Crisis’ in Russia. During those days in 1962, the United States and Soviet Union came closer to conflict than at any other time. It has been described as the worst week of the Cold War. That the conflict did not erupt probably has quite a lot to do with the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The suffering of those cities and their hibakusha was indelibly etched on the consciousness of the post-war generation. One prominent member of that generation, Robert McNamara, was US Defence Secretary from 1961 to 1968. Decades later, in 2005, he observed that: ‘ Much of the current US nuclear policy has been in place since before I was secretary of defence, and it has only grown more dangerous and diplomatically destructive in the intervening years. ’ Mr McNamara then assessed the average modern US warhead as having a destructive power 20 times that of...

The Spokesman 110 Edited by Tony Simpson ‘Whilst still in opposition, in August 2009, the then Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, argued for what he called ‘progressive’ and ‘fundamental’ reform of public services. The alternative, according to the Chancellor in waiting, was ‘deep cuts in the quality of those services’. Praying in aid Tony Blair and Alan Milburn, who were by then advocating something similar, he said that what was true ‘in the years of plenty’ was doubly true in an age of austerity. Now installed, Chancellor Osborne has set about his austere task with a will. As the comprehensive spending review looks to slice further tens of billions from departmental budgets, the cuts are already scything through public services round the country. Local government workers in their tens of thousands have received Section 118 redundancy notices, as have their counterparts in the Civil Service and sundry quangos. Public service, and all its outworks, is being chopped hard. Osborne shows...