Spokesman Books

Tate Liverpool: Exhibition 28 February – 11 May 2014 Adult £8.80 (without donation £8) Concession £6.60 (without donation £6) Help Tate by including the voluntary donation to enable Gift Aid Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980s Britain , is a new take on how the changes in the meaning of words reflect the cultural shifts in our society. This dynamic exhibition takes its name and focus from the seminal 1976 Raymond Williams book on the vocabulary of culture and society. An academic and critic influenced by the New Left, Williams defined ‘Keywords’ as terms that repeatedly crop up in our discussion of culture and society. His book contains more than 130 short essays on words such as ‘violence’, ‘country’, ‘criticism’, ‘media’, ‘popular’ and ‘exploitation’ providing an account of the word’s current use, its origin and the range of meanings attached to it. Williams expressed the wish some other ‘form of presentation could be devised’ for his book, and this exhibition i...

Week of Action Against Drones 5th - 12th October Starting this Saturday 5th October at midday, join activists from across Britain at RAF Croughton in Oxfordshire to say Keep Space for Peace and no to drones! Full details and registration at the CND website . Yorkshire CND has also organised a series of events at RAF bases Menwith Hill and Fylingdales - take a look at their website for full details. Our friends at the Drones Campaign Network have a detailed list of the week's events across Britain. Take a look and get involved here ! *** Only a few days left to register for CND Conference! CND Conference will be held in Liverpool on 12th & 13th October. Our annual conference and AGM gives members the opportunity to decide our overall direction for the coming year, debate contemporary issues, vote in CND’s national Council elections, and to draw strength and inspiration from participating in a collective national forum. This year’s theme is Building our Alliances...

Taking the message to Parliament On 15th April, the Global Day of Action Against Military Spending (GDAMS), CAAT, Pax Christi, War on Want, CND and others joined together to take our message to Parliament, with a protest against prioritising military spending over public services and welfare. We came together to ask for investment in improving people’s quality of life, not destroying it through war and suffering. Improvements could be made by scrapping the £3bn annual cost of nuclear weapons in favour of quadrupling investment in renewable energy. On the day campaigners took the message to parliament. For more details visit the GDAMS website .

Dave Webb, Chair of CND, sent this eyewitness report on the increasing militarisation of Hawaii. Been here a couple of days now – it’s an amazing place. A range of volcanic islands and a holiday paradise that is also one of the many military oppressed islands in the Pacific Region. The political and military importance of this region is not escaping the islanders. President Obama’s moves to escalate the US military presence here is threatening even further the lives and livelihoods of the people. It is unlikely that holidaymakers will be aware of the history of the Islands and the past and present domination of the US military industrial complex there – which exercises a cynical and arrogant display of power. We are staying on Oahu, one of the Hawaii chain and the Island that includes Honolulu and Pearl Harbour and yesterday we had a 10-hour tour (known as the De-Tour) of the militarization of Oahu. Kyle Kajihiro, former director of the American Friends Services Committee peace program...

Morning Star , Monday 22 March 2010 Reviewed by John Green Many today will not remember the legendary Labour MP Fenner Brockway, who died in 1988. Hopefully, this reissue of the first volume of his autobiography by Spokesman Books will make him better known to a new generation. Like Tony Benn, Brockway was one of those rare figures who started early on as a principled socialist and remained so to the end of his life. His political career spanned the bulk of the 20th century and for most of that time he was at the centre of progressive politics nationally and internationally. He was a founder member, among other organisations, of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), the Movement for Colonial Freedom - now Liberation - War on Want and CND. He became an MP for the ILP at a very young age and, after its demise, for the Labour Party. Vehemently anti-war, he spent several years in various prisons as a conscientious objector during the first world war. His description of the treatment he and ...