Spokesman Books

Our good comrade and friend, Michael, died in London on 7 May after several weeks in hospital following a fall at home. During his long and eventful life, he worked closely with the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and the Institute for Workers’ Control, and was a regular contributor to  The Spokesman  journal. We shall miss him greatly, and will publish a full appreciation later. Michael’s funeral is at 12 o’clock on Wednesday 10 June at Golders Green Crematorium (West Chapel), Hoop Lane, London NW11 7NL.

Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, will give the inaugural Ken Coates Memorial Lecture at the University of Nottingham   (Law and Social Sciences Building) on Wednesday 3 June 2015 at 6.30pm , a few weeks after the General Election. Ken Coates died on 27 June 2010, in his eightieth year. He was a prolific author whose work included the Penguin Classic  Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen , about the St Ann’s district of Nottingham, co-authored with Richard Silburn. The Times commented: ‘Writing with compassion, style, wit and an almost complete lack of jargon, [they] present us with inescapable facts which must remould our thinking and our actions.’ During the 1960s, Bertrand Russell invited Ken Coates to work with him  at the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. This was to lead to location of the Foundation’s offices in Nottingham, where they remain to this day. Ken Coates edited The Spokesman, the Foundation’s journal, for 40 years; he als...