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Spokesman Books have started to create ePUB eBooks and to showcase our new venture we'd like to give you the opportunity to read one of our digital editions of The Spokesman completely FREE (see below for details).

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Beyond Austerity - ePUB
By Stuart Holland

Beyond Austerity argues that the European Union already has the means to finance the equivalent of the Roosevelt New Deal, which saved the US from Depression in the 1930s, without needing either fiscal federalism or 'ever closer union'. This is highly relevant to the referendum on British membership of the EU. How can Europe's economic recovery be accomplished? The European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund can issue Eurobonds that do not count on the debt of EU member states, nor need national guarantees, nor require fiscal transfers between Germany and Greece or any other countries. Heads of state and government in the European Council have the right to define 'general economic policies' that the European Central Bank is obliged to support. The European Commission has displaced this important capacity, although the structure for European recovery was carefully assembled by Jacques Delors, its former President, in conjunction with the author during the 1990s. Who will make the first move beyond austerity and start to put Europe back to work?

Contents: Introduction; Chapter One: Democracy in Question; Chapter Two: Learning Up from the New Deal; Chapter Three: The Case for a Social Europe; Chapter Four: The Feasibility of a European New Deal; Chapter Five: Beyond a German Europe; Chapter Six: Regaining the Case; Annex: A Modest Proposal for Resolving the Eurozone Crisis; Glossary; Biographical Note; Endorsements of Europe in Question

FREE ePUB eBook edition

Price: £8.95

ISBN: 978 0 85124 8561

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Europe in Question: - ePUB</span>

Europe in Question: - ePUB
and what to do about it
By Stuart Holland

'Stuart Holland on Europe is akin to Thomas Paine on the French Revolution combined with John Maynard Keynes on the Economic Consequences of the Peace. At a preciously young age, he persuaded Charles De Gaulle to agree to Britain's second application to join the European Economic Community. As an advisor to Jacques Delors he designed solutions to Europe's current problems decades before they even surfaced. Now, with Europe in Question - and what to do about it he offers a new generation of readers unique insights on how Europe can be fixed - as well as warnings that it may not be.'
Yanis Varoufakis
Professor in Economics University of Athens and Visiting Professor LBJ School of Government University of Austin Texas.

Yanis Varoufakis is co-author with James K. Galbraith and Stuart Holland of The Modest Proposal 4.0 of which former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard has commented:

"It neither is modest by ambition nor in intelligence. Its aim is to resolve the Eurozone crisis without directly confronting the sovereignty of any major state, and notably not that of Germany. It combines awareness of room for manoeuvre displaced by monetary authorities for decades and affirms that there can be solutions within existing institutional frameworks."

Europe in Question elaborates this case in The Modest Proposal by an author who was the architect in the 70s of Labour's economic programmes, then a Labour member of parliament, and has been an adviser since the 1960s to European heads of state and government as well as to the ETUC, the European Parliament and the EU Social Partners Economic and Social Committee.

Review
Nirupam Sen - Feb 2016

Nuno Martins on 20 July 2015, Amazon

Price: £9.99

ISBN: 978 0 85124 835 6

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Unmasking Austerity - ePUB</span>

Unmasking Austerity - ePUB
Opposition and Alternatives in Europe and North America
By Dexter Whitfield

Unmasking Austerity: Opposition and Alternatives in Europe and North America exposes how austerity policies have fuelled the fire of recession rather than stimulating growth. It identifies key lessons from organising and action against such policies, and urges a rethink of trade union, community and social movement strategies to overcome austerity. Unmasking Austerity examines the deeper causes of the financial crisis, and exposes the manufactured crises which are being used to dismantle hard-earned labour rights and the welfare state.

A radical alternative strategy includes economic stimulus, reconstruction of public services, faster fundamental reform of banks and financial markets, the elimination of corporate welfare that enriches big business, and strategies to increase labour's share of national income.

Reviews
Sebastian Schipper, Bauhaus-University Weimar - IJURR, Vol.39 Number 3 May 2015

Edward Dingwall - Red Pepper, September 2015

Public Services International - June 2014

Dave Putson - Independent Socialist Networks
May 2014

Price: £9.99

ISBN: 978 0 85124 8325

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Safe at work? - ePUB</span>

Safe at work? - ePUB
Ramazzini versus the attack on health and safety

By Dave Putson
With an introduction by Mark Serwotka

'This is an important time to write the history of health and safety in the UK, given the near derision that the term now evokes in the media and from the Government. What Dave Putson demonstrates in writing this book is that health and safety, far from being the product of a more litigious society or the political agenda of overbearing bureaucrats, is rooted in human need, protecting people.

This book describes how, over the last 300 years, an evolving body of surveys, research, legal challenges and often tragic experiences led to an emergence of, at first, quite limited protections. Some of these histories will be familiar to the reader, like the match girls and 'phossy jaw', but others, like the seminal legal case of Priestley vs Fowler, are not. What the varied and fascinating histories indicate is that health and safety evolved to improve not only the workplace, but also our homes, our communities, our roads, our waterways, and public and environmental health ...

Today, there are desperate attempts to reverse those gains. Our Prime Minister echoes the worst of the 19th century's irresponsible industrialists when he says health and safety is an 'albatross around the neck of British businesses'. The burden to take reasonable and practical steps to ensure workers can come home at night is what Cameron objects to when he says he wants to "kill off the health and safety culture for good". Despite this supposedly rampant culture, the HSE records that around 175 people died in 2011/12 from injuries sustained at work while, according to the Hazards campaign, up to 50,000 die each year from work-related illnesses, including 6,000 from occupational cancers.

Workers only got these rights and protections because they organised and fought for them. It is a depressing but familiar tale of history that, today, we need to fight those same battles again. I hope you enjoy reading this detailed, fascinating and engaging history as much as I did. But most importantly, I hope it inspires you to think and to act.'

Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, from his introduction

Dave Putson is a trade union health and safety representative in the London Courts.

Reviews
A review by the Bookmarks Socialist Bookshop

ASLEF Journal - June 2013

'Seeing the increasing attacks on health and safety and "red tape" by this Tory led government and the support from the right wing media, I would like to recommend a book recently published by Spokesman titled Safe at work? written by Dave Putson who is a union health and safety representative in the London Courts.This details theuphill struggle over the last 300 hundred years for safer practices in the workplace. I believe this is essential reading for all health and safety representatives and indeed anyone interested in their own and other peoples well being. We should all be aware that health and safety regulations and so called "red tape" were hard won rights and should not be surrendered.'
Mr J. Randall, Bexley, Kent (UNITE member, who sent this letter to his union journal)

'I'm enjoying this book so much. I suggest you make sure it's on the stall at the Tolpuddle Rally 21st July. Salam, Shalom, Peace.'
Rev. Hazel Barkham

Price: £8.99

ISBN: 978 0 85124 8240

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Changing How We Live - ePUB</span>

Changing How We Live - ePUB
Society from the bottom up
By Robert Hinde

The shortcomings in our society need more than readjustments to our political, financial, and legal institutions. There must be a better regard for morality at every level, from individuals to government. This book explores the nature of our morality. It identifies how changes can be made so that each of us takes responsibility for looking after each other and our planet, and shows that a better society is within our power.

Robert Hinde served as an RAF pilot in World War Two before training as a biologist. He subsequently carried out research in biology and the human sciences. He has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the British Academy, the Royal College of Psychiatry, the US National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge. Professor Hinde has received awards for research in Anthropology, Developmental Psychology, Social Psychology, Psychiatry, Ethology, Primatology, and Zoology.

Price: £5.99

ISBN: 978 0 85124 8073

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Working Spaces, Working Lives - ePUB</span>

Working Spaces, Working Lives - ePUB
Key Words 5

Contents:
In Memoriam Charles Swann - Terry Eagleton

I. M. Charles Swann, 18 December 1943 - 13 October 2006 - Stan Smith

Introduction - Nicola Wilson

The Representation of the People and Our Mutual Friend - Ruth Livesey

Politicising the Home in Ethel Carnie Holdsworth's This Slavery (1925) and Ellen Wilkinson's Clash (1929) - Nicola Wilson

Gender and Community in 1930s Working-Class Writing - Joseph Pridmore

Raymond Williams, Cultural Materialsim, and the Break-Up of Britain - Hywel Dix

'Committed to paper': Vacated Spaces and Phallogocentrism in Magnus Mills's The Restraint of Beasts - Ian Haywood

Organising Space: Clutter, Storage and Everyday Life - Tracey Potts

An Interview with Richard Hoggart - Sean Matthews

Reviews and Previews

The Raymond Williams Memorial Fund

Price: £8.99

ISBN: 978 1 90551 0-11-5

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Bad News - ePUB</span>

Bad News - ePUB
The Wapping Dispute
by John Lang & Graham Dodkins
Foreword by Tony Benn

In January 1986, some 5,500 workers employed by four of Britain's national newspapers were sacked. The Sun, News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times were all owned by Rupert Murdoch's News International Limited, and the bitter industrial dispute that followed was to last 13 months.

Although generally referred to as a print workers' dispute, many of those sacked were not printers at all, but managers, clerks, secretaries, librarians, copy typists and messengers who were members of the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT).

In the year following the dispute the authors of this book, themselves previously librarians at The Times and The Sunday Times and active participants in the strike, interviewed many of the clerical workers involved in an effort to document their experiences. Having spent more than a year recording these testimonies and transcribing the tapes onto the backs of discarded fast-food delivery menus using a portable typewriter (money was tight and paper expensive), the project was reluctantly abandoned, the victim of an acute need to earn a living.

The manuscript gathered dust in a loft until, in 2009 (with the 25th anniversary of the dispute fast approaching) unemployment, ironically, provided an opportunity to finish the job. Bad News tells the story of an ordinary group of people thrown into extraordinary circumstances, and how those circumstances affected their lives.

"What comes out in this book is the courage and determination of those who fought for their jobs and their rights against a government that was bitterly hostile to both. This is a book that should be very widely read." Tony Benn, Foreword

Reviews:
Robert Giddings - Tribune, Sunday, June 19th, 2011
Brendan Perring and Ben Welch - Print Monthly, June 2011

Price: £9.99

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7960

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Nuclear New Build? - ePUB</span>

Nuclear New Build? - ePUB
A review of the issues
By Christopher Gifford

'This paper attempts to describe the present state of affairs, in particular the issues facing the new Coalition Government. In February 2007, the then government was described in judicial review as having behaved 'unlawfully' in consulting on energy policy with information 'wholly insufficient for the public to make an intelligent response'. Since then, thousands of pages have been published in further consultations and some in response to freedom of information requests, and it has become clear that much detail remains to be provided on matters that may not be decided until licences to build and operate nuclear stations are granted, if at all. The material is usually technical, but there are ethical issues which demand political decisions after the involvement of an informed public. Meaningful information has been slow to emerge, and it is not surprising that, so far, few members of the public have become involved.'

Christopher Gifford

Price: £4.99

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7984

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Imperialism: A Study - ePUB</span>

Imperialism: A Study - ePUB
by J. A. Hobson
Introduction by Nathaniel Mehr
Foreword by Jeremy Corbyn MP

First published in 1902, Hobson’s seminal work was among the first to make the link between political economy and the imperialist expansionism of the advanced capitalist nations at the turn of the 20th Century. A devastating moral critique of the murderous cynicism of imperialism, Hobson’s book paved the way for the influential Marxist theories of imperialism advanced by Lenin and Bukharin and others. It provides an invaluable framework for understanding militarism and war in the 21st Century.

'It’s a depressing reflection on our condition that J A Hobson’s pioneering study of the relationship between finance and empire retains much actuality today, more than a hundred years after it was first published. It is good to have this classic work available again. Nathaniel Mehr’s critical introduction admirably situates Imperialism both historically and in relation to the debates it helped to shape among Marxists from Lenin and Bukharin to Harvey and Negri.'
Alex Callinicos, Professor of European Studies, King's College London, and author of Imperialism and Global Political Economy.

'Hobson's book remains an indispensable starting point for the understanding of imperialism. Spokesman are to be congratulated for making it available once more.'
John Newsinger, author of The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire.

‘Hobson's Imperialism belongs to the small group of books in the years from 1900 to the outbreak of war that have definitely changed the contours of social thought.'
The Guardian.

Reviews:
Llewellyn James - Socialist Review, March 2011

Price: £8.95

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7922

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Housing: Did it have to be like this? - ePUB</span>

Housing: Did it have to be like this? - ePUB
A socialist critique of New Labour's performance
By Cathy Davis & Alan Wigfield

'This pamphlet will identify the best of what was achieved by Labour governments in the past, by Labour ministers struggling against considerable opposition to achieve progressive legislation and large building programmes. This will be compared with what New Labour, with a massive electoral majority, has achieved in relation to council housebuilding and maintenance, anti-social behaviour and creating mixed communities. What have been the effects of the twin restrictions on local authorities - in relation to new building and funding to achieve the Decent Homes Standard? Should council or housing association landlords have substantial powers over tenants' personal behaviour, and has New Labour emphasis on dealing with anti-social behaviour changed the way that social housing is regarded?'

Dr Cathy Davis, University of Salford
Alan Wigfield, Sheffield Hallam University, Chair, Sheffield City Council Housing Committee 1986-92

Price: £4.99

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7823

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Global Auction of Public Assets - ePUB</span>

Global Auction of Public Assets - ePUB
Public sector alternatives to the infrastructure market and Public Private Partnerships
By Dexter Whitfield

Public infrastructure in the 21st century is confronted with new challenges - adapting to climate change, meeting the economic, energy, water, transportation and social infrastructure needs of megacities in Asia, megaregions in North America and European city regions.

Public infrastructure provides basic human needs - homes, water, energy for light, heat and cooking; the transport of people, raw materials and goods by road, rail, sea and air; hospitals, schools, sports and cultural facilities; communications networks; facilities for the criminal justice system; and civic and governmental buildings for democratic governance, social and political activity.

Public infrastructure supports economic growth, increases productivity, generates employment, creates opportunities for the production and supply chains in construction and services, and improves community well-being.

Wider adoption of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and growth of the global infrastructure market, financed by investment funds and pension funds, could fuel a new era of public asset sales. Already, the refinancing and the sale of equity in PPP projects has led to the buying and selling of public hospitals, schools, prisons and roads, furthering exploitation and profiteering.

PPPs are promoted by the World Bank, IMF, development banks and via bilateral agreements in developing countries and the industrialised north. This is the first critical analysis which explores PPP programmes in the UK, France, Ireland, Germany, the US, Canada, Russia, Australia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

Yet over US$500bn of PPP projects have failed, have little democratic control or transparency, are costly, lack innovation and are approved on narrow value for money or fraudulent public sector comparators. PPPs are ultimately publicly financed, either directly by government or indirectly through user charges, fares and tolls.

Profiteering from public private partnerships
Dexter Whitfield, Guardian, 10 December 2009

Reviews:
Privatising the Public Sector: Two books expose the defects of Public-Private Partnerships - Keith Reynolds, The CCPA Monitor, October 2010

New book challenges privatization claims - in CUPE, March 31st 2010

Selling off the family silver - Duncan Bowie, Chartist, March/April 2010

Public cost and private benefit - Michael Barratt Brown in Red Pepper, Feb 2010

Socialist Review - Nick Grant, January 2010

Truthout - Friday 15 January 2010, Op-Ed

Price: £11.99

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7847

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>'Constructive Bloodbath' in Indonesia - ePUB</span>

'Constructive Bloodbath' in Indonesia - ePUB
The United States, Britain
and the Mass Killings of 1965-66
By Nathaniel Mehr
With a foreword by Carmel Budiardjo

In October 1965, the Indonesian army embarked upon a vicious campaign of mass murder with the aim of destroying he country's powerful Communist Party. In the space of just a few months, the army massacred between 500,000 and one million innocent people, mostly rural peasants who had joined th Communist Party in the hope of improving their lives. The killings paved the way for the seizure of power by a military junta headed by General Suharto. Suharto's regime became synonymous with corruption and human rights abuse, but his willingness to integrate Indonesia into the global capitalist system made him a darling of the United States and Great Britain. To this extent the massacre - one of the most devastating mass murders of the 20th Century - constituted what Noam Chomsky called a "constructive bloodbath" from the point of view of prevailing Cold War orthodoxy, and the US and Britain did what they could to encourage the slaughter. 'Constructive Bloodbath' in Indonesia examines the relationship between Suharto and his Western allies before, during and after the killings.

Reviews:
Southeast Asian Times - British Role Exposed
London Progressive Journal - Remembering the Indonesian Killings
The Palestine Chronicle - Herman Jones
Joyo Indonesia News - David Jardine
Jakarta Globe - Armando Siahaan
Tribune - Ian Sinclair

Price: £6.99

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7830

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