First published in 1990. Of all British cities, it is perhaps Coventry which has come to symbolise best the country's experience of World War II and the post-war period. An important engineering centre, Coventry immediately found itself geared up to produce armaments, a specialisation which inevitably brought considerable attention from the German Air Force, which in 1940 and 1941 destroyed much of the city centre. In the 1950s the city emerged as a boom town and as an exemplar of a new type of city, in step with the demands and aspirations of a modern, more democratic and equitable age. Yet this book is more than just a case study. By examining the experience of Coventry in particular, the author poses questions of significance to Britain's post-war development in general. Did the construction of the welfare state after 1945 inevitably hinder the country's long-term economic development? Can the rise and fall of the Labour Party's popularity be plotted in terms of increased popular affluence? By linking Coventry's specific history to wider questions, the book will be of interest to anyone who is concerned with Britain's post-war history.

First published in 1976. This book covers working-class history from the decline of Chartism to the formation of the Labour Party and its early development to 1914. It gives a historical perspective to the essentially defensive, materialist orientation of twentieth century working-class politics. David Kynaston has sought to synthesise the wealth of recent detailed research to produce a coherent overall view of the particular dynamic of these formative years. He sees the course of working-class history in the second half of the nineteenth century as a necessary tragedy and suggests that a major reason for this was the inability of William Morris as a revolutionary socialist to influence organised labour. The treatment is thematic as much as chronological and special attention is given not only to the parliamentary rise of Labour, but also to deeper-lying intellectual, occupational, residential, religious, and cultural influences. The text itself includes a substantial amount of contemporary material in order to reflect the distinctive 'feel' of the period. The book is particularly designed for students studying the political, social and economic background to modern Britain as well as those specialising in nineteenth-century English history.

First published in 1951. The purpose of this study was to consider the prospects of the British Co-operative movement in all its main aspects and not as a consumers' movement only. The author examines ways in which the Co-operative enterprise, in its various forms, could best be fitted into the economic structure of the coming society. This title will be of great interest to scholars and students of labour history.

First published in 1980. This book covers areas of policy interest viewed from a social democratic perspective and each chapter takes a specific issue which would have been of concern to Labour in the 1980s, including some of the more controversial areas. The study reviews various problem areas and suggests policies which are realistic and applicable in the conditions of the 1980s. This title will be of interests to scholars and students of history and politics.

Twenty years after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, historians still struggle to explain how an apparently stable state imploded with such vehemence. This book shows how 'national' identity was invented in the GDR and how citizens engaged with it. Jan Palmowski argues that it was hard for individuals to identify with the GDR amid the threat of Stasi informants and with the accelerating urban and environmental decay of the 1970s and 1980s. Since socialism contradicted its own ideals of community, identity and environmental care, citizens developed rival meanings of nationhood and identities and learned to mask their growing distance from socialism beneath regular public assertions of socialist belonging. This stabilized the party's rule until 1989. However, when the revolution came, the alternative identifications citizens had developed for decades allowed them to abandon their 'nation', the GDR, with remarkable ease.

First published in 1992. In this lively and controversial book, Kevin Theakston examines the Yes, Minister-style argument popularised by Tony Benn and Richard Crossman that the civil service obstructs Labour government policies. He argues that in fact the Labour party's problems and failures in office are largely political in origin. The book surveys the development of socialist thinking about Whitehall, and examines the claim of a Labour MP in 1979 that 'It is as if Labour in office has now lost all stomach for administrative reform.' Theakston looks at the effectiveness of Labour's various reform schemes, raising important issues such as politicisation and power in the civil service, Whitehall management, elitism in civil service recruitment, and secrecy and 'open government'. This book will appeal to researchers and students of British politics, public administration, and history, as well as to all those with an interest in Whitehall reform, or in Labour Party politics.

First published in 1995. This volume offers a comparative perspective on labour relations and political change in eastern Europe within a common theoretical and empirical framework. Its coverage includes Bulgaria, and Czech and Slovak republics, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. Particular attention is given to the dynamics of changes in labour relations and privatisation, which are now critical to the more general process of political and economic transformation. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of politics, sociology and modern history.

In the three decades before the First World War, the relationship between socialism and feminism was both curious and convoluted. Despite strong theoretical links between these ideologies, class and sex seem to have inspired conflicting loyalties and opposing demands. In Britain, the uniquely middle-class, reform-minded Fabian Society might have been expected to bridge the gap between these movements. Yet, between 1884 and 1914, the Fabian Society's record on the "woman question" was highly inconsistent and, at times, overtly regressive. Originally published in 1987, this title looks at three of the most influential members, Sidney Webb, George Bernard Shaw and Hubert Bland and the women they were married to, who were also active in the Society.

First published in 1992. The collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe has led to a widespread view that socialism is a dead, or at least dying, force. Labour's Utopias argues that this assumption is based on the popular conception that socialism's various traditions are simply different means to a common end. The author looks at three strands of socialism - Bolshevism, Fabianism and German Social Democracy - in order to assess whether this argument is justified, concluding that in fact each has a distinct vision of an ideal future. This study will appeal to scholars and students of politics, history and socialism, and to all those with an interest in the alternatives to capitalism.

First published in 1960. This title is a study of one of the most controversial alliances in British political history. The 'wage freeze', Bevanism, the block vote, nuclear disarmament: these are only a few of the points at which the unions' activities within the Labour Party had roused hot debate. Drawing extensively on previously unpublished material and on discussions with past members of the Labour Movement, the author creates a survey of what the partnership really amounted to.

First published in 1987. This book considers the Trade Unions-Labour Party relationship. It traces developments over the 1970s and early 1980s, and analyses the debate between those who argue for the Unions to take a more prominent lead within the Party and those who are against this. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of politics and history.

First published in 1973. In this study, the author adopts a historical approach, tracing the evolution of socialist thinking during the past century and relating this to the growth of the union movement. The Taff Vale judgement, the Osborne judgement, the roles of the SDF, the Fabians, and the ILP - these episodes are re-examined from a novel perspective, and the historical material is frequently illuminated by the use of contemporary analogies. The second half of the book presents an analytical study of differing union political theories and attitudes against the modern industrial background. Here the Marxist case is studied in depth and contrasted with the views of the Social Democrats. The author then considers the ownership and control of the economy, industrial relations, prices and incomes and inflation, making it clear where he feels the movement should stand on the key political issues of today. Finally, the book suggests the way in which the Labour Party and the trade unions should organise for power in the country.

First published in 1923. This autobiographical study by Francis William Soutter, an English Radical activist and an advocate for independent labour representation in Parliament, will be of interest to anyone interested in political and social history. This title examines Soutter's background, his fight for labour representation, and provides an extensive overview of his political activity.

First published in 1978. This book is an essay in labour biography. Labour leaders of the nineteenth century are often enigmatic personalities, and James Keir Hardie is no exception. The main purpose of this study is to penetrate the heart of the enigma that is Kier Hardie. Why does he remain so puzzling? The author explores Hardie's childhood and his interest and involvement within the Labour Party. This title will be of interest to students of politics and history.

First published in 1982. To study Tillett's career is to study the modern British labour movement in its formative stages. His rhetoric and activities cast light upon some of the most important periods in labour history. In this book, not only the career of this remarkable and mercurial man is analysed, but our knowledge of the wider scene in which he played so major a role is increased. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of political history.

First published in 1948, this book gives a full account of the development of the British Labour Party from its emergence as a national influence in the first world war to its return to power with an effective majority after the second world war. The study includes an epilogue which surveys the achievements of the party in the years after the 1945 election. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of history and politics.

First published in 1941. This purpose of this history of the earlier phases of the political Labour movement was due to the author's belief that there was a need for a positive effort to re-create the legion of inspired and untiring propagandists for Socialism whose work made the Labour Party possible. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of history and politics.

First published in 1988. In a few short years during and just after the Great War, the Labour Party and the trade unions established themselves firmly at the centre of the British political and industrial scene. But at the same time, the politics and organisation of both Labour and unions were reshaped. This is a grass-roots study of a key period in the building of Labour's political and industrial base. It is a study of how unions and Labour were organised and motivated to seize their moments of destiny - and of how a new political industrial movement was limited by the common-sense of the age in which it was born. It is a study of shifting support for various Labour and Communist political and industrial strategies - of the pressures and struggles which reshaped the movement, stamping on it the character we know today. And it is a study of how labour - at work and in the community - responded to war, to prosperity, to depression.

First published in 1977. The New Left, as an organised political phenomenon, came - and went - largely in the 1960s. Was the Movement that went into precipitate decline after 1969 the same New Left that had developed a decade earlier? Nigel Young's thesis is that the core New Left, as it had evolved by the mid-1960s, had a unique identity that set it apart from other Old Left and Marxist groups. He believes that this was dissipated in the later developments of the black and student movements, and in the opposition to the Vietnam war. By 1968 - the watershed year - an acute 'identity-crisis' had set in within the Movement and became the major source of the New Left's disintegration. Nigel Young traces the Movement's growth and crisis mainly in Britain and America, where it reached its greater strength, but attention is also paid to parallel developments in similar movements elsewhere. He analyses the crisis in terms of the interrelationship between dilemmas of strategy and ideas, and the external events which tend to reinforce the tendencies toward elitism, intolerance and violence, and produce organisational breakdown.

First published in 1925. Robert Owen was, in the author's words, 'that rarest of phenomena, an utterly disinterested critic of a system by which he had himself risen to greatness', and in studying his life this work reveals with a remarkable clarity the first phases of the Industrial Revolution crowded as it was with events, changes, ideas, and characters. This title will be of great interest to scholars and students of labour history.

First published in 1983. This book combines a case study of class relations, politics and voting in Sweden with a comparative analysis of distributive conflicts and politics in eighteen OECD countries. Its underlying theoretical theme is the development of class relations in free-enterprise or capitalise democracies. This title will be of interest to students of history and politics.

This volume offers new perspectives on the appeal and profound cultural meaning of socialism over the past two centuries. It brings together scholarship from various disciplines addressing diverse national contexts, including Britain, China, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the USA. Taken together, the contributions highlight the aesthetic, narrative, and religious dimensions of socialism as it has developed through three broad phases in the modern era: early nineteenth-century beginnings, mass-based political organizations, and the attainment of state power in the twentieth century and beyond. Socialism did not attract millions of people primarily because of logical argument and empirical evidence, important though those were. Rather, it told the most compelling story about the past, present, and future. Refocusing attention on socialism's imaginative dimensions, this volume aims to revive scholarly interest in one of the modern world(1)s most important political orientations.

What can contemporary activists and political theorists learn from the life and work of Rosa Luxemburg? Examining her contribution to radical democracy and revolutionary socialism, Jon Nixon shows why Red Rosa's legacy lives on. Luxemburg's political and intellectual formation was in itself a 'long revolution', conceived of over time and in response to world events; her groundbreaking ideas around internationalism and spontaneity were formulated in the context of revolution. Returning to her thinking on global capitalism, democratic renewal, state militarism, and the social question, Nixon draws out the enduring nature of her work, using her framework of ideas as a lens through which to view the contemporary debates. By establishing a rich and distinctive account of Luxemburg, Nixon makes the argument for why her struggle for democratic renewal is as relevant as ever.

The bitter struggle of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, against the Turkish state has delivered inspirational but often tragic stories. This memoir by Kurdish revolutionary Sakine Cansiz is one of them. Sakine, whose code name was 'Sara', co-founded the PKK in 1974 and dedicated her life to its cause. On the 9 January 2013 she was assassinated in Paris in circumstances that remain officially unresolved. This is the first chapter of her iconic life, leading up to her arrest in 1979, penned as dramatic events unfolded against the backdrop of the Turkish revolutionary left. She writes about the excitement of entering the movement as a young woman, discovering she would have to challenge traditional gender roles as she rose amongst its ranks. She was one of the first to demand the recruitment and education of female revolutionaries, and demanded total gender equality within the PKK, which is now one of its central tenets. Today, 'Sara' is an inspiration to women fighting for liberation across the world. This is her story in her own words, and is in turns shocking, violent and path-breaking. Translated by Janet Biehl.

"Modell Deutschland," once admired worldwide, has lost much of its shine, due to a number ofinternal and external factors. This important and timely volume deals with the economic andpolitical pressures and challenges of globalization and is particularly concerned with their effecton social policy, labor markets, environmental policies and technological change. Distinguishedacademic experts and leading politicians discuss these problems both from an internationalperspective and against the background of debates currently going on in Germany.