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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>In Place of Austerity</span>

In Place of Austerity
Reconstructing the economy,
state and public services
By Dexter Whitfield

In Place of Austerity uncovers the realities of commissioning, localism, 'big society' empowerment fraud, and the systematic undermining of public services and the welfare state. It perceptively exposes the scale of disempowerment, dispossession and disinvestment, and analyses the dominant rationale, which continues to underpin the financialisation and personalisation of public services, accelerating marketisation and privatisation on an unprecedented scale.

This is a vitally important book for trade unions as well as for civil and community organisations. It provides a critical understanding of the issues and will aid their intervention in transformation and procurement of public services by forging strong alliances, taking industrial and community action, and advancing alternative policies.

In Place of Austerity sets out a framework for policies that reconstruct the economy, invest in local economies, create jobs and rebuild public infrastructure. In doing so, it charts a new role for the state and offers a radical new public service management strategy. It is an equally important resource for all public sector employees. Incisive, timely and detailed, it is original in its research and analysis.

A paper by Dexter:
A paper written for Studies in Social Services, Li Bing, Vice Professor, Department of Sociology, Beijing Administrative College, China. Social services are at the forefront of the continued neoliberal transformation of public services and the welfare state in the UK. The paper applies the In Place of Austerity framework to examine the changes in social services. Paper in English and Chinese.

Reviews:
Bryan Evans in Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation Volume 7, Number 1, Summer 2013

Colin Burgess in Campaign for Labour Party Democracy

Dave Putson, TUSC (Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition)

An article by New Left Project on G4S makes positive reference to In Place of Austerity, August 2012

William Podmore - Amazon

Andy Morton for Chartist, March/April 2012

Clive Singer for Open Democracy, Jan 2012

Nick Grant for Socialist Review, Jan 2012

A short review from IIndependent Action

Price: £18.00

264 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 085124 7939

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

Global Auction of Public Assets:
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.

The Guardianpublic article, 17th Jan 2011, on PPP equity sales.

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

Reviews:
Capital & Class 35.3 (2011) - Hugo Radice, University of Leeds, UK

International Journal of Governmental Financial Management Vol. X No. 2, 2010 - Stewart Smyth, Queen's University Managment School, Belfast

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: £18.00

380 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7731

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

Bad News
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:
Richard Sharpe - Review 31
James Grayson - Chartist, September/October 2011
Sue Sparks - Socialist Review, July/August 2011
Robert Giddings - Tribune, Sunday, June 19th, 2011
Brendan Perring and Ben Welch - Print Monthly, June 2011

Price: £15.00

172 pages | Illustrated

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7960

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Logic and Knowledge</span>

Logic and Knowledge
by Bertrand Russell

Logic and Knowledge has been acclaimed as the most widely-used university text for teaching Russell's philosophy.

Ten essays, including the landmark On Denoting, which extend through fifty years in the life of one of the great philosophers of our time.

" ... for the most part these are writings which it would be impertinent to praise; they are the best work of one of the most influential minds of our time." The Sunday Times

Many of Bertrand Russell's most important essays in logic and the theory of knowledge were not easily available until Professor Marsh collected them together in 1956. It is now the best source of Russell's views in these areas and is firmly established as a philosophical classic in its own right. The collection presents essays which are both historically important and which have profoundly influenced the course of philosophy.

Price: £15.00

380 pages | ISBN: 978 085124 7432

Philosophical Writings

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Speeches by Tony Benn</span>

Speeches by Tony Benn
"Political speeches delivered at public meetings are in the oldest tradition of democratic debate; and they have retained their importance in the labour movement.

They are a part of the process of mutual education by which the people discuss and learn from their own experience.

These speeches, together with some articles and memoranda written over the years, record at least as much about what I have learned as about what I have tried to expound.

Some of the views expressed do not stand up so well to the test of time. Many are now widely accepted in the movement and outside.

Political arguments tend to be most sterile when they are confined within the limits of conventional wisdom and rotate around the personalities involved in them. The most fruitful are those parallel, analytical debates, rooted in our daily experience, which offer alternative explanations of that experience and open up different perspectives for the future.

Many of the speeches reproduced in this volume were intended to be part of that broader socialist debate."

Tony Benn
London, August 1974

Available in paperback for the first time, this new edition includes an interview with the author about workers' control, the occupy movement and other political issues.

Price: £15.00

314 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 0 85124 810 3

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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>These Are The Times</span>

These Are The Times
A Life of Thomas Paine
Screenplay by Trevor Griffiths

Trevor Griffiths' thrilling screenplay follows Tom Paine from persecution in England, to the American War of Independence, to Revolutionary France. It mixes politics, love and war.

It has been adapted for theatre and A New World made its premiere at Shakespeare's Globe (29th August - 9th October).

David Horspool reviews A New World in the TLS - PDF

Putting the World to Rights - An interview with Trevor Griffiths by Robert Chalmers, in the Independent on Sunday 9th August 2009.

'These Are The Times reads like the greatest of novels and is the most thrilling read I’ve had in years!'
Kurt Vonnegut

These Are The Times Episodes from a Life of Thomas Paine featured in Vertigo Magazine Volume 4, Number 3, Summer 2009.

Revolutionising Tom Paine - Whilst recording These Are The Times for radio, Trevor Griffiths discovered the true revolutionary spirit of Tom Paine.

Trevor Griffiths's screenplay broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday 26th July and Saturday 2nd August 2008. Read the discussions about it on their Message Boards.

Ann Talbot's recent review of These Are The Times and interview with Trevor Griffiths can be found on the
World Socialist Web Site:
Review
Interview

Read reviews by:
Phil Turner
Ray Brown
Sheila Rowbotham
Jeremy Pikser
Matthew Robbins
Mike Nichols
Rob Ritchie
Prof. Ted Braun
Terry Eagleton
Tim Robbins
Tom Stoppard
Troy Kennedy Martin
Walter Bernstein
Kurt Vonnegut

Price: £15.00

208 pages | ISBN: 978 0 85124 6956

110mm (w) x 180mm (h) | Paperback

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Spokesman Books | Best Sellers

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