Product Sections

Main Pages

Home

Our details

About Us

This catalog is reserved for registered customers only. Please contact us to register.

Michael Barratt Brown

Spokesman Books | Michael Barratt Brown

Michael Barratt Brown

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.

Michael Barratt Brown wrote extensively throughout his life on economics, workers' control and politics. During his long career he served in a Quaker Ambulance Unit and worked for the United Nations and, subsequently, in documentary films, in workers' education, in industrial democracy, in socialist economics, in resisting nuclear warfare, in honest academic research, and in Fair Trade among co-operative organisations.

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Seekers: A Twentieth Century Life</span>

Seekers: A Twentieth Century Life
Memories of People and Places, 1918-2013
By Michael Barratt Brown

Michael Barratt Brown sets each chapter of his long and eventful life, from the 1920s to 2013, within the frame of world events. Thus, after childhood and youth, at the end of one world war and the start of another, he writes about his service in a Quaker Ambulance Unit. There followed work for the United Nations and, subsequently, in documentary films, in workers' education, in industrial democracy, in socialist economics, in resisting nuclear warfare, in honest academic research, and in Fair Trade among co-operative organisations. In so doing, the author recalls something of the places, people, family and friends with whom he has been seeking to find a way to live a decent life, and to help others to do the same. Not always successful in these endeavours, he has nevertheless found wonderful love and friendships, as Seekers makes clear. The struggle goes on.

A courageous and exhilarating book, Michael Barratt Brown provides a remarkably honest narrative of his struggles both to live a good life on his own account and to improve the lot of others 'from below upwards' through his work in adult education and Fair Trade. Michael seems to have known almost everyone who mattered. As a child in 1930, he sat on Gandhi's knee. The stories of his loves and friendships give the reader a fascinating insight into the networks of the 20th century intellectual Left.
FIONA MacCARTHY
Biographer and cultural historian

Michael Barratt Brown brings alive the struggles for socialism, and for peace and justice, in the 20th century with fascinating and sometimes very funny stories of everyone that a 21st century radical socialist would want to meet, plus a few that you will be glad to have missed! As important is that, through his stories and reflections, Michael conveys powerfully the potential of a transformative, radically democratic and feminist tradition which has long existed on the Left across Europe. During much of Michael's amazing life, this tradition was marginalised. We need to draw on it now to inspire the alternatives that are so urgent today. So Seekers is a valuable resource as well as a riveting read.
HILARY WAINWRIGHT
Red Pepper co-editor
Fellow of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam

Reviews:
John Field - Vol 33(4) of International Journal of Lifelong Education

Price: £18.95

220 pages | 80 illustrations

ISBN: 978 0 85124 825 7

Paperback

Published Oct 2013

Quantity:

CATALOG SUSPENDED

Alfred Barratt Brown

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Machine and the Worker</span>

The Machine and the Worker
By Alfred Barratt Brown

'This is one of the most interesting, informative and insightful books I have encountered on this topic. It is both cautionary and inspirational …

Although it was published in 1934 when the author was Principal of Ruskin College, Oxford, its great strength is that it still provides a multidisciplinary framework in which to consider how to progress further the matters addressed. It shows the need to campaign for socially useful systems in an era of exponential technological change, when the gap between technology's potential and its reality becomes a yawning chasm.

Those initiating technological change usually provide an account of its positive features only. History shows, however, that it is a double-edged affair, a form of Faustian exchange. The author deals deftly with this by providing a sort of balance sheet of the gain and losses of such systems …

This is indeed a tour de force and is written in a form that makes it not only accessible but a delightful read. It should be widely read and discussed, not least in departments of engineering and design, as works of this kind are surely as important as mathematical or machine theory.

The Barratt Brown family are to be thanked for making this book available for republication, and Spokesman Books should also be thanked for making it a reality.'

Mike Cooley, from his new foreword

Price: £9.99

216 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 0 85124 838 7

Published Oct 2014

Quantity:

CATALOG SUSPENDED

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Great Democrats</span>

Great Democrats
Edited by Alfred Barratt Brown

Long out of print, this 2012 edition of Great Democrats restores to new generations a seminal work in the struggle against the rise of fascism in Europe during the 1930s.

'There are great men who have also been Democrats, but the figures chosen for these pages are principally those of men and women who have been great as Democrats - great, that is to say, either in the extent to which they embodied in their lives and characters the democratic temper and attitude to mankind, or in the measure of their contribution to the democratic movement.'
Alfred Barratt Brown in his Preface, 1934

'For an historian the Contents page of Alfred Barratt Brown's book is exciting enough, particularly when combined with 1934, its date of publication. How is it possible not to plunge straight into Frances Evelyn Countess of Warwick on Joseph Arch? … And then there is Henry Nevinson on Edward Carpenter, Katherine Bruce Glasier on Keir Hardie, Oliver Baldwin on William Morris … The imaginative author-subject couplings will whet any appetite. G.D.H. Cole on William Cobbett; Ray Strachey (novelist and author of the classic The Cause: a short history of the Women's Movement in Great Britain, 1928) on Millicent Fawcett … Bertrand Russell on Thomas Paine … '
Stephen Yeo in his Foreword, 2013

' … the whole purpose of my father's book was to respond to the current rise to power of the dictatorships and, most particularly, of Hitler … and to recognise that Democracy, and being a Great Democrat, is not just about embracing a form of government, but a principle of government, espousing the triad of liberty, equality and fraternity.'
Michael Barratt Brown in his Introduction, 2013

Free Downloads
Click on name to download

Introduction by Michael Barratt Brown
Edward Carpenter by Henry W. Nevinson
William Cobbett by G. D. H. Cole
Eugene Debs by Norman Thomas
William Godwin by H. N. Brailsford
Jean Jaures by Henry de Man
Mary Macarthur by Mary Agnes Hamilton
Mary Wollstonecraft by Evelyn Sharp

Reviews:
Reviewed by Anthony Arblaster in Red Pepper - March 2014

Price: £24.95

724 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 0 85124 827 1

Published Sept 2013

Quantity:

CATALOG SUSPENDED

Economics

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Social Costs of Business Enterprise</span>

The Social Costs of Business Enterprise
By K W Kapp
Edited by Michael Barratt Brown

Social Costs is an environmental classic. The main purpose of this book is to present a detailed study of how private enterprise, under conditions of unregulated competition, tends to impose social costs which are not accounted for in entrepreneurial outlays. Instead these costs are shifted to and borne by third persons and the community as a whole. Thus, this book deals at the same time with a specific technical economic question and with broad issues of social philosophy and economic knowledge.

Further information on K. William Kapp.

'Kapp's influence is growing in ecological economics. Social Costs is one of the greatest economics books of the 20th century.'

Julien-François Gerber
Department of Economics
Harvard University

Price: £25.00

348 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 0 85124 637 6

Quantity:

CATALOG SUSPENDED

European Labour Forum

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Right to Work</span>

The Right to Work
The Loss of our First Freedom
Edited by Ken Coates
with chapters by: Michael Barratt Brown,
John Hughes and John Wells

A whole generation has been born, completed its schooling, and entered an increasingly hostile labour market, without ever knowing any relief from mass unemployment. In Britain, calamitous levels of unemployment amongst young people are shadowed by poverty, rising crime, and growing fear of crime.

In this book John Wells has shown how far the British unemployment statistics are polluted, and his testimony has not been effectively challenged. His evidence is reinforced by that of John Hughes, who has shown a similar level of pollution of the employment statistics.

Price: £6.99

122 pages | Paperback

ISBN: 978 0 85124 578 2

ELF Books 9

Quantity:

CATALOG SUSPENDED

Politics

Workers' Control

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Can the workers run industry?</span>

Can the workers run industry?
Edited by Ken Coates

Contributions by Hugh Scanlon, Ian Mikardo, Ernie Roberts, Michael Barratt Brown, Terry Lacey and others.

With the British Economy staggering from one crisis to the next, the issue of Industrial Democracy becomes increasingly important. Behind all the discussion of little Neddies, Income Policies and rationalisation people are beginning to realise that the most vital economic resource is the initiative of the workers themselves. The basic problem facing the C.B.I. and the Trade Unions is to ensure that the week's work becomes a challenge rather than a burden.

The aim of this book is to show that the best cure for the 'roll on Friday' attitude is to involve the workers actively and vitally in the process of making decisions. The old formula of nationalisation is not enough: there is a demand for new, experimental forms of democratic organisation.

In this volume trade union leaders, shop stewards, university teachers and political leaders present their views and plans for the future of industrial democracy in Britain.

Price: £5.95

254 pages | Paperback

First published 1972

ISBN: 0 90174 0306

Quantity:

CATALOG SUSPENDED

The Spokesman

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

Revolutions
Altering the World Money
Tom Paine ... Two, Three, Many Revolutions
Spokesman 104
Edited by Ken Coates

Paul Rogers - Drone Wars in Pakistan
Ken Coates - Blowback or Frame-up in Lancashire?
Peter Linebaugh - Tom Paine: Two, Three, Many Revolutions ...

***
Altering the World Money
Michael Barratt Brown - On Redistribution
Stuart Holland - On Bretton Woods
Ken Coates - Unfinished Business
Zhou Xiaochuan - How to Do It

***
John Dugard - Apartheid in Palestine

***
Russell Tribunal on Palestine
Nurit Peled - Until When?
Ken Coates - Russell Tribunals
Richard Falk - Situation in Palestine

***
George Galloway MP - Viva Palestina
Tony Simpson - Licence to Torture
Bryan Gould - I Disown this Government

Dossier
Reviews

Price: £6.00

104 pages | A5 size

ISBN: 978 0 85124 7687

Quantity:

CATALOG SUSPENDED

Socialist Renewal

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Third Way or Feeding the Fat Cats</span>

Third Way or Feeding the Fat Cats
By Michael Barratt Brown

In this pamphlet Michael Barratt Brown critically examines Prof. Anthony Giddens's Fabian Pamphlet 'Where Now for New Labour?' Giddens's stated aim is to defend New Labour, and the Third Way, against its critics, with a wholesale onslaught on 'old Labour'. Barratt Brown looks in detail at what Giddens means by 'old Labour', and exposes these 'myths of the left'. He then assesses New Labour's embrace of the private sector in providing public services and the role of business in government. "In regard to the major aim of reducing inequalities in Britain, Giddens is entirely complacent about New Labour ... " writes Barratt Brown, who cites the relevant statistics on widening income gaps between rich and poor.

Price: £2.00

16 pages | ISBN: 978 085124 6642

2nd Series Number 10

Quantity:

CATALOG SUSPENDED

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Third Way ... To Where?</span>

Third Way ... To Where?
By Michael Barratt Brown

When the third way was invented, not the least of its attractions to its promoters was that if offered a convenient bridge to enable President Clinton to take a position on the same platform as European Socialist Prime Ministers, without undergoing an inconvenient 'conversion' to some form of social democracy. The Third Way was a perfect foil for such an impostor. It afforded a media-friendly cover for the extension of neo-liberal politics of deregulation, the untrammelling of market forces, privatisation and the roll-back of welfare.

'The ideas associated with the Third Way are still the wave of the future for progressive politics' says Tony Blair. Ken Coates and Michael Barratt Brown examine what this 'wave of the future' has brought us, and where it may yet wash us up.

Price: £2.00

20 pages | ISBN: 978 085124 6505

2nd Series Number 4

Quantity:

CATALOG SUSPENDED

Spokesman Books | Michael Barratt Brown

This catalog is reserved for registered customers only. Please contact us to register.