Three speakers on Lenin's intellectual and political legacy including an exploration of Lenin on imperialism and the labour aristocracy, and his thinking on the state and revolution.
Professor Mary Davis
Jonathan White (author of Making our History: A Users Guide to Historical Materialism)
Vijay Prashad (Indian historian & journalist, author of forty books)
A panel discussion convened by Gawain Little General Secretary of the GFTU
Our panel is set to deliberate on the latest surge in industrial militancy - its origins and impact - , examining challenges and opportnities in organising and sustaining collective action. The discussion will delve into the lessons gleaned from recent experiences and outline the strategic steps forward, especially in the face of escalating legal assaults on trade union freedoms. We will hear from:
Alex Gordon, President of the RMT Helen O’Connor, Organiser at GMB Xav Cohen, Organiser at Unison
Our panellists are speaking in a personal capacity
Join author & historian Andy Friend for a fascinating insight into the history surrounding the Marx Memorial Library's fresco.
Jack Hastings, an aristocrat with Plantagenet forbears, and Clifford Wight, son of a Swindon railway fitter and his wife, first met in October 1930 as part of Diego Rivera’s team painting a fresco in San Francisco. Five years later their combined efforts produced ‘The Worker of the Future Upsetting the Economic Chaos of the Present’ at Clerkenwell Green. This talk will explore how the project came about, how it was received and the artistic and political journeys that proceeded and followed from it.
Andy Friend is the author of Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship (2017) and John Nash: The Landscape of Love and Solace (2020), both published by Thames and Hudson, and co-curated their accompanying touring exhibitions. He is currently writing a new history of the Artists’ International Association which will be published by T&H in 2025.
Michael Roberts will analyse the current phase of the world capitalist crisis and Britain’s place within it.
Michael Robert's publications include The Great Recession – a Marxist view (2009); The Long Depression (2016); Marx 200: a review of Marx’s economics (2018). He edited, jointly with Guglielmo Carchedi, The World in Crisis (2018) and this year, also with Guglielmo Carchedi, published Capitalism in the twenty first century through the prism of value. He has worked as an economist in the City of London. The meeting will be chaired by Nina Hilton.
A panel marking 50 years since the Shrewsbury ‘conspiracy’
On the 50th anniversary of the Shrewsbury ‘conspiracy’ trial Eileen Turnbull and Terry Renshaw will detail the conspiracy between the Tory government, building contractors and the police to frame and imprison 24 pickets for their participation in the building workers strike the previous year. The meeting will be chaired by John Hendy KC.
Eileen Turnbull is Researcher for the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign and author of A Very British Conspiracy: the Shrewsbury 24 and the Campaign for Justice published this year. A trade union lawyer, she received a doctorate for her research on the trial from the University of Liverpool in 2018. Terry Renshaw, a convicted Shrewsbury picket, is a member of the Campaign Committee.
A panel discussion reflecting on the anniversary of General Pinochet's CIA backed coup against Chile's democratically elected socialist government in 1973
Panelists:
Kate Clark (former Morning Star correspondent)
Carlos Insunza Rojas (CC CP Chile and CUT Central Committee)
An event celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Marx Memorial Library and the 50th anniversaries of the Modern Records Centre and the South Wales Miners' Library.
With Kate Hudson on the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; Liz Payne on British Peace Assembly (British Peace Committee) and Andrew Murray on Stop the War. Meirian Jump in the Chair.
At a time of mounting international crisis the meeting will examine the respective roles, past and present, of Britain’s peace organisations. First, the British Peace Assembly developed at the height of the first Cold War in 1949-1950 as part of the World Peace Council which continues today as the major peace movement in the global south. Second, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament formed in 1956 and is today Britain’s major movement opposing nuclear weapons. Thirdly Stop the War was formed to oppose the invasion of Iraq and is today the major organisation mobilising for peace. The chair, Meirian Jump, will highlight the Library’s Bernal Collection, the major documentary archive of one of the founders of the World Peace Council.
Richard Burgon MP examines the contemporary relevance of Labour’s 1973 programme and the role of Tony Benn in its development and in its contested implementation.
With authors James Crossley and Robert Myles and Richard Clarke in the Chair
The authors will discuss their new book which, by situating the life of Jesus of Nazareth in the turbulent troubles of first-century Palestine, provides a historical-materialist take on the historical Jesus.
This lecture will examine the current strike wave as a period of class mobilisation, looking at the extent to which we can see class consciousness emerging within it and the offering thoughts on the prospects for sustaining and building this consciousness.
This lecture will examine the role of language in class mobilisation and why such moments are both difficult to sustain and critical for social transformation
Labour peer Pauline Bryan, Beth Winter MP, Jon Trickett MP, Sean Griffin & Clare Williams discuss how to develop a democratic challenge to the British state
Labour peer Pauline Bryan will chair a discussion on how to develop a democratic challenge to the British state, one that can enhance the power of the many not the few and secure institutions that can, in a developing process of struggle and mobilisation, advance the class interests of working people across the nations and regions of Britain. Others on the panel include Beth Winter MP, Jon Trickett MP, Sean Griffin who wrote the Labour Party report on "Remaking the British State: For the Many, Not the Few", and Clare Williams, Regional Secretary Unison Northern.
Kenny Coyle, regular contributor on international politics for the Morning Star and director of Praxis Press, will examine the economic and political forces which have led to the new cold war and to the current confrontations in the Far East, Middle East and Europe.
Michael Roberts introduces this new analysis of the contradictions of capitalism in the present century with Mary Davis in the Chair
Marxist economists Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts have a new book: Capitalism in the 21st century - through the prism of value. Basing themselves on Marx's theory of value, Carchedi and Roberts analyse the key contradictions of 21st century capitalism: climate change; economic crises; inflation; robots and AI; imperialism and war; and the transition to socialism.
Professor Thomas Kuczynski, an economic historian and one of the leading Marxist scholars in Germany, will be discussing his new text edition of Capital vol 1, recently published (Hamburg, VSA-Verlag 2017).
Professor Kuczynski writes
After the French edition of Capital vol. I was published, Marx demanded of potential translators into a third language that they always carefully compare the second German edition with the French edition, where he had made many important changes and additions and greatly improved his presentation. Engels did not know anything about these communications from Marx, nor of the instructions Marx had written in preparation for a translation planned but not realised in the USA. He therefore assumed that the entries made by Marx in his hand copies in this connection served to prepare a third German edition; this was a misconception. The new text edition I have compiled is based on the comparison demanded by Marx. The lecture shows some of the major innovations.
Economist Michael Roberts, author of Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century (Pluto 2022), will probe the prevalent explanations of the current crisis and argue that inflation is a symptom not a cause of a crisis whose roots lie in the nature of capitalist accumulation.
An accessible discussion of the current energy crisis, its impact on the industry, workers and the economy and possible ways forward
Simon Coop (Unite National Officer for Energy) discusses the consequences of the private ownership of energy for his members, for consumers and for the British economy. Community energy campaigner Stephanie Martin will examine campaigning initiatives and energy economist Stewart McGill will argue that energy can be taken back into public ownership with minimal longer term cost. Join us for what promises to be a timely discussion on this pressing issue.