By Mike Phipps and Michael Calderbank
Our friends over at LabourList recently published reading recommendations from self-styled “moderate” Luke Akehurst.
We have a few of our own to add – to correct a little of the imbalance.
If you have only time to read two books during the enforced COVID-19 isolation, perhaps the key ones are
Ralph Miliband – Parliamentary Socialism (the classic critique of “Labourism” and its commitment to Parliamentarism)
and this recently published assessment of Miliband’s classic thesis in the light of the experience of Corbynism,
Colin Leys and Leo Panitch – Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn.
However, if you have a little more time on your hands here are some more recommendations:
From Attlee to Wilson
Ken Coates – The Crisis of British Socialism
Paul Foot – The Politics of Harold Wilson
(and as a telling aside, Ervand Abrahamian on The Coup (in Iran – with Labour’s disastrous support for the anti-democratic coup against the Mossadegh government and support for the Shah).
From Callaghan to Kinnock
Tony Benn – Diaries
Hilary Wainwright – Labour: A Tale of Two Parties
Peter Tatchell – The Battle for Bermondsey
Mike Marqusee and Richard Heffernan – Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
The Blair Years
Lewis Minkin – The Blair Supremacy
Liz Davies – Through the Looking Glass
Mark Seddon – Standing for Something
Colin Leys – Market-driven Politics
Corbynism
Alex Nunns – The Candidate
Andrew Murray – The Fall and Rise of the British Left
Mike Phipps (ed) – For the Many..
Mark Perryman (ed) – The Corbyn Effect; Corbynism from Below
Christine Berry and Joe Guinan – People Get Ready
Mark Seddon – Jeremy Corbyn and the Strange Rebirth of Labour England
Of course, politics doesn’t begin and end with the what happens in the Labour Party – we’ll follow up with a list of interesting reading on the issues any socialist politics will need to engage with in the years ahead.
Send us your recommendations? Tweet them to @LabourHub
