Contributors

Michael Meacher (1939-2015) was Labour MP for Oldham from 1970 until he died. He was a Minister both in the 1970s and, from 1997 to 2003, for the Environment. Since then, he was a leading critic of New Labour policy on the economy, outspoken on climate change and parliamentary reform. He was a prolific writer on a wide variety of issues and his regular contributions to Left Futures are greatly missed.

James Elliott is Editor of Left Futures having previously been assistant editor.

Jon Lansman, Former editor is a veteran Bennite and party democracy campaigner.  He gave up tribalism in the Blair years used to say he believed that winning the Labour Party for socialism and sustainability is the Left’s least bad option.  That was before Jeremy Corbyn became leader (Jon was Director of Operations in his campaign in 2015) – now he says it’s the Left’s only serious option. Jon is Chair of Momentum.

Conrad Landin, formerly associate editor of Left Futures and now a journalist at the Morning Star, has previously written for the the Guardian, the New Statesman and Labour Uncut. He represents the East of England on the Young Labour national committee. His own website is here.

Ann Pettifor is an analyst of the global financial system and co-author of the Green New Deal. She predicted an Anglo-American debt-deflationary crisis back in 2003, and is known for her work on sovereign debt and Jubilee 2000. A fellow of the new economics foundation, director of Advocacy International and and co-founder of PRIME, the economic think-tank, she blogs at Debtonation and the Huffington Post.

Kate Hudson is General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, an officer of the Stop the War Coalition and a a Visiting Research Fellow to London South Bank University where she was formerly Head of Social and Political Studies, as well as being a leading member of the Coalition of Resistance and the Greece Solidarity Campaign. Kate has in the past been a member of both the Communist Party and Respect before becoming a founding member of Left Unity.

Keith Ewing is Professor of Public Law at King’s College London and a leading scholar in public law and labour law, and author of The Bonfire of the Liberties. He is also He is also the President of the Institute of Employment Rights and a regular contributor to the Guardian, Tribune and the Morning Star.

Bryan Gould, a New Zealander, was also a British Member of Parliament from 1974 to 1979, and again from 1983 to 1994. He was a member of the Labour Party’s Shadow Cabinet from 1986 to 1994, and stood unsuccessfully for the leadership of the party in 1992. In July 1994 he returned to New Zealand and became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Waikato, serving until his retirement in 2004.

Lucy Reese is a Labour party activist, FE college teacher and TV producer from Kentish Town, North London. She is a mum of three, and first became actively involved in campaigning when her local children’s centre was under threat. Her articles were described as “mesmerising” by Camden New Journal deputy editor Richard Osley.

David Pavett is a retired maths/science/philosophy teacher. He maintains interests in philosophy, religion, history, psychology, maths and music and is currently working on arguments about dialectics in Marxist debate. He is active in the Socialist Education Association and in his local CLP.

Mark Seddon is a former editor of Tribune, member of the Labour party’s National Executive Committee and the United Nations and New York correspondent for Al Jazeera International. He is now speechwriter to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon. He blogs at LabourList, Guardian CommentisFree and Big Think.

Phil Burton-Cartledge blogs at A Very Public Sociologist and the New Statesman. He is an active Labour Party member in Stoke, and a lecturer at Derby University.

Andy Newman is Labour prospective parliamentary candidate for Chippenham, and an activist in the GMB trade union. He is a contributor to Socialist Unity. His personal website is Andy Newman for Chippenham.

Mike Phipps is joint editor of a fortnightly e-newsletter produced by Iraq Occupation Focus and of its website Justice for Iraq. He is a long-standing anti-war and labour movement activist and contributes regularly to the LRC’s Labour Briefing and other publications on international and domestic politics.

Owen Jones is a North London lefty originally fromStockport, former flunky for unions and Labour MPs, and author of  Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. He blogs at jonesblog, is a columnist for the Independent tweets as @owenjones84 and he’s been published and interviewed in more places than anyone else who looks his age. He was named by Left Foot Forward as Most Influential Left-Wing Thinker of the Year and, more ominously, by the Daily Telegraph as one of the  ‘Top 100 Most Influential People on the Left’ for 2011.

Dominic Curran, is a member of Unite the union and the Coventry Labour party. Known among his comrades for his encyclopaedic knowledge of left-wing folksongs, he is active in the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. His latest project has been instigating the “Red Warwick revival” in his university, where he studies politics and is active in the Labour Club. He has also worked as an actor in radio and film and has written for Chartist magazine.

David Osler is a journalist, author and blogger of an unorthodox Marxist perspective. He blogs  on his own blog and at Liberal Conspiracy and his book, Labour Party plc: New Labour as a Party of Business, is still available here.

Ann Black is a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee, was Chair of the Labour Party from September 2009 to September 2010, and is Secretary of Oxford East Constituency Labour Party and vice chair of Unison’s political committee in her region. She works as a computer programmer at Oxford Brookes University.

Ben Folley is a leading member of Next Generation Labour and works for CND. Originally from Cambridge, he was a student in Liverpool and is now a Labour Party activist in Islington.

Michael Burke is an economic consultant. He has worked in the City and was formerly Senior International Economist with Citibank in London. He co-authored Stimulating Recovery, on solutions to the Irish economic crisis and has written extensively on the British, Asian and European economies. He blogs regularly for Socialist Economic Bulletin and is a co-founder of PRIME, the economic think-tank.

Carl Packman is a health researcher, writer and blogger. He has written for the New Statesman, the Guardian, Tribune Magazine, The Philosopher’s Magazine and the International Journal for Zizek Studies. He blogs at Liberal Conspiracy, Though Cowards Flinch and tweets as @carlraincoat.

Meric Apak is a councillor in the London Borough of Camden, and chair of the housing scrutiny committee. He was previously a tenants’ association leader on his estate. He also blogs at mericapak.wordpress.com, and works as an electrician and plumber. He is a keen angler and an Arsenal fan.

Peter Willsman is Secretary of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee, first elected in 1998, having previously been well known to conference delegates as a member of the  Conference Arrangements Committee for thirteen years. If you’ve heard him speak, you may think he’d enjoyed a career as a stand-up comic, but in fact he was a research officer for NUPE and then Unison.

Andrew Murray is Chief of Staff of Unite the Union and a member of the General Council of the TUC. Until recently, he was Chair of Stop the War coalition, and he is also a former Morning Star journalist.

James Bloodworth has blogged at the Independent, Jacobin and written on his own blog, Obliged to Offend, but is now Editor of Left Foot Forward.

Ben Mitchell is a freelance political analyst providing commentary on current affairs with a particular (but certainly not exclusive) interest in all things British. He writes for Left Foot Forward and is also a contributor for Liberal Conspiracy and tweets as @bmitchellwrites.

Adrian Weir is assistant Chief of Staff of Unite the Union and a leading member of the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom and Cuba Solidarity Campaign.

Billy Hayes is General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union. Bill became a postman in Liverpool in 1974, and after 18 years as a lay union activist before becoming a full time official in various capacities and being elected general secretary in 2001. Billy also serves as vice chair of Trade Union Liaison Organisation (TULO) and vice chair of the National Policy Forum of the Labour Party and he is a member of the TUC General Council.

Richard Murphy is a founder of the Tax Justice Network , advisor to the TUC (for whom he wrote The Missing Billions) and blogs on economic and taxation at Tax Research LLP of which he is Director. His clients include governments, commercial organisations, aid agencies and pressure groups here and abroad.

Duncan Hall is a college lecturer, freelance writer and semi-professional musician.  He is the author of A Pleasant Change from Politics: Music and the British Labour Movement Between the Wars. A veteran of 1990s student politics and Vice Chair of Skipton and Ripon Labour Party, Duncan writes on a wide range of issues, including education policy.

Bob Clay was MP for Sunderland North from 1983 to 1992 and served first as Treasurer then as Secretary of the Campaign Group of MPs.  He never had any time for parliamentary cretinism and two terms was all he could take. He now lives in South Wales.

Mark Drakeford is Professor of Social Policy at Cardiff and was, until recently, senior Special Advisor to the  Welsh Government. The BBC describes him as “providing the intellectual underpinnings for the much vaunted ‘clear red water’ strategy of differentiating Welsh Labour from New Labour;” WalesHome as “arguably the most influential person on the left in Welsh politics over the past decade.” He is also prospective Labour candidate for Cardiff West for the Welsh Assembly.

Uri Avnery was the founder of the hard core of the Israeli peace movement, Gush Shalom, in 1993, having previously sat in the Knesset from 1965–74 and 1979–81. Having also had a long career in journalism, he now writes a weekly column for the Gush Shalom website.

Naomi Fearon is a Councillor in Fleetwood and a member of the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Educational Association, the National Union of Teachers, and the Anti-Academies Alliance. She writes for Left Futures on education policy.

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