Remembering Robin Beste: co-founder of Public Reading Rooms

Robin with author Heathcote Williams

Public Reading Rooms is very sad to announce that Robin Beste who was one of the founders and the driving force behind both the PRR website and its publishing project has died. Robin had a very serious heart attack in late May and never recovered. He was active on the left for many decades both in his union and on the revolutionary left and in recent years as a leading figure in Stop the War and in his local Labour party. Among many other things he was a huge supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and of the Palestinian struggle. A lovely and amazing person much loved by all. This is the tribute from Andrew Burgin who worked with Robin on the Public Reading Rooms project. We will be publishing all others in due course.

New Edition of the radical left journal Transform

The latest issue of Transform will be published next week. It carries articles and contributions from the No Pasaran conference that the journal organised earlier this year. The conference brought together activists from across Europe to confront the growing threat from the rise of the far right. The journal can be ordered post free here. Articles include:

• The reactionary rebellion / Walter Baier
• The new far-right and the authoritarian turn: Hungary at the semi-periphery of the capitalist world system / Tamás Krausz
• What is the situation in Germany with the AfD? / Cornelia Hildebrandt
• Progressive nationalism: combatting the far-right in the struggle for national liberation / Paul Gavan
• The populist far-right upsurge in Brazil: the desire for self-repression and the banalisation of evil / Matheus Lock
• Brexit and the progress of Jeremy Corbyn / Michael Wongsam
• Managerialism and the British state: marketisation, work intensification and resistance / Miguel Martinez Lucio
• Slavoj Žižek and the ‘yellow vests’ / Boris Kagarlitsky
• Fighting the far-right – the costs and benefits of hindsight / Sue Sparks

Mutiny! A Radical Interactive Debate on the Political Crisis

Thousands of people have been convinced that socialism is possible after years of defeat. This is part of a series of discussions to define what socialism means in the 21st century, hosted by socialists active in the Labour Party, unions and elsewhere. Full details here