Our Books

Marx’s Das Kapital and capitalism today by Robert Griffiths

The Life and Times of James Connolly

by C Desmond Greaves

The Impact of the Russian Revolution on Britain

The Impact of the Russian Revolution on Britain - Robin Page Arnot

£8 (plus £1.50 p&p)  ISBN 978-1-907464-30-0

First published for the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, this book documents the immediate and lasting effects on Britain of the events in Russia in 1917. Robin Page Arnot describes the varying reactions of Britain’s press, its established political parties and its Labour movement, from the February Revolution all the way through to the Wars of Intervention.

He reveals just how much the British ruling class sought to destroy the world’s first workers’ state, and the struggles by Britain’s working class to prevent that.

On the occasion of the Centenary of the October Revolution, Manifesto Press is proud to make this work of scholarship, long out of print, available for a new generation of readers and students of history.

The Councils of Action 1920 and the British Labour Movement’s Defence of Soviet Russia

The Councils of Action 1920 and the British Labour Movement’s Defence of Soviet Russia - John Foster

£4 (plus £1.50 p&p)  ISBN 978-1-907464-28-7

When, close to a century ago, the labour movement in Britain prepared to take industrial action in defence of the young Soviet Union, the ruling class was terrified.

On 7 August 1920 the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party jointly convened a Council of Action with the aim of preventing the British government from declaring war on Soviet Russia or of supplying troops or munitions to its enemies. Over 300 local Councils of Action were subsequently called into being to provide the organisational base for a general strike.

Two days later the government abandoned its plans and instead backed Soviet proposals for a peace treaty with the principal aggressor, Poland. This was the first occasion on which the leadership of the British Labour movement had formally countenanced industrial action to bring pressure to bear on a ‘constitutional’ government. Its success in doing so provided both precedent and rationale for the 1926 General Strike.

John Foster examines the Councils of Action against the background of a rising militancy and in the political context of a government divided over how to restore Britain’s power, the ideological challenges to right-wing Labour arising from the Irish national movement and Soviet power and the formation of the Communist Party.