Second Imperialist World War: book launch
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There is to be a book launch of Unpatriotic History of the Second World War by James Heartfield this Thursday (27 September) at 7.30 in The Vine, 86 Highgate Road, London NW5 1PB.
I’ve just read it and it’s good. It vindicates our position of opposition to the Second World War as a conflict. on both sides, between rival imperialist powers for a re-division of the world, and not at all a war of “democracy” against “fascism”, in which both sides screwed down the working class and committed atrocities.
I’m going to try to go to this book launch and see if I can get some copies at a reduced cost.
Two of us went to the book launch as well as 30 or so others, mainly members of James Heartfield’s family and ex-RCPers (who used to publish Living Marxism, of which he was a member). He seemed a decent bloke. I gave him a copy of the May 1985 Standard (50th anniversary of the outbreak of the slaughter) and in his speech he mentioned that when he set out to write the book he thought that only the CP (between 1939 and 22 June 1941) had denounced the war as a conflict between rival imperialist blocs but had since learned that anarchists, the ILP and the Socialist Standard had also taken up this position (throughout the war). I bought 5 copies at a discount (£16 as opposed to £20) for resale to members. He also said he’d be prepared to do a talk on it. So we’ll have to take that up.
James Heartfield's talk on his book has now been fixed. It will be the next in the series of Sunday evening talks at 52 Clapham High Street. The date is Sunday 11 November (Armistice Day) at 6pm. Copies of the book should be on sale at a reduced price. See http://www.heartfield.org
Well done Adam and the others. I hope Heartfield's book gets to a 2nd edition and he can mention our opposition to WW2.I hope the meeting on a very appropriate day goes well.Also good to note that HO is widening the stock of non-party members it carries. We should make a policy of purchasing books that agree with our case. We have the space for a special section on the shelves.
Yes, we did try to record it but don't know whether we did. See report elsewhere on this forum (message #12):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/comments/unpatriotic-history-second-world-war-clapham-600pm?page=1
Hey there,Yeah, thankfully it's come out ok – definitely good enough to work with. I'll make it No.1 on the 'to-do' list.Cheers,Robert
The recording of James Heartfield's talk has been uploaded to our audio section -http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/audio/unpatriotic-history-2nd-world-war
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