Sandra Bloodworth – författare

Tom Freeman was a lifelong revolutionary and a member of the International Socialist Tendency for nearly 30 years. His work stands as a valuable contribution to what can be considered the field of “Lenin Studies” that has been blossoming over the past decade, taking its place with the varied, important contributions of Lars Lih, Antonio Negri, Alan Shandro, Tamás Krausz, August Nimtz, and others.

His clear and meticulous research reveals a continuity between Lenin’s revolutionary organisational perspectives of the early 1900s with those advanced during the revolutionary mass upsurge of 1905 – and this in a way that can be useful for revolutionary activists of today and tomorrow. Freeman highlights the dynamic interplay of theory and practice, of Marxism and mass struggle, of intellectual activists and radicalising workers and mass insurgencies that shaped the past and are the hope of the future.

Here are stories that challenge the conventional views of working class women and their struggles. Strikes and demonstrations throughout the 20th century shatter traditional images of women as passive victims. From the women of Broken Hill, who fought strike-breakers with axes and broom handles in the early part of the century through the 1930s Depression and World War II through to the postwar period, women played an important role in strikes and unemployed movements.

Rebel Women also challenges those accounts which see the enemy as ''patriarchy'' rather than capitalism, or which deny the relevance of the class altogether. These women fought their oppression alongside working men, as participants in - and leaders of - the class struggle. Frequently they had to confront opposition from middle class or upper class women. Many were sustained by a socialist vision.

First published in 1999, this new enhanced edition makes these inspiring stories available to new generations.