Simon Hannah – författare

The economic and political growth of China and its transformation into a capitalist world power is one of the defining features of the modern age. It has shifted economic relations and the balance of power. With hundreds of millions of workers in China - the world's largest working-class population - they hold the future of the world in their hands. What China is and how it is developing is not an academic matter. This book is a contribution to the debate on China.

*A Guardian Book of the Day*

The defeat of socialist firebrand Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Leader in 2019 confirmed Tony Benn’s famous retort ''the Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it.''

For over a hundred years, the British Labour Party has been a bastion for working class organisation and struggle. However, has it ever truly been on the side of the workers? Where do its interests really lie? And can we rely on it to provide a barrier against right-wing forces?

Simon Hannah’s smart and succinct history of the Labour left guides us through the twists and turns of the party, from the Bevanite movement and the celebrated government of Clement Attlee, through the emergence of a New Left in the 1970s and the Blairism of the 1990s, to Corbyn’s defeat and his replacement by Keir Starmer.

This new edition is updated throughout, with a new final chapter and conclusion bringing the story up to date.

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis with the pandemic, climate disaster and an economic crash. Resistance is occurring on every continent against the capitalist system. The vision of Karl Marx for a new society is still relevant today. Simon Hannah gives an outline of Marxism and how it can help us to free people from exploitation and save the planet.

Thirty years ago, a social movement helped bring down one of the most powerful British Prime Ministers of the 20th Century. For the 30th anniversary of the Poll Tax rebellion, Simon Hannah looks back on those tumultuous days of resistance, telling the story of the people that beat the bailiffs, rioted for their rights and defied a government.

Starting in Scotland where the ''Community Charge'' was first trialled, Can''t Pay, Won''t Pay immerses the reader in the gritty history of the rebellion. Amidst the drama of large scale protests and blockaded estates a number of key figures and groups emerge: Neil Kinnock and Tommy Sheridan; Militant, Class War and the Metropolitan Police.

Assessing this legacy today, Hannah demonstrates the centrality of the Poll Tax resistance as a key chapter in the history of British popular uprisings, Labour Party factionalism, the anti-socialist agenda and failed Tory ideology.