The basis for 20th-century social democracy in Britain is gone, argues ANDREW MURRAY – but there are measures a Burnham government could take that would break with neoliberalism
AS LENIN left the world, Ramsay MacDonald entered Downing Street. The first workers’ state lost its leader, and Britain gained its first Labour government on the same day, a century gone Sunday last.
One could write the story of the 20th-century workers’ movement through that moment. A comrade sent me a picture of hundreds of workers standing in silent homage at the news of Lenin’s passing. In Poplar.
Ramsay MacDonald’s memorial was the ruin of the movement he had built, its dreams traded in for the friendship of Lady Londonderry and the applause of the bankers — the “greatest betrayal in the political history of the country,” in Clem Attlee’s words.
JOHN REES replies to Claudia Webbe
MARTIN GRAHAM welcomes, with reservations, a scholarly addition to the unfinished business of understanding how capital works on a world scale
Building is the solution for much of our housing crisis – and will also help to address poverty, ill health, and even anti-social behaviour and alienation, writes KENNY MacASKILL
Corbyn and Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ represents the first attempt at mass socialist organisation since the CPGB’s formation in 1921, argues DYLAN MURPHY


