PUBLISHING house  Pluto Press was born out of the radical consciousness brought about by the Vietnam war, the student movement and grassroots workers' organisations of the 1960s, a time of possibilities and hope for political change.

That generation was the offspring of those who fought fascism in WWII and were themselves politicised to the point of overthrowing Churchill and ushering in the welfare state of Bevan and Attlee.

They set up a momentum of change that could not be halted by what was seen as Harold Wilson’s rather weedy version of socialism that kept in place capitalist structures with its built-in inequalities. Inspired by Karl Marx, this was the youth who wanted a true egalitarianism.

The deeper history, of course, was the Paris Commune, the Communist Manifesto and the imperialist disaster of WWI in which the seeds of fascism were sown. This all may sound a tad portentous, but 50th birthdays are like that — bringing on some ancestral probing.

Pluto was established in 1969 by Richard Kuper, a member of International Socialists, with a series of pamphlets of accessible revolutionary theory as well as the history of working-class movements.

The first publication was Tony Cliff’s The Employers Offensive: Productivity Deals and How to Fight Them, aimed at industrial workplace organisers. Mike and Nina Kidron grasped the baton some years later and seminal texts followed — Sheila Rowbotham’s 300 Years of Women’s Oppression and the Fight Against It and the Big Red Diaries. Playscripts in collaboration with Max Stafford Clark and the Royal Court theatre were also published.

Many subsequent titles nourished the movement with theory, history and ideas and Pluto became the publishing house that empowered people, fuelling the political discussions needed for social change.

There have been hundreds of publications since, most recently After Grenfell: Violence, Resistance and Response, Staying Power by Peter Fryer and Living in Fire, the forthcoming biography of James Baldwin by Bill V Mullen.

Theory and practice is a radical mantra that you need both to make change happen, whether by revolution or the slower democratic processes, and the heady stuff that Pluto provided helped the movement’s beating heart.

By the 1980s, Pluto was struggling to survive Thatcher’s deregulation, privatisation and the neoliberalism stoking that other god of the underworld — money — and the ensuing financial stress on the press.

Her intention to break the miners and left-wing publishing houses was working, to a point. The publishing house was in the red for a decade but rescue came in the form of Roger Van Zwanenberg, who took over in 1987 after Pluto had gone into administration.

“At that time, the surge in left publications was in serious decline,” he recalls. “Only Verso and Zed Books were left from a huge creative moment in this history of left publishing.

“Within two years the USSR collapsed and I had to lead Pluto for a decade when Marxism was in decline. Pluto offered me, a committed socialist, an opportunity for a lifetime’s fulfilment in socialist publishing.

“I had learned my socialism on the African continent, which freed me from the sectarianism that tore the left apart in Britain. My business acumen was gained from a course at business school, and so, ironically, I could use the tools of capitalism to help a socialist publisher thrive.”

Pluto has been publishing great books ever since, under the stewardships of Anne Beech and more recently Veruschka Selbach, who became managing director in early 2017. Since then, Pluto has become a social enterprise and attracted investment.

“Pluto has struggled and flourished through five tumultuous decades and we are ready for five more,” Selbach says. “We have plans that expand both the list and our reach. Most importantly, though, we put people and mission before profit.”

Part of Pluto’s expansion is the introduction in September of the Outspoken series of books written by young people for young people, combining contemporary politics with personal stories and powerful hidden histories.

Pluto is desperately needed in this era of rampant neoliberalism. It’s a vital element in the class struggle, ensuring that knowledge is maintained and passed on. So long live the god of the underworld. It’s a truism that you can’t un-know what you know.