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From strength to strength
JAN WOOLF celebrates the forward march of radical publisher Pluto Press, which is about to mark its 50th birthday
PIC CAP On a mission: Pluto’s managing director Veruschka Selbach
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.
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