Kenneth Sidney Coates (16 September 1930 – 27 June 2010) was a British politician and writer. He chaired the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (BRPF) and edited The Spokesman,The Spokesman, back issues the BRPF magazine launched in March 1970. He was a Member of the European Parliament from the Labour Party from 1989 to 1998 until his expulsion, and was then an independent member of GUE/NGL from 1998 to 1999. Coates also played leading roles in the Institute for Workers' Control and European Nuclear Disarmament.Lambie, George, "A Political Life" (interview with Ken Coates).

Early years Coates was born in Leek, Staffordshire, and was brought up in Worthing, West Sussex, where he was educated at Worthing High School for Boys. When called up for national service in 1948, he chose to become a coal miner rather than be conscripted into the British army to fight in the Malayan Emergency. He later won a scholarship in 1956 to the University of Nottingham and achieved a first in Sociology.

After the war, he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain but left following the breach between Joseph Stalin and Josip Broz Tito, whom he defended. After the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, Coates and Pat Jordan became the focal point of a group of Marxists with a developing interest in Trotskyism. After attending the fifth world congress of the Fourth International in 1958, of which they were very critical, Coates played a central role in founding the International Group, forerunner of the International Marxist Group.

Political career and European Parliament Coates contested Nottingham South in 1983, but lost by several thousand votes.

From 1989 to 1998 he was a Labour Party member of the European Parliament, and spent five years as president of its Human Rights Subcommittee. In 1998 Coates was expelled from the Labour Party because he left the Party of European Socialists to join the European United Left/Nordic Green Left in the European Parliament, after criticising New Labour's move to the right.

It was while a member of the European Parliament that Coates was in contact with Vadim Zagladin, one of Mikhail Gorbachev's advisors, about the idea of a joint meeting between the European Parliament and the Supreme Soviet. Coates persuaded the European Parliament to explore the possibility of such a joint meeting, as a practical way of exploring Gorbachev's call for a 'common European home' and supporting his democratic reforms. Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister, visited the European Parliament, and said he would be willing to be present at a joint meeting. Coates visited Zagladin in Moscow, who offered a four-point programme of stages for realisation of the Joint Special Session, as it came to be known.

Coates pioneered a number of initiatives to help focus the institutions of European civil society beginning with a very successful Pensioners' Parliament, and also including a special Parliament of Disabled People, and two Europe-wide conferences of unemployed people. He strongly supported the Delors programme for full employment in Europe, and became rapporteur of the Parliament's Temporary Committee on Employment, which carried two major reports with almost unanimous support of the European Parliament.

Author and academic Coates was the co-author, with Tony Topham, of the official history of the Transport and General Workers' Union, among numerous other books on poverty, political philosophy, democratic and humanistic socialism, social and economic issues, peace and disarmament as well as on democracy and human rights. His book The Case of Nikolai Bukharin (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1978) is regarded by some to have served as the international basis for the rehabilitation of that Bolshevik leader. He also continued to support the democratic left in Eastern Europe, and was a member of the advisory board of the Novi Plamen magazine.

Coates was special professor in the Department of Adult Education at the University of Nottingham (1990–2004).

Books written or co-written

St Ann's: Poverty, deprivation and morale in a Nottingham Community, with Richard Silburn, University of Nottingham, 1967 & Spokesman 2007 Industrial Democracy in Great Britain, with Tony Topham, MacGibbon & Kee, 1967 The Dirty War in Mr. Wilson, Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, 1967 Workers' Control: A Book of Readings and Witnesses for Workers' Control, , McGibbon and Kee 1968 A Future for British Socialism?, Editor, Centre for Socialist Education, 1968 Can the workers run industry?, Editor, Sphere, 1968 Czechoslovakia and Socialism, Editor, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, 1969 How and Why Industry Must Be Democratised, with Wyn Williams, Institute for Workers' Control, 1969 The Debate on Workers' Control, Editor and Contributor, Institute for Workers' Control, 1970 Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen, , Penguin Books 1970 & Spokesman Books 2007 The Crisis of British Socialism, Spokesman Books 1971 Spokesman Books publish books by Bertrand Russell and The Spokesman journal. Prevent the Crime of Silence, Editor, Allen Lane, 1971 Essays on Industrial Democracy, Spokesman Books, 1971 Essays on Socialist Humanism, Editor, Spokesman, 1971 The New Unionism: the case for worker's control, with Tony Topham, Penguin Books, 1974. Socialism and the Environment, Editor, Spokesman, 1972 Detente and Socialist Democracy, Editor, Spokesman, 1975 Beyond Wage Slavery, Spokesman, 1977 Democracy in the Labour Party, Spokesman, 1977 The Shop Stewards' Guide to the Bullock Report, with Tony Topham, Spokesman, 1977 The Just Society, Edited with Fred Singleton, Spokesman, 1977 The Right to Useful Work, Editor, with Mike Cooley Spokesman, 1977 The Case of Nikoli Bukharin, Spokesman, 1978 What Went Wrong, Editor, Spokesman, 1979 Trade Unions in Britain, with Tony Topham, , Spokesman, 1980 & Fontana Press, 1988 Beyond the Bulldozer, with Richard Silburn, University of Nottingham, 1980 & , Spokesman 1987 How to Win, Editor, Spokesman, 1981 Work-ins, Sit-ins and Industrial Democracy, Spokesman, 1981 Eleventh Hour for Europe, Editor, Spokesman, 1981 Heresies, Spokesman, 1982 The Social Democrats: Those who went and those who stayed, Spokesman 1983 The Most Dangerous Decade, Spokesman 1984 Trade unions and politics, with Tony Topham, , Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1986 China and the Bomb, Spokesman 1986 Joint Action for Jobs, A New Internationalism, Editor, Spokesman 1986 Perestroika: Global Challenge, Editor, Spokesman 1988 Think Globally, Act Locally, Spokesman 1988 The History of the Transport and General Workers' Union, with Tony Topham, , Basil Blackwell 1991 & Spokesman 1994 Human Rights in the World, Spokesman 1992 A European Recovery Programme: Restoring Full Employment, Edited with Michael Barratt Brown, Spokesman 1993 Common Ownership: Clause Four and the Labour Party, Spokesman 1995 The Right to Work: The Loss of Our First Freedom, Editor, Spokesman 1995 Full Employment for Europe, with Stuart Holland, Spokesman 1995 Dear Commissioner, Spokesman 1996 The Blair Revelation: Deliverance for whom?, with Michael Barratt Brown, Spokesman 1996 Community Under Attack, with Michael Barratt Brown, Spokesman 1997 Full Employment: A European Appeal, Spokesman 1998 Workers' Control: Another World Is Possible, , Spokesman Books 2003 Empire No More, , Spokesman Books 2004

References

Further reading A Political Life (Coates interview) Lifelong Comrade (reflections by John Daniels) Tributes to Coates published in The Spokesman Obituary in the Telegraph Obituary in The Guardian Stan Newens obituary in The Independent Giles Oakley obituary in The Independent

External links Ken Coates Archive at marxists.org