Marxist Writers: Peter Sedgwick

Peter Sedgwick
Internet Archive

Peter Sedgwick

1934 – 1983


Biography

Peter Sedgwick was born in 1934 and brought up in Liverpool. He gained a scholarship to Balliol College Oxford where he became a communist, leaving the Communist Party in 1956 with other members of the early New Left. He then joined the Socialist Review Group later to become the International Socialists. He wrote brilliantly for the group’s press, but also involved himself deeply in all the drudgery and activities of the rank rank-and and-file members. He was always a free spirit and was bitterly opposed to the International Socialism group renaming itself as a the Socialist Workers Party in 1976 refusing to join the new organisation while always remaining a man dedicated to the far left. He was editing the works of Victor Serge at the time of his death.

 

Works:

1954

America Over Britain

1955

Psychopolitics

1 January 1959

The Pretenders: An Answer to R. Emmett

Autumn 1959

NATO, the Bomb and Socialism

12 February 1960

Lidchester Leads the Way

Spring 1960

Towards an African socialism

July 1960

Labour’s Great Debate

November 1960

The Mind Of An Assassin (book review)

December 1960

Socialism, the Bomb and Neutralism

Winter 1960/61

The Fight for Workers’ Control

January 1961

Liquidating the Thirties (book review)

March 1961

Russia’s bomb (letter)

April 1961

Review (review)

May 1961

The Direction of Action

July 1961

Crime and Punishment

Autumn 1961

Stalinism without Stalin (review)

December 1961

Non-Violence – Dogma Or Tactic?

Winter 1961/62

The Last Time It Happened (review)

1962

The Reader’s Digest (short story)

Spring 1962

Reason in Revolt (review)

March 1962

Ghana, Guinea, Guiana: Three Strikes

August 1962

Sedgwick disagrees with Rex ... (review)

Autumn 1962

Historical Materialism (review)

Winter 1962

Caucasian Circles (review)

12 December 1962

Who Are the Troublemakers?

Winter 1962

States Of Emergency (review)

1963

Introduction to Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (review)

Spring 1963

The Left Reformist (review)

Autumn 1963

Defending Russia (review)

Autumn 1963

School Psychology (review)

Autumn 1963

Victor Serge and Socialism

Spring 1964

Original Marxism (review)

August 1964

The Two New Lefts

Autumn 1964

France Goes Pop (review)

Winter 1964/65

Colonial Sequelæ (review)

Winter 1964/65

International Nostalgia (review)

Winter 1964/65

Soviets Without Socialism (review)

Winter 1964/65

Whose Maturity? (review)

1 May 1965

Why May Day?

1 July 1965

Agents and Frameups

Autumn 1965

Life with Auntie (review)

Autumn 1965

Theory at the Hour of Wilson (review article)

1966

Natural Science and Human Theory

Autumn 1965

Too Involved (review)

15 February 1966

Nigerian workers

14 March 1966

Ghana – another saviour thrown on the scrapheap

Spring 1966

Centre for Socialist Education

7 April 1966

No noose is good noose (with Harry Goode)

Summer 1966

Doing Time (review)

Summer 1966

Pseud Left Review

5 August 1966

‘Victory for the Vietcong’ – Is it the right slogan?

Autumn 1966

Hash Rehashed (review)

Winter 1966/67

Behaviour and Action (review)

Spring 1967

Too Much, Too Soon (review)

Winter 1967/68

Thoughts in a Dry Season (review)

Winter 1967/68

Tragedy of the Tragedian: An appreciation of Isaac Deutscher

January 1968

Guevara: Right or Wrong?

Autumn 1968

Anarchy and Organisation (review)

9 November 1968

Orwell: honesty, courage and faith in the ‘proles’ (review)

Winter 1968/69

They’re talking about me (review)

1969

FOCUMENT

April 1969

The French May ... (review)

26 April 1969

Welfare work or revolutionary politics – the choice for the Left

8 May 1969

Be careful with nicknames (letter) (with Bob Looker)

15 May 1969

Inspiring – the early struggle for the revolution in Britain (review)

June 1969

George Orwell: International Socialist?

10 July 1969

The appalling silence and inactivity of the British Left as Biafrans face death and starvation ...

13 November 1969

Financiers untroubled by mines ‘takeover’

February 1970

The Polish Spring (review)

February 1970

The Problem of Fascism (review)

12 February 1970

Russell – the eagle (obituary)

April 1970

An Electoral Strategy for the Left (polemic)

May-June 1970

Discussion on factions

10 June 1970

Do we say ‘vote Labour’ until doomsday? (letter)

15 August 1970

Class, race and ‘intelligence’

1971

A Prologue: A Day in the Life of the ’Fifties

January 1972

The Crucial Year: Victor Serge on Class and Party

5 February 1972

Who’s Mad – You or the System? (review)

11 March 1972

Family Life: The critic replies to his critics (letter)

13 May 1972

A Note on Ireland

13 May 1972

A Prophet Revealed

11 November 1972

Endpiece [George Orwell + Radical Scholars] (review)

18 November 1972

Endpiece [Tenants + Old friends]

9 December 1972

Endpiece [Thomas Szasz + Language of Politics] (review)

23 December 1972

Endpiece: What chance for the big man’s widow? [+ Black Panthers] (review)

1972

Editor’s Introduction to Year One of the Russian Revolution

1972

The Allied Part in the Czechoslovak Intervention (Editorial Postscript to Year One of the Russian Revolution)

12 May 1973

Guevara’s other great love (review)

4 August 1973

Death of a Community (review)

February 1975

The return of Bukharin (extended review article)

1976

Farewell, Grosvenor Square

December 1976

The SWP Fraud

1978

Editor’s Note to the 1978 Impression of Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary

1980

A Return to First Things (review article)

1982

The Ethical Dance (review article)

1984

The Unhappy Elitist: Victor Serge’s Early Bolshevism

Date unknown

Letter from Afar




 

Last updated on 26 October 2017