Ken Coates

This article is about the British politician. For the Canadian historian, see Ken Coates (historian).

Ken Coates (born 1930) is a British politician and writer. He chairs the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and edits The Spokesman, the BRPF magazine launched in March 1970. He was a Member of the European Parliament from 1989 to 1999.

A former member of the Young Communist League (Britain), Coates became a Nottinghamshire coal miner rather than face conscription into the British army fighting in the Malayan Emergency. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain but left following the breach between Stalin and 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 attended the fifth world congress of the Fourth International in 1958, Coates played a central role in founding the International Group, forerunner of the International Marxist Group.

Coates has also played leading roles in the Institute for Workers' Control, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, European Nuclear Disarmament, the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (BRPF) and the Independent Labour Network. From 1989 to 1999 he was a Labour Party member of the European Parliament and spent five years as President of its Human Rights Subcommittee. Coates is now special professor in the Department of Adult Education at the University of Nottingham. Prior to the 2007 Scottish Parliament election Coates announced his support for the Scottish National Party.[1] He is a member of the Advisory Board of the left-wing magazine on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia Novi Plamen.

Coates is the author of Essays on Socialist Humanism, a book in honour of Bertrand Russell. He has written and edited numerous other books on poverty, political philosophy, democratic and human 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.

Books written or co-written by Ken Coates.

• A Future for British Socialism?, The Centre for Socialist Education 96pp
• Beyond the Bulldozer, ISBN 0-902031-43-0, Spokesman Books 1980
• Confessions of a terrorist, ISBN 0-85124-678-8, Spokesman Books 2003
• Empire no more, ISBN 0-85124-694-X
• Essays on Industrial Democracy, Spokesman Books
• From Tom Paine To Guantanamo, ISBN 0-85124-702-4
• Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen, Harmondsworth. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-052280-8
• The New Unionism: the case for worker's control, Penguin Books, 1974. ISBN 0-14-021811-4
• Trade Union Register, Merlin Press 1969
• Trade unions and politics, ISBN 0-631-13753-X, Basil Blackwell, Oxford
• Trade Unions in Britain, ISBN 0-00-686121-0, Fontana Press May 12, 1988
• Workers' Control: A Book of Readings and Witnesses for Workers' Control
• Workers' Control: Another World Is Possible, ISBN 0-85124-682-6, Spokesman