the RADIOACTIVE TOMORROW Big Red Diary 1979 Pluto Press, £1.50.
La diary?
This one has 365 days in it, same as ine one i nad last year (u nas a icu more in fact). Unlike last year, however, the dates all match up witt different days. Clever that.
But this diary is different. Instead of lighting up times, Northern Ireland bank holidays and charts telling you what year was good for Beaujolais there is. is a Big Red Diary (though it's yellow this year).
The topic: Better active today than radio-active tomorrow.
The front and back pages contain all the necessary nuclear hazards. the threat to civil liberties, the worldwide anti-nuclear campaign and so on. it also has a simple explanation (useful for people ike me of how nuclear power works An improvement on previous years is that the anniversary dates at the end of each week no longer encroach on the space for each day, which makes it more useful as a normal diary One quibble: the diary tends to take over wholesale the environmentaliststyle arguments of the bulk of the anti-nuclear movement instead of trying to place the issue in a socialist context. It is, after all, meant to be a red diary.
This means, for example, that it uncritically reproduces media horror SLOTIC "terrorists' being able to make their own bomb -used to justify the clamp down on civil rights and restriction of trade union activity in the nuclear industry Still, the fault lies less editors of this diary than with some of the British left seems pathologically incapable adjusting itself to take up new issues. Perhaps if they have one of these diaries in their pocket all next year it might jolt their consciences.
RICHARD CARVER by elementary the The duties of Marxists The Second Slump by Ernest Mandel New Left Books. £6.50 T Mar chapter present economic recession indicates need for struggle;
defeat. workers security, defensive job.
HAT ON earth do you sa when you're asked to reviev •politics! In other words, this imperatives information on overturned possibility of precisely the argument with the . which sometimes defend depression.
foster, HIS BRIEF extract from the Ernest Mandel's new book on the