Quick Facts
Biography
Colin Barker (born 1939) is a British sociologist as well as a Marxist historian and writer. A former long-standing member of the Socialist Workers Party in Manchester, he is the author of numerous articles and works on Marxism, including a history of the Polish trade union Solidarity, Festival of the Oppressed.
A Trotskyist, Barker was a member of the International Socialism Group in Oxford and Manchester from 1962. He was a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University from 1967 to 2002 and is an organiser of the periodic International Conference on Alternative Futures and Popular Protest there.
He regularly spoke at the Socialist Workers Party's annual Marxism event. In 2013, he joined opposition to the SWP Central Committee's handling of the allegations of rape made against 'Comrade Delta'. and left the organisation in 2014.
Books
- The Power Game. London: Pluto Press, 1972. ISBN 978-0-902818-17-0
- Festival of the Oppressed: solidarity, reform and revolution in Poland, 1980-81. London: Bookmarks Publishing Co-operative, 1986. ISBN 978-0-906224-27-4
- Marxism and Social Movements (co-editor). Leiden: Brill, 2013. ISBN 978-9-004211-75-9
Selected articles/works
- Incomes policy, legislation and shop stewards (with Tony Cliff) (1966)
- Involvement in strikes: some recent case-studies, etc (1966)
- A Note On The Theory of Capitalist States (1978)
- A ‘New’ Reformism?—A Critique of the Political Theory of Nicos Poulantzas (1979)
- Origins and Significance of the Meiji Restoration (1982)
- Solidarnosc: from Gdansk to military repression (with Kara Weber) (1982)
- Revolutionary Rehearsals (editor) (1987)
- The development of British capitalist society: a Marxist debate (edited with David Nicholls) (1988)
- To make another world: studies in protest and collective action (edited with Paul Kennedy) (1996)
- Leadership and social movements (edited with Michael Lavalette and Alan Johnson) (2001)
- In the middle way (review of Geoff Eley Forging Democracy) (2004)
- The rise of Solidarnosc (2005)
- Strike for Freedom, Socialist Worker (2006)