This volume, marking the eightieth anniversary of the journal The Political Quarterly, contains a selection of articles from eight decades of progressive writing and provides both a fascinating window on the past and a stimulus to thought and action in the present.

• A free-thinking platform for the leading voices of the progressive tradition in British politics
• Spans eight decades of progressive writing from voices which still have something to say to us now
• Aims to bridge the divide between thought and action and to provide an intellectual foundation for practical reform and for progressive politics

Andrew Gamble is Professor of Politics and a Fellow of Queens’ College in the University of Cambridge, and currently Head of the Department of Politics and International Studies and joint editor of The Political Quarterly. His research interests lie in political economy, political theory and British politics, and his books include Between Europe and America: the future of British politics and The Spectre at the Feast: capitalist crisis and the politics of recession. In 2005 he received the Isaiah Berlin Prize from the Political Studies Association for lifetime contribution to political studies.   

Tony Wright is Professorial Fellow in the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, working on the development of the new Centre for the Study of British Politics and Public Life and contributing to the teaching of British Politics. Tony was educated at LSE, Harvard and Oxford. Before being elected to Parliament in 1992, he was Reader in British Political Thought at the University of Birmingham, where he taught in the School of Continuing Studies. In the House of Commons he chaired the Select Committee on Public Administration for over a decade; and also chaired the Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons which recommended major changes in how the Commons works. He stood down from the Commons at the last election.

He is joint editor of The Political Quarterly and his many books include GDH Cole and Socialist Democracy (1979), Socialisms: Theories and Practices (1986), RH Tawney (1987),Citizens and Subjects (1994), British Politics: A Very Short Introduction (2003) and several edited volumes including The British Political Process (2000).A collection of his other writing is to appear shortly as Doing Politics.