Chris Harman


Chris Harman was a British journalist and political activist, and a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He was an editor of International Socialism and Socialist Worker.

Life

Born Christopher John Harman into a working-class family, he attended Leeds University and the London School of Economics where he began a doctorate under the supervision of Ralph Miliband. He was instrumental in publishing the magazine of the LSE Socialist Society, The Agitator, and was a leading member of the International Socialists by 1968. He was involved in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and outraged many leftists when, at a meeting in the Conway Hall, he denounced Ho Chi Minh for murdering the leader of the Vietnamese Trotskyist movement, Tạ Thu Thâu, in 1945 after crushing the workers' rising of that year in Saigon.
His main role in the IS was as a theorist and he produced numerous books and articles on a wide variety of topics. Almost all his writing appeared in the publications of the IS and SWP or has been published by related publishing houses, such as Bookmarks. He was first editor of Socialist Worker in 1976-77 and returned to the role after a break in 1982, remaining in the post until 2004, when he started editing the SWP's theoretical quarterly International Socialism Journal.
Harman's work on the May 1968 events in France and other student and workers' uprisings of the late 1960s, The Fire Last Time, was recommended by rock band Rage Against the Machine in their album sleeve notes for Evil Empire.
Harman died on 7 November 2009, following a cardiac arrest while lecturing at the Socialist Days conference of the Center for Socialist Studies in Cairo, Egypt. He is buried in Highgate Cemetery, London, a few yards from Karl Marx's tomb and adjacent to his comrade Paul Foot.

Selected works

Books and pamphlets

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