Tomorrow marks the 70^th anniversary of the murder
of Trotsky’s eldest son – Leon Sedov -by agents of the Stalinist secret police,
the GPU. He was thirty-two years of age. This crime constituted part of the
systematic hounding and murder of Trotsky’s key supporters and family, whose
only ‘crime’ was to defend genuine Marxism against Stalin and the crimes of the
Russian bureaucracy.

Andrew Glyn died from a brain tumour on 22 December 2007.  He was 64 years old.  A fellow of Corpus Christi College
in Oxford since
1969, he was a leading socialist economist for all that time.

Andrew left a wealth
of important writing that analysed the development of post-war capitalism. His best-known works were British capitalism, workers and the profits
squeeze with Bob Sutcliffe in 1972; Capitalism
since 1945 with Phil Armstrong and the late John Harrison in 1984 and most
recently, Capitalism Unleashed
(2006), reviewed earlier.

One year ago today comrade Phil Mitchinson
died tragically of a heart attack. He was without doubt a very talented comrade
who devoted his time to editing the Socialist
Appeal and helping to build our tendency in Britain and internationally. Here
Rob Sewell remembers Phil and the role he played.