Ken Coates was the editor of our journal The Spokesman until his death in 2010. Ken served as a director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and helped to found the Institute for Workers' Control, European Nuclear Disarmament and many other organisations. Ken worked as a miner, adult education tutor and served as a Labour MEP up to his expulsion from the party in 1999 for opposition to Tony Blair's policies. Ken Coates was a prolific writer of articles, essays, pamphlets and books most of which were printed by Spokesman Books.