Andrew Murray (campaigner and journalist)
Encyclopedia
Andrew Murray is a British
campaigner and journalist who has been Chair of the Stop the War Coalition
from its formation in 2001. In this capacity he presided at the concluding rally of what is claimed as the largest political demonstration in British history, against the Iraq war in 2003. His role in Stop the War has led to him being the target of considerable polemical criticism from the war's supporters, including Nick Cohen
, the Labour
Friends of Iraq group and others.
A former Morning Star
journalist, to which he still contributes, he was appointed a parliamentary lobby correspondent at the age of 19. Later he became an official for the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen
(ASLEF). In the 1980s, he worked for the official Soviet
Novosti news agency.
At the Transport and General Workers Union, where he worked from 1987 to 1998 and again from 2003, he was heavily involved in the conduct of the British Airways
cabin crew strike of 1997, and in the successful general secretary election campaigns of Bill Morris
(1991 and 1995) and Tony Woodley
(2003).
He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain
in 1976 and was later associated with its Straight Left
faction. Following the dissolution of the CPGB in 1991 he was a leader of the Communist Liaison group, which itself dissolved in 1995 with its members joining the Communist Party of Britain
, of which he remains a member. He served on the Party's leadership from 2000 to 2004, and was an advocate of the CPB supporting the Trotskyite-led Respect Coalition in the European and municipal elections
that year. He was re-elected to the party executive in 2008.
Murray is considered an apologist for Joseph Stalin
by his critics, such as Nick Cohen
. Described as an "admirer" in The Independent on Sunday in 2003, in 1999 he wrote in his Morning Star column:
In 2008, Murray identified "one of the successes" of the "nationalities policy of the Soviet Union" as being the promotion of "the cultural, linguistic and educational development of each ethnic group, no matter how small or how historically marginalised." This comment was criticized by author Edward Lucas
in The Guardian
who accused Murray of ignoring "the Chechens
, Crimean Tatars
and other victims of Stalin's murderous deportation policies."
He is also a defender of North Korea
: "Our Party has already made its basic position of solidarity with Peoples Korea clear". In response to a Daily Telegraph letter from Conservative
MP and Defence Spokesman Dr Julian Lewis
, he claimed that he had made no secret of his political beliefs.
Murray is presently senior officer in charge of communications for Unite
- the trade union formed by a merger of the Transport and General Workers Union and Amicus
. He defended Arthur Scargill
in a review of Marching to the Fault Line by Francis Beckett
and David Hencke, which criticises the NUM leader's role in the miners' strike
, advising Morning Star
readers not to buy the book as doing so would only "feed the jackals."
He is the author of several books and numerous pamphlets, including Flashpoint World War III (1997), Off the Rails (2001), A New Labour Nightmare: Return of the Awkward Squad (2003), Stop the War: The Story of Britain's Biggest Mass Movement (with Lindsey German
, 2005), The T&G Story (2008) and The Imperial Controversy (2009), the later work was described Nathaniel Mehr
in Tribune
magazine as "an important and timely book". He has also contributed to The Guardian and has written a blog on the newspaper's web page.
Andrew Murray has been married twice - to Susan Michie
(1981–1997) and to Anna Kruthoffer from 2003 to date. He has three children with Dr. Michie - Jessica Katharine Murray, Jack Douglas Murray and Laura Catriona Murray and a stepdaughter, Sally.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
campaigner and journalist who has been Chair of the Stop the War Coalition
Stop the War Coalition
The Stop the War Coalition is a United Kingdom group set up on 21 September 2001 that campaigns against what it believes are unjust wars....
from its formation in 2001. In this capacity he presided at the concluding rally of what is claimed as the largest political demonstration in British history, against the Iraq war in 2003. His role in Stop the War has led to him being the target of considerable polemical criticism from the war's supporters, including Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen is a British journalist, author and political commentator. He is currently a columnist for The Observer, a blogger for The Spectator and TV critic for Standpoint magazine. He formerly wrote for the London Evening Standard and the New Statesman...
, the Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
Friends of Iraq group and others.
A former Morning Star
The Morning Star
The Morning Star is a left wing British daily tabloid newspaper with a focus on social and trade union issues. Articles and comment columns are contributed by writers from socialist, social democratic, green and religious perspectives....
journalist, to which he still contributes, he was appointed a parliamentary lobby correspondent at the age of 19. Later he became an official for the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen
Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen
The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen is the trade union representing railway workers in Great Britain who are train drivers or in the line of promotion to train driver....
(ASLEF). In the 1980s, he worked for the official Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
Novosti news agency.
At the Transport and General Workers Union, where he worked from 1987 to 1998 and again from 2003, he was heavily involved in the conduct of the British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
cabin crew strike of 1997, and in the successful general secretary election campaigns of Bill Morris
Bill Morris
William Manuel Morris, Baron Morris of Handsworth, OJ , generally known as Bill Morris, was general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union from 1992 to 2003, and the first black leader of a British trade union....
(1991 and 1995) and Tony Woodley
Tony Woodley
Anthony Woodley is a British trade unionist who was the Joint-General Secretary of the Unite union which was formed through the merger of Amicus and the Transport and General Workers Union in 2007...
(2003).
He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
in 1976 and was later associated with its Straight Left
Straight Left
Straight Left was a left-wing newspaper. The phrase was also the generic name given to a political faction of the Communist Party of Great Britain who disagreed with the leadership's emerging Eurocommunist politics, and were responsible for the production of the newspaper...
faction. Following the dissolution of the CPGB in 1991 he was a leader of the Communist Liaison group, which itself dissolved in 1995 with its members joining the Communist Party of Britain
Communist Party of Britain
The Communist Party of Britain is a communist political party in Great Britain. Although founded in 1988 it traces its origins back to 1920 and the Communist Party of Great Britain, and claims the legacy of that party and its most influential members Harry Pollitt and John Gollan as its...
, of which he remains a member. He served on the Party's leadership from 2000 to 2004, and was an advocate of the CPB supporting the Trotskyite-led Respect Coalition in the European and municipal elections
United Kingdom local elections, 2004
The United Kingdom local elections of 2004 were held on 10 June, as part of the 2004 set of elections along with the European elections and the London mayoral and Assembly elections.-About the elections:...
that year. He was re-elected to the party executive in 2008.
Murray is considered an apologist for Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
by his critics, such as Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen is a British journalist, author and political commentator. He is currently a columnist for The Observer, a blogger for The Spectator and TV critic for Standpoint magazine. He formerly wrote for the London Evening Standard and the New Statesman...
. Described as an "admirer" in The Independent on Sunday in 2003, in 1999 he wrote in his Morning Star column:
"Next Tuesday is the 120th anniversary of the birth of Josef Stalin. His career is the subject of a vast and ever expandingb literature. Read it all and, at the end, you are still left paying your money and taking your choice. A socialist system embracing a third of the world and the defeat of Nazi Germany on the one hand. On the other, all accompanied by harsh measures imposed by a one-party regime. Nevertheless, if you believe that the worst crimes visited on humanity this century, from colonialism to Hiroshima and from concentration camps to mass poverty and unemployment
have been caused by imperialism, then [Stalin’s birthday] might at least be a moment to ponder why the authors of those crimes and their hack propagandists abominate the name of Stalin beyond all others. It was, after all, Stalin’s best-known critic, Nikita Khrushchev, who remarked in 1956 that 'against imperialists, we are all Stalinists'".
In 2008, Murray identified "one of the successes" of the "nationalities policy of the Soviet Union" as being the promotion of "the cultural, linguistic and educational development of each ethnic group, no matter how small or how historically marginalised." This comment was criticized by author Edward Lucas
Edward Lucas (journalist)
Edward Lucas is a British journalist.Lucas is International Editor of The Economist, the London-based global newsweekly and also oversees the paper’s political coverage of Central and Eastern Europe. He has been covering eastern Europe since 1986, and was the Moscow bureau chief from 1998-2002,...
in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
who accused Murray of ignoring "the Chechens
Operation Lentil (Caucasus)
Operation Lentil was the Soviet expulsion of the whole of the native Chechen and Ingush populations of the North Caucasus to Siberia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan during World War II....
, Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group that originally resided in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...
and other victims of Stalin's murderous deportation policies."
He is also a defender of North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
: "Our Party has already made its basic position of solidarity with Peoples Korea clear". In response to a Daily Telegraph letter from Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
MP and Defence Spokesman Dr Julian Lewis
Julian Lewis
Dr. Julian Murray Lewis is a British Conservative Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for New Forest East in Hampshire since the 1997 general election.-Education:Born on 26 September 1951 in Swansea, Dr...
, he claimed that he had made no secret of his political beliefs.
Murray is presently senior officer in charge of communications for Unite
Unite the Union
Unite – the Union, known as Unite, is a British and Irish trade union, formed on 1 May 2007, by the merger of Amicus and the Transport and General Workers' Union...
- the trade union formed by a merger of the Transport and General Workers Union and Amicus
Amicus
Amicus was the United Kingdom's second-largest trade union, and the largest private sector union, formed by the merger of Manufacturing Science and Finance, the AEEU agreed in 2001, and two smaller unions, UNIFI and the GPMU...
. He defended Arthur Scargill
Arthur Scargill
Arthur Scargill is a British politician who was President of the National Union of Mineworkers from 1982 to 2002, leading the union through the 1984–85 miners' strike, a key event in British labour and political history...
in a review of Marching to the Fault Line by Francis Beckett
Francis Beckett
Francis Beckett is an English author, journalist, biographer, and contemporary historian. He has written biographies of Aneurin Bevan, Clement Attlee, Harold Macmillan, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. He has also written on education for the New Statesman, The Guardian and The Independent...
and David Hencke, which criticises the NUM leader's role in the miners' strike
UK miners' strike (1984–1985)
The UK miners' strike was a major industrial action affecting the British coal industry. It was a defining moment in British industrial relations, and its defeat significantly weakened the British trades union movement...
, advising Morning Star
Morning Star
Morning star is the name given to the planet Venus when it appears in the east before sunrise.*Phosphorus , in Greek and biblical mythology** Eosphorus, the "dawn-bearer" in Greek mythology**Lucifer, the Latin translation of Phosphorus...
readers not to buy the book as doing so would only "feed the jackals."
He is the author of several books and numerous pamphlets, including Flashpoint World War III (1997), Off the Rails (2001), A New Labour Nightmare: Return of the Awkward Squad (2003), Stop the War: The Story of Britain's Biggest Mass Movement (with Lindsey German
Lindsey German
Lindsey German is the convenor of the British anti-war organisation Stop the War Coalition and a former member of the central committee of the Socialist Workers Party. She was editor of Socialist Review for twenty years until 2004...
, 2005), The T&G Story (2008) and The Imperial Controversy (2009), the later work was described Nathaniel Mehr
Nathaniel Mehr
Nathaniel Mehr is a leftwing British journalist whose has written for several publications including The Morning Star newspaper and Tribune magazine and Red Pepper....
in Tribune
Tribune (magazine)
Tribune is a democratic socialist weekly, founded in 1937 published in London. It is independent but supports the Labour Party from the left...
magazine as "an important and timely book". He has also contributed to The Guardian and has written a blog on the newspaper's web page.
Andrew Murray has been married twice - to Susan Michie
Susan Michie
Professor Susan Michie is Professor of Health Psychology at University College London, United Kingdom.-Academic career:...
(1981–1997) and to Anna Kruthoffer from 2003 to date. He has three children with Dr. Michie - Jessica Katharine Murray, Jack Douglas Murray and Laura Catriona Murray and a stepdaughter, Sally.