Mick Brooks and expropriating the banks

Submitted by AWL on 9 February, 2021 - 7:40 Author: Sacha Ismail
Mick Brooks

Longstanding socialist and Labour Party activist Mick Brooks (1948-2021), who died in January as a result of complications from Covid-19, was co-author with Michael Roberts of the Fire Brigades Union’s 2013 pamphlet on public ownership of the banks and high finance, It's time to take over the banks. (The two also ran regular Karl Marx walking tours in London.)

In the face of multiple convulsive social crises, the demand for public and democratic control of finance is more relevant and urgent than ever. Mick continued to vocally and actively make the case for it. For those who did not know him, the best way to honour him is surely to popularise and build labour movement campaigning to win it.

Mick was involved in the anti-Vietnam-war movement and joined the Labour Party Young Socialists as a teenager. Active in the Revolutionary Socialist League/Militant and the International Marxist Tendency, and then the broader Labour left (he was political secretary of the Labour Representation Committee and editor of its Labour Briefing), he supported a wide range of campaigns and struggles virtually to the end.

In 2012, he published a book analysing the post-2007 upheaval, Capitalist Crisis: Theory and Practice.

You can read other appreciations of Mick on the Labour Briefing and Labour Hub websites.

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