John Rose (socialist)

John Rose (1945-2024) was a British socialist and anti-Zionist Jew who taught sociology at Southwark College and London Metropolitan University. After growing up in Harrogate as a Zionist in 1966 he went to the London School of Economics where he met Tony Cliff and was recruited to the International Socialists, later the Socialist Workers Party (UK) in 1967 amid discussions around the Six Day War. He was one of the London Recruits who undertook anti-apartheid work as a student in South Africa under the direction of the ANC. In the late 1970s he was an editor of Socialist Worker for a period.

John Rose was a tireless campaigner for Palestinian rights and the author of numerous articles and the book The Myths of Zionism. He attended and spoke at the Cairo Anti-war Conference in the mid-2000s. He completed his PhD on Workers Power and the failure of Communism at King's College London in 2020. He died after a long illness on 30 October 2024.

Selected works

• Israel: The Hijack State (London: Bookmarks: 1986).
• Introduction to The Ghetto Fights: Warsaw 1941-43 by Marek Edelman (London: Bookmarks, 1995)
• The Myths of Zionism (London: Pluto, 2004) ISBN 9780745320557
• The Nakba: Why Israel’s birth was Palestine’s catastrophe and what’s the solution (London: Bookmarks, 2008) (with Anne Alexander)

External links

• The John Rose Internet Archive Articles at Marxists.org
• John Rose: An inspiration for revolutionaries Obituary in Socialist Worker by Ken Muller 2 November 2024.
• John Rose: A Revolutionary Life - Obituary by Lindsey German.
• Interview with John Rose from 2010 by Dave Randall (musician)
• Palestine: Resistance, Revolution & the Struggle for Freedom - speech by John Rose from 2015
• Podcast on ‘Israel – Analysing the Empire’s watchdog in the Middle East’ (2014)
• Profile at Open Democracy
• Profile at the Guardian