Peter Waterman

Image rights: Peter Waterman

Born in London, 1936, to a Jewish Communist family, Peter did a Diploma in Journalism at the Regent Street Polytechnic and got his first job as English Editor (effectively chief sub-editor) of World Student News, the magazine of the International Union of Students, Prague, 1955-8. After diploma studies at the trade-union associated Ruskin College and a Batchelor’s degree at Oxford University, he returned to Prague, 1966-9, where he worked as a labour educator for the World Federation of Trade Unions (primarily in Africa). Leaving the Communist world (and the world of Communism), he got a Master’s in West African Studies in Birmingham, and taught at Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria, 1970-72. From then till 1998 he worked at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. Here he was successively associated with the Labour Studies and the Politics of Alternative Development programmes. Since retirement in 1998 he has published various books, compilations and numerous academic and political papers - the latter almost all to be found online. He has had many papers published by the Montevideo-based Choike portal.

He is currently associated with - amongst others - the Network Institute for Global Democracy (Helsinki), the Programa Democracia y Transformación Global (Lima), with two online journals, Interface: a Journal for and about Social Movements, the Global Labour Journal, and with the India Institute for Critical Action - Centre in Movement (CACIM) in New Delhi. Here he has been co-editing a book series on the World Social Forums, Challenging Empires. Peter has a blog on the UnionBook blogsite. He spends several months a year in Peru, where his longtime partner, feminist writer and activist, Virginia Vargas, lives. He has been present at many of the World Social Forums and has in recent years also traveled for his work to Russia, the USA, Sweden, Finland, Hongkong and South Korea. Peter is currently completing his autobiography, under the working title ‘Itinerary of a Long-Distance Internationalist’.