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In 1981 Britain was in a state of crisis: 2.5 million people were unemployed and Margaret Thatcher's government was deeply unpopular.

Eds: Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, Seven Stories, £11.99

The Labour victory in Glenrothes was about more than a bounce for Gordon Brown (Frontlines, Socialist Review, December 2008).

Neve Gordon, University of California Press, £12.95

To read the papers in recent weeks you might be forgiven for assuming that car workers' wage levels and public sector pensions caused the financial crisis currently wreaking havoc across the globe.

I don't understand why your writer thinks a New Labour victory in Glenrothes is good for socialism (Frontlines, Socialist Review, December 2008).

Lloyd C Gardner, The New Press, £18.99

This time last year the world looked very different. Ian McCafferty, the chief economic adviser of the CBI, argued on New Year's Eve 2007, "While the 2008 slowdown may appear dramatic set against this year's strong growth, the fundamentals of our economy remain sound and talk of a full-blown recession is overstated."

Colin Wilson is correct to defend Francis Bacon's art against attempts at a crude reduction (Feedback, Socialist Review, December 2008).

Jonathan Glennie, Zed Books, £12.99

So much for Gordon Brown's claim in November that "old free market fundamentalism, no matter how it is dressed up, has been found wanting". The publication of Richard Hooper's report on the future of Royal Mail, "Modernise or Decline", suggests that part-privatisation is well and truly on the cards.

Sorry, Colin Wilson, but the "impoverished and philistine view we should reject" concerning the over-hyped and utterly derivative painter, Francis Bacon, is yours, not Tom Davies (Feedback, Socialist Review, December 2008).